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Once upon a time there was a very prosperous country, where the needs of education - kindergartens, obligatory primary education, secondary education and universities - could be fully covered.   It was then that a state body came into being to take education to another level.  Music schools, dance schools, pottery workshops, children's creativity centers, etc., sprang up everywhere.... 

This is where my story comes in. 
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##### A passage to France. 

At that time in my life, I was working in a children's creativity workshop, in charge of teaching performing arts.    I was participating in a meeting of theater and puppeteers from all over the country. We were discussing techniques for making the puppets dance when the country's Director of Culture, poking his head through the door and said:  

 "There is a place to do a Children's Creativity Workshop at the George Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture The course starts in fifteen days. All expenses covered. Who is interested?"

 I, who at the time was as free-thinking as the wind, who had never known an obstacle big enough to limit myself, immediately raised my hand. I was very excited and sure that I had to compete with many others for the privilege of spending a month and a half in Paris, in the cultural heart of the most romantic city in the world.   As I looked at the Director's astonished face, I turned around to check the reaction of my classmates. 

They were all staring at me. Me, with my happily amazed eyes, with my long, curly hair, my hand-painted cotton tunic over my bluyines and my leather sandals.  Me with my face without makeup, with my arm held high, contrasting with the whole group.  

Surely my colleagues in the performing arts had families to attend to, commitments to make, studies to attend, conditions that they considered as obstacles, but not me.  I have already said that at that time my thinking was as free as the wind. 

Faced with the evidence, the director remained hesitant for a while, then he smiled, without parting his lips, and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye he questioned me.    
Et vous parlez français ?"
"Un peu" -   I said in a low but audible voice - "Mes professeurs de lycée ont dit que j'avais une belle intonation".
 "Well, the place is yours"- Said the director very formally- "Stop by my office to hand in your data." 

Thirteen days later I arrived at the Geoges Pompidou Center.  Never in my life had I seen a building like that, with its elevators and stairs, with its water, electricity and telephone installations traveling through colored tubes.  Everything that should have been inside the building was outside, welcoming visitors and supporting a building without walls.  When I was inside, in the empty, wide and diaphanous interior spaces, I understood that everything can be given an unexpected twist.  Today I sum it up by saying that anything, natural or cultural, can be considered a metaphor for life.

 ##### Two lovers holding hands 
 
Two days later I met Vincent and Silvie.  They received us, kind and solicitous, in a room decorated for children, full of shelves where the colors of the paintings, the shapes and colors of the raw ceramics, the sculptural forms made in sweet wire, the lecterns...  

They spoke to us in French and took turns asking us to choose any material to create. At the end of each day our works were exhibited, commented and evaluated.  Everyone was amazed at the creativity of the others and considered their own work poor and uninteresting. Vincent and Silvie encouraged us without distinction.  We were a group of 20 participants. There were people there from all continents.  

 Vincent and Silvie accompanied us to a French course that the organizers had set up to determine the different levels of understanding of the language.   They treated each other like Monsieur Durand and Madame Petit, with great respect and distance. We never imagined what Leticia, a colleague from Mexico, and I saw one afternoon when after finishing the activities we had to return to the room for a reason I can't remember now.   

Vincent and Silvie were holding hands, and were about to kiss each other on the mouth when they became aware of our presence.  When they looked at us they pulled away and tried to conceal the situation. Leticia and I lost our apologies in unison and left the room as quickly as we could. 

 Later, we saw them pass together through the square in front of the building and say goodbye, like co-workers, to go their separate ways.  

"It's a shame, they look great together" Leticia said to me, to settle the issue.  I nodded, thinking that in Paris love is more beautiful.

#####  La Gioconda smiles at me  

 I took advantage of the free time left by the children's creativity workshop to visit markets, universities and museums.  Of course it is impossible to be in Paris, at least for me, and not visit the Louvre museum.  Of that I will only say that on the second floor of the Louvre is one of my eternal loves.  The Mona Lisa stole my imagination, since my childhood, as she has done with the whole world. During the period of the Children's Creativity Workshop I had the pleasure of enjoying her to my heart's content and to live a hypnotic experience of true fascination with her. 

One day I arrived around three o'clock in the afternoon and went straight to the huge room where the world's greatest work of art hangs. The room was full of visitors. At that time it was not possible to take a photograph of the portrait and the high-tech glass that protects it today had not yet been installed.  People crowded around to look at it for as long as possible. I began to look at her from the front, from a distance. As people cleared the space, I was able to get closer. That day I stopped caring about the crowd and kept my eyes focused on Lisa's features. I watched her smile and as I saw her eyes I imagined the wrinkles that form when someone smiles. When I was in front of her I played at staring at her but closing one eye alternately.  

Perhaps whoever reads me has done the exercise I mention and has had the illusion that the objects change their position in space a little. They will understand that I was playing an innocent game of perspective with the Mona Lisa.  The truth is that I was without a companion, without time pressure and without anyone to pay attention to me, and I was free to concentrate on the images that my brain was creating. Then I felt her, her looking right into my eyes and beginning to smile. I smiled too, with all my soul, genuinely, as when one observes from the front the gesture of someone who loves us, who reciprocates and shares our joy. 

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This is my entry to the difficult challenge proposed by The Ink Well. 
I have to say which scene is the fake one.  Well, it's hard for me to say that the fake scene is the one starring Vincent and Silvie. 
Although some details are true, the names of the instructors were not those and also I never saw my instructors in the position of lovers. Leticia does not exist either. 
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#### Thank you for reading 
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## @gracielaacevedo
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