Appreciate!

‘Musée du Louvre’, the most visited art museum in the world! 4-5 young men walking in a gallary, slowly, looking at paintings, both sides. Here comes the famous work by Jacques-Louis David, ‘the coronation of Napoleon’. Here comes ‘John the Baptist’ by leonardo da vinci. YES! the one which leonardo da vinci paited himself, not a photo-copy. But they’re walking, just walking. With the same speed, 1 step in 2 seconds. They’re aware of one thing that it’s the famous Louvre Museum and they really want to appreciate everything. The paintings, sculptures, very old pots of babylonian time etc. etc. But appreciation is not possible while you’re standing or walking. They say-lets find a place to appreciate these things. No explanation required-all of them understand the code language. Some day when you’re dead tired or you’re not even slightly interested in art-work, you’d understand that language too. If you still didn’t get what they meant, they’re looking for a place to SIT.

But sad news for them! they’re not the only ones who want to ‘appreciate’. There are more, I mean too many-just like them. Wherever there are seats, lot of people are already appreciating. They move on but no luck this time either. Now one of them sees through the window and voila! there is some space around the big sculptures(or statues, whatever)and they go downstairs and right towards the PLACE. No sooner they begin their appreciation, a security personnel comes and asks them to stand up, “Not a place to sit”.

We had audio-guides too and whenever the weight hanging in the neck reminded us of 5 euros, all of us pressed some number and started learning about the history, for not more than a minute in any case. I found a 20 seconds long music track in the audio-guide(which was really good) so I just listened to that, probably more than 100 times. The time is passing away but we knew every second of it which seemed like an hour.

Now we entered into a hall and a saw huge crowd. Somebody said-look! there is monalisa! We opened our eyes for the first time. You guessed it wrong. Not to see monalisa, nobody even gazed at it but to find some space in the crowd and take one picture having monalisa in the backgroud. When was this painted?Who was Monalisa? Some questions went through my mind and I started using my audio-guide. It was too boring to be continued and I excused that I’ll wiki these questions later. We moved on like every other time in search of a place to appreciate…..that was never to be found!

Before the law

Recently I read a short story by Franz Kafka…just wonderful!

Before the Law

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”