I remember standing by one of bassin, facing the facade of Louvre in all its glory. Dead leafs on the ground mark the beginning of the fall season. The sky was grey and the trees danced to the rhythm of the wind. That day the gardens seemed empty, regardless of all the people that surrounded me, and all I could see were the crows, everywhere. I felt alone, as if there was no one else but nature.
They changed the atmosphere. They looked odd in this fairy-tail like garden, but at the same time they fit in. Some people would argue that crows are bad luck, but I find them beautiful. They fascinate me. They tell a story without saying a word. It seemed like they’ve been here for forever, like they lived through all of Paris’ history, from the begging of time, watching, watching us, and they were ready to spill all of its dark secrets, all of our dark secrets, if they could. I felt nostalgia towards events that I never lived as I looked at them.
The garden turned gloomy through the lens of my phone. The monochrome effect made the pictures timeless.
I stoped and looked down at the map of the Tuileries Gardens and follow the dots I had previously marked. I noticed three of the dots land on grass. I stood on the same spot for what felt like an eternity waiting for the security guards to pass by and the gardener mowing the lawn to move further away, and so I made a run for it and snapped the three pictures I needed for my studio derive project. For a second I felt like a kid again, my inner child doing things she knew she was going to get in trouble for. As a child I was always scared to do things I wasn’t supposed to do because I was so scared of my mother more than hurting myself. When I got back on the walking track, I moved on to the next mark on my map as if nothing happened while I burst into laughter. Two young men were sitting by and I am pretty certain they’ve been eyeing me since the start and now probably think I am crazy.
As I walked through the garden, I walked the same path french nobles walked on, and for a brief moment I felt like I’m in sixteenth century Paris. I imagined myself during the french revolution, walking through the gardens to reach La Place de La Revolution. A piece of land, in the center of Paris, turned into a garden in sixteenth century to please the residence of the Tuileries palace. The perfectly symmetric garden felt bigger then what it is to my eyes. As I wondered through the garden, following the dots on my map.
As I continued my walk through the garden, I remembered my mother’s words. How she loved to come to the Tuileries gardens back when she herself lived in Paris and I remembered her giving me a moral lesson on how I should, and I quote, “Definitely go to the Jardins des Tuileries as much as you can”. It was a requirement, an obligation, a request I had to do for my mother. And here I was, for the seventh time since I landed in Paris in mid-August.
At 11:20, we had to meet up at the octagon basin. The first person I saw, and who woke me up from my trance was Lara, Serbian Lara, Lara Popovic not German Lara. She was still filming with her phone, I recognized her from her curly blonde locks. While waiting for everyone to gather up, Konstanze and I craved ice cream. Luckily for us, there was an ice cream stand. We each ordered and chose our flavors, and stared upon the women who carved our ice-cream cones in the shape of roses, delicately positioning each ice-cream flavor after the other to form a delicate rose. It was good ice-cream, but I’m not sure if it was gelato or not, it did resemble gelato by the look of it, but I believe gelato is more elastic in texture.
Alice was laying on the ground by the bank of the octagonal basin, trying to take a picture of the landscape. We were all worried she was gonna fall in, and all the laws of physics also pointed toward that, but she somehow managed to stay dry. Mona came down with something, and was so tired she could barely walk.