I really haven’t noticed the sunny, breezy weather today. Fall is supposed to be my favorite season, and yet I find myself longing for winter. There’s a snow globe on my desk reminding me that business trips end, usually with a hug and a silly souvenir. La Joconde (Mona Lisa) looks at me with that half smile, a secret she’s hiding for centuries. The gloss on the postcard is wearing thin now that she’s been moved to so many different places; different offices, apartments, boxes…She’s even looking at me now as I write, and she’s taunting me.
I got that postcard in Paris. It was winter then and I was in love with France. I came face to face with La Joconde that season. No one was in the room. the Louvre was empty of tourists who on any other day would shuffle through the line to get a glimpse of the small, unimpressive painting, then ushered along to see some other work of art in some other hall. Her face has been an enigma for years.
I look at her and see “almost’s”. She is almost flirtatious. She is almost sad. She is almost smiling. She is almost crying. She almost can read my mind because maybe she too has been sad for a long time and longs for a winter. I wonder if she is beautiful like I wonder if I am beautiful to anyone who has seen my face. I’m no masterpiece. I’m not framed in some famous musuem.
I have my bathroom mirror and she has the world.
The funny thing about sad is that more often then not, I have no real reason to be sad. I’m selfish I suppose. I want things I can’t have. I want to be transformed into someone I’m not. I “gimmie gimmie!” more than anything. And somehow, even as I look back on my trips to Paris, seeing Mona before me, and all the other things I have seen, done, eaten, had…
….incomplete.
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