8: Rodin

Sat morning.
“So you don’t want to go out tonight?” sister
“No, I don’t want to hang out with kids.” me
“They’re not kids…they’re sea lions.” sister

Saturday.
Stop Varenne for Rodin museum.
See admission charge, then explore the Latin Quarter and Luxembourg garden park.

The huge hands and feet of the first Rodin sculpture group of figures I come to.
They have magnifying glass telescopes set up so you can better see the small detail of one that looks like a doorway, and looking at the title is La Porte de L’Enfer.
I am already excited that I know nothing of Rodin except the name a slight familiarity.
Ariane is beautifully nice, haunting and even confusing at first glance.
Watched a baby in a stroller eyes flickering from one marble statue to the next. The feet of the dark outdoor sculptures so large.
Small girls make French duck noises.
I want to punch a kid who just put his cigarette out at the feet of D’Andres’ draped figure. Give us both an inordinate memory of this sculpture garden.

You get all the angles that books never provide you. I sit on a bench and look at his famous thinker in front of me. Conical evergreens on either side of bench. MCMVI. The “d” in his signature looks especially nice. The muscles of the right leg quickly remind me of H.R. Geiger, the feet are a bulbous knobby, the flap of hair on left side of his head is strange. But the impression is magnificent.
The feeling of it.
Meaning of it?
Meaning of it to me.

Francesca of Paulo and Francesca dans les Nuages is beautiful. The fish woman is erotic.
A photo of Rodin shows a man with a stomach and large hands large beard.
The way La Danaide comes out of the marble.
A great painting by Van Gogh I’ve never seen before Le Pere Tanguy.
He also owned ancient Egyptian and Greek and a couple Japanese sculptures. A Van Gogh wheat painting, a dark Monet water 1886.
Le Sculpteur et sa Muse – look up. It is edifying.
I love L’Homme et sa Pensee and if you look close at the right angle you can see the slight part of her parts underneath. The man is bearded the woman’s face young.
My imagination is running wild in this place of smooth lines, in these recreations waiting for life to breath into them. Breath that runs from my eyes to the mass of gray yogurt holding who I am. Breath that works, even if nobody is brave enough to acknowledge it.

Upon seeing second photo his hands are not so large.
An Edward Munch of the thinker.
The poetic pinch of the breast in Fugit Amor, thumb on the underside.
A very cool portrait of him by Sinet.
Le Sommeil beautiful.
He had a Rembrandt copy of the woman washing feet.
A blonde girl of maybe seven with pigtails stares at Le Baiser for a couple minutes, transfixed, and I wonder what she’s thinking.
The girl in the sculpture has her hand in light relief, curling just under her back ear.
The man kissing eternal idol – L’Eternelle Idole. I want you like this.
We can embrace and feel it while held in the Main de Dieu.

The young girl with roses in hat’s little buck and parted teeth.
The odd way they look in profile.

As I sit at the gates of hell your perfume eludes me. The kiss of soft curve memory tries wooden planks out into my middle back. A rosary of misery calling to be prayed over. Will the subtle felt of your skin ever be teased by my lips?
Sew pattern of reluctance into consuming victory of spirit.
The maddening crunch of loose
gravel half embedded in clayed mud.
The whisper.
The laugh throaty in moment feeling like the whine of an old automatic camera rewinding.
Turn soft light pink folds turquoise in sunrise – remove the make-up of previous personality persona to dance move walk fully in what is inside. Birdsong twitter running of green pattern,
spider web of pantyhose a pinstripe citrus line from toes to thigh
to breast nipple
collar bone
neck
lip nose
right eye forehead.
A yawn and grin afterwards. A letting in.
A shadow rolled in dirt maple covered hard to part.
The two escaping from marble.
Standing at the gates of hell others get their picture taken – sitting at/before the gates of hell I think of the curve of your stomach and long to wrap my thus around you.

In the café in Rodin’s garden I drink a Cotes de Provence Rose 3E90. With so much walking this trip and sun and fresh air I just cannot escape from rose during the day. This one is very good. I am very much contemplating taking my little bottle away from the café and sitting down somewhere else…I decide not to. I want to explore where he made the works – it feels inside here somewhere. Is it where the museum now is? In the back building…or did it stretch the property underground. Surely there are kilns down there. I have the strong desire to read his biography. The marble figures are the best I have ever seen.
You will hardly ever smile at a stranger in this country – is it you or them?
I am very conscious of playing with my beard or resting the end of my pen on chin in this place – considering the sculpture yards away is what it is. I am smiling inside the whole time, some moments of unrecognized breathless awe.
Moments of wonder. Moments of lust. Moments of ache.

“A man bummed a cigarette from me, he had a beard and a strange haircut – the back half was long unruly and tangled, the whole left side shaved clean. He was wearing a black hoodie and a slate scarve. One of those prints I’ve been seeing everywhere. His jeans were tattered at the bottom. He was wearing gray and turquoise Pumas with hints of yellow. His hands were tattooed. He said thank you in shaky English.” The man who thought this is wearing a green shirt.
Then I left the museum.
Then I thought of writing more prose at the museum.
Then I sat still at the museum.
I sat and re-read some things. The second time I look at the Thinker dark gray clouds brood behind him.
I do not go to the Camille Claudel exhibit.
I don’t go because I am almost too full.