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Housing Fall 2006

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A Moment of Wanting Nothing

You can live richly, and money has nothing to do with it. Written by Rachel Marusak, AUCP Fall 2002 student, published in 50 Truths Worth Knowing, Rodal Books. Forty sketches were due at the end of the week.  As I put my things together, I lingered over my sketchbook.  The cover was bright blue and spiral-bound; the pages were thick, blank, and full of possibility.  It was midterms at the American University Center of Provence, where I was studying abroad for my junior year in college.  In lieu of classes, we had a day to study.  Outside my host family’s home, I pulled the gate closed and felt especially relaxed as I set out on my usual route to school.  Every day, I passed the same fruit and vegetable vendor, where I would sometimes stop in for a tomato or an apple and practice my grocery vocabulary.  I passed the same café with the floor-to-ceiling windows where I would see the same old men sidled up to the bar with their little espressos and morning cigarettes. With the 40 sketches in the back of my mind, I noticed a wrought-iron gate that gave entrance through a cement wall  I had always taken for granted on the other side of the street.  Feeling like I had some stolen time, I wandered across the street.  The gate was unlocked and led to stairs that immediately descended into an artfully designed courtyard.  Sidewalks divided the park into equal parts and joined to form a circle around the fountain in the center.  The park was part of an art museum, which looked like it was just closing for the lunch hour.  I set up shop on a bench facing the fountain.  As the sun warmed my face, I took off my jacket and remembered reading in a travel book that you should always dress in layers during the fall in the south of France.  I took my sketchbook out of my bag and assessed potential subjects.  One child raced giddily around the fountain, another dangled her hand to test the water, and a couple was picnicking in a sunny corner.  Opening my book to a fresh page, I faced the fountain and started to outline the curves of the structure.  I heard my painting teacher’s reminder in my head, “Forget the intellect.”  She repeated the phrase so often it was more of a mantra.  They were Cezanne’s words, meaning : don’t think about drawing something.  Be open to your impression of the moment.  Birds brought movement to my page.  I made lines until they took form, would flip without resignation to a new start, and shift position to a new composition.  Deep lines.  Splashing water.  Fountains.  Children.  Birds.  I remember looking up and feeling my good fortune and taking note. I wasn’t in it for the grads.  I didn’t need to be anywhere.  I didn’t want for anything.  I was just living – calmly, graciously.  I had wanted so badly to extend my stay in Aix-en-Provence, but there was no way.  By the last week of the semester, I was literally living on soup and bread, and I traveled home without a dime.  But I took that day, that moment in the park, with me.  That moment – of wanting nothing – is my most cherished possession.