“It” was a half-hour talk I had given earlier that afternoon, in French, in France, to an audience of French speakers. How’d it go? Well, some of the people in my audience liked what I had to say. Others weren’t so enthusiastic, and they asked challenging questions. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I gave my speech and answered the questions without collapsing, dissolving into tears, or clutching my chest and passing out. It was one of the most trying moments of my life.

If it’s true that people fear public speaking more than death, imagine how much greater that fear might be speaking in public in a foreign country and in a language that’s not your own! Anticipating my talk, I became a poster child for fear. Months before the speaking engagement, I endured sleepless nights, lost my appetite and my concentration, nearly lost my mind. In my mind I played and replayed imagined scenes from that dreaded moment, accompanied by a disturbing self-loathing monologue. I would fail. People would think my ideas were far-fetched, or worse, simplistic. I would see members of my audience roll their eyes. Some would fall asleep. Others would tiptoe out of the conference room before I had finished. My French would desert me, and I would labor to produce sounds that I usually pronounce with ease. I would, in short, be a laughingstock.

The invitation to speak had arrived in November. I was to be the only American on the program of some twenty-five speakers. The conference organizers would cover the cost of my stay. Would I do them the honor of accepting the invitation?

Would I do them the honor? My throat tightened. My heart, banging against my chest wall, dislodged itself and traveled to my throat. There was no question of refusing an honor like this. I replied immediately, saying that I would be ravie (delighted) to accept the invitation. Never was delight accompanied by more anguish.

“Stop obsessing! You’re driving yourself crazy,” said my husband a week later.

It was then I decided to try hypnosis. The hypnotist, selected at random from the Internet—there weren’t all that many hypnotists close by—instructed me to close my eyes. After asking probing questions to try to determine the source of my fear (was it the time my mother washed my mouth out with a bar of soap?) and the situation I was facing, she used a technique known as creative visualization. There, in my mind’s eye, I stood, in the small and comfortable conference room. The audience—some thirty scholars from around the world—smiled in agreement as I spoke. I was at the top of my game, articulate and convincing. And then it was over. I basked in the warmth of the applause.

Uncannily calm and filled with joyful anticipation, I flew to France five months later. I slept soundly the night before the conference. At the hypnotist’s suggestion, I had obtained from my physician a prescription for 5 mg. Valium tablets, because “you never know.” The day I was to speak (the first day of the three-day conference, at my request, so that I could “get it over with”), I dressed in a smartly tailored grey suit, bought especially for the occasion. I tucked a tranquilizer into my pocket, sure that I wouldn’t need it. Then I headed to the conference center, just a block from my hotel.

When I arrived, reality collided with the fiction of my creative visualization. The “small, comfortable room” was an amphitheater. Speakers addressed the audience of some 400 people from a stage, using a microphone. My knees buckled under me, my mouth went dry, and my heart began its bone-rattling dance.

The rest is not, as they say, history, but medical science. The Valium enabled me to speak that afternoon; the Valium gave me the words to answer the questions. I felt slightly disappointed to have failed my hypnotist, but mostly I was elated. That evening, after the Valium had worn off, I had a glass of Bordeaux to celebrate.

A month after my return, recounting the story to my physician, I thanked her profusely for “saving” me by writing me the prescription.

“How strong were the tablets I prescribed?” she asked as she scanned the screen of her laptop.

“5 milligrams,” I replied.

She located the record she was looking for.

“I prescribed ten tablets. How many did you take?”

“Just one,” I said.

She laughed. “At that dose, it was basically a placebo.”

Night at the Musée d’Orsay: Poems of Paris & Other Great European Cities

by Judy Wells

Night at the Musée d’Orsay: Poems of Paris & Other Great European Cities is a vibrant memoir of travel poems centering on Judy Wells’ appreciation of well-known European painters, architects, writers, and musicians associated with great European cities. Her poems explore artists in France, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Spain, from Van Gogh, Chagall, Matisse, and Balzac in Paris, to Velázquez and Goya in Madrid, and Gaudí in Barcelona.

Wells interweaves her own personal life into her poems, which illustrate her creative responses to her travels at different times—from young adult in France to older woman confronting aging in Barcelona. Her poetry encompasses various poetic styles—lyric, narrative, and surprisingly for a book on European travels, haiku.

Night at the Musée d’Orsay
 
If the curators knew I, a moth, was in the Van Gogh room
they’d be shocked!
But what do they expect—
I love light and I’m particularly
attracted to a painting
of stars—globs of light
reflected in a river.
 
I’ve sat on top of these yellow blobs
and survived though I can feel
the heat of these stars
right through the paint.
Light bulbs are cold by comparison
though I’m not singed by Van Gogh.
I’m transformed and waves of ecstasy
wander through my wings.
 
I rest on Van Gogh’s stars all night.
In the morning I flit to a cottage
and settle on a deep blue iris.
The tourists think I’m part of the painting.
I laugh. I’m just a moth
with grand taste.

Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, and www.regentpress.net

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