Part I: Milo and the Lion
I never cared much for the Palace of Versailles — all that suffocating excess topped with swarms of tourists. It’s like hot chocolate drowned in whipped cream: rich, cloying, and utterly exhausting. But the gardens? Yes, please. I could wander that green labyrinth for hours, half-convinced the sculptures start watching me the moment I stop watching them.
One caught me this time: Milo of Croton by Pierre Puget (well, a copy — the original lives at the Louvre). The legendary Greek wrestler is shown in his twilight years, trying to split a tree trunk. According to the myth, his hands get trapped in the wood, leaving him helpless — in this version, to a lion who’s biting his behind.
It’s dramatic, emotional — classic Baroque. But also darkly funny, as if Puget were whispering, “One day you’re taming lions; the next, they’re chewing your ass.” I felt that.
One day, I was sprinting up the 222 stairs to Sacré-Cœur — no sweat. The next, I was doubled over on a Parisian sidewalk, clutching my side, disoriented, and, of course, it was Saturday.
I found a clinic (open till six, I was told). I made it by five, explaining to a cheery man behind the counter my agony in agonizing French. His English wasn’t much better. The part I understood — “All doctors gone.”
Wandering the streets again, pain mounting, I spotted a line of cabs outside a swanky hotel — all reserved. None would take me.
A phrase from an old Soviet comedy floated up: “Saving those who are drowning is the responsibility of those who are drowning.”
So I walked into the hotel like I belonged there — and went Baroque. I yelled that I was dying and needed a hospital. It worked.
The hospital saga? I’ll spare you. After a CAT scan confirming a kidney stone, a brief doctor’s visit, eight hours of idling, and a bill that could buy a painting, I left with painkillers and a “bonne chance.”
Back at my Airbnb in the Latin Quarter, I collapsed. At 3 a.m., pain woke me again — along with the drunken chorus of a la vie est belle crowd outside. I whispered, “The show must go on.”
You see, as a psychotherapist (if you were wondering what else I do besides writing), I have a handful of quotes for moments like this.
But pain doesn’t negotiate. That’s why tyrannies — even polite, democratic ones — always reach for it to break the human spirit. Years ago, I worked at the Marjorie Kovler Center for survivors of torture. If I learned anything there, it’s this: our capacity for cruelty is vast — and so is our capacity for compassion.
My pain wasn’t inflicted. It came from within. And honestly, I feared spending the rest of my trip in bed more than passing the damn stone. So, I pleaded with my body — vehemently — and by morning, with some cursing (always helps), it passed.
By the next day, I felt like Milo in his prime again — sipping latte, quoting Woody Allen: “Life’s like Vegas. You’re up, you’re down, but in the end, the house always wins. Doesn’t mean you didn’t have fun.”
For a few days, I lived as if nothing had happened — until I saw that sculpture again in Versailles, and remembered: the lion is always waiting.
And that’s not all. In the worst possible moment, your hand — or both — inevitably gets caught in the tree of our everything-happens-at-once, full-catastrophe living. What’s left is to hold, with whatever you have, to the edge — between myth and surrender.
The museum was closing. It was time to go. I gave the gardens one last look. Power is fleeting. Wonder isn’t.
From page to thread — a story you can wear
Taming Lions $35.99
Part II: The Music of Chaos
On the train back to Paris, I listened to Les Élémens (The Elements) by Jean-Féry Rebel. Composed in 1737, it opens with Le Chaos — a radical movement: every note of the D minor scale played at once.
Discordant. Jarring. Magnificent. The four elements — earth, air, fire, water — colliding in primordial confusion.
Versailles, with its gilded symmetry and manicured order — beauty masking oppression — stood as a temple to Louis XIV’s obsession with control and harmony. Rebel had served there, head of the elite 24 Violons du Roy. He knew the rules — he wrote by the rules. But at 71, he broke them.
Not to start a musical revolution — but perhaps because, at last, he understood the primal role and quiet necessity of dissonance.
The Tyranny of Constant Harmony
We tolerate chaos in music now — Stravinsky is my guy — but in life? Not so much. We expect ease. We crave balance, shrink-wrapped in positivity. When things fall apart, when relationships go sideways, when our bodies betray us, we panic. We label it bad.
But let’s be real — constant harmony is stifling. Without dissonance, there’s no tension. No depth. No movement. No growth.
Physicist Ilya Prigogine, in Order Out of Chaos, explains how systems evolve through instability — not in spite of it. Chaos isn’t the end. It’s the compost from which new order grows.
Rebelling Against Our Own Habits
One caveat, though: chaos is expensive. It burns energy the way my ’76 Mercury Marquis burned gas — fast. And energy is precious. That’s why our brains cling to habits — they conserve ATP, the fuel of life. So even if our habits suck, they’re economic. Comfortable.
But dissonance? Dissonance cracks things open.
Sometimes it’s a kidney stone. Sometimes it’s a lion.
Either way, it’s the unexpected that jolts us awake — reconnects us with art, meaning, each other. Pain sharpens the senses and stretches empathy. It makes us more human. Breaking is part of being.
So yes — dissonance is underrated. Maybe it’s the invitation:
- To break old patterns.
- To tune into what’s real.
- To feel more deeply, love more bravely, create more authentically.
Jean-Féry Rebel wasn’t a young rebel in leather and eyeliner. He was a white-wigged court composer, pushing the boundaries of sound when most of his peers were polishing their court manners.
Play Rebel. Be one.
🖤
— Vibe & Verse
From page to thread — a story you can wear
Play Rebel - Be One $35.99