On a warm, sunny day, I sit with a pint of beer in the garden café of the Chagall Museum. Olive trees loom over the ramshackle white garden cafe structure, half open to the calm grounds of the museum. Emotional French music is playing. It’s all pretty good.
The white structures of our café are festooned with fake plants, even as the whole building threatens to collapse under the weight of the completely genuine vines and trees growing wild and swallowing it all up. Oddly, the juxtaposition works, though it strikes me as possible that the challenge of putting a café in a grove of ivy and small olive trees, in the graceful garden of the Chagall Museum, in this beautiful city, would be in its not working.
A large tour group of Japanese people makes its way to the tented entrance of the artfully weathered cement museum building. Some of them carry umbrellas, which was a clever thing I saw people do in Kyoto, and that I copied to endure its terrible September sun.
My wife and I both sit here writing at the edge of the shade. This is the extent of our visit. Having seen the museum many times we will not go in again today.
My beer is almost gone and the strong sun makes its way to the tall trees at the west end of the garden.
I thought maybe I’d like to make a list of everything wrong with perfection, but now I’ve forgotten why.
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