July 01, 2011, I was lucky to see the Manet exhibit at the musée d’Orsay. I waited a long time outside, after a long walk along les quais de la Seine, while reading *Le Monde Diplomatique* on the architecture and social dynamics of the modern city. Mobile city where the powerful make the world move around themselves: RER trains for instance, or a fireman yesterday going far (2 hours +) to his appointment with top officers and administrators of the region for a boost to his retirement (not granted), versus the French president not wanting windows on his presidential plane or Paris looking like the museum of our being, our expensive tax-gobbling center for desultory luxury lovers à la *Midnight in Paris*.

A few notes on Manet. *Les courses à Longchamp*, 1866: I re-imagine or remember that the emerald trees or the images on the horizon explode in a gallop that engulfs me. The horses, whipped to the point of folly, scatter around the spectator. The world hurled at me. *Clair de lune sur le port de Boulogne*, 1869: a group of women waits for men in the night. The little orange spots sprinkled at half-frame (flames), the blinding whiteness in the harbor, it’s for them, it’s them. *La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux*, 1878: a one-legged man—war wound?—his back to the spectator, walks alone on the shady side of a long, flag-decorated street, a sort of canyon where the national, republican procession has aroused everyone. Light colors however, not an obvious political commentary.

Outside the exhibit: what Manet had begun to dare, Van Gogh completes. *L’arlésienne* of 1888, detached on yellow, not on a hole in the sky, sitting on a chair of matter, with her near-green face. *La méridienne*, its burning vault, the sickles properly put away behind, it is not Boaz and Ruth. Everything is burning in this painting. Must one have done the harvest oneself with sickle or scythe, and have read the book of Ruth, to feel it?