Ca-lunk

Four love affairs and a murder really does a number on a girl. Tires her right out. Am in the thick of a fatigue so dense it could barely be penetrated by absolutely wondrous beauty at the Musée du Cluny. And even that just exhausted me further. And made me cry.

There is a feeling of letdown after the completion of anything profound, whether it's a marathon or a creative project. Anything where there has been build up and preparation and a great peak of effort. It's like a natural balancing. What goes up must come down. Sounds kind of like sex, when one thinks about it. Or giving birth. Which, I've heard, is one of the possible end results of sex.

Writing this post is difficult. My fingers don't want to work on the keys and I'm certain it will be rife with typos. Even more than usual.

I took yesterday off. Spent it reading and puttering about the house, tidying up after last week's creative explosion. Early in the evening, Dana the Artist and I toured the city in her car, stopping at the museum where she dropped off some pills. Understand Your Mother Instantly. Stay in Love Forever. Feel and Look Canadian! (She describes it as an alternative lifestyle.) We spent a lot of time talking about pills and love, interestingly. After I got home, she offered me this: "pari" is the French word for a gamble or risk. Paris, then, is the plural form, bets or high stakes. Those cheesy I Heart Paris t-shirts take on deeper meaning when you think about it that way.

This great adventure is a risk. Creativity is a risk. Love is a risk. Living one's dreams, also a risk. And, yes, there are low points. Today feels like one of those. But even the lows are delicious. My exhaustion today comes from massive creative output. What could be more satisfying than the knowledge that you've worked incredibly hard doing something you passionately love?

Today in the museum I was stuck by a series of ancient, ancient statues standing in rows. Many of them had no heads, the heads having fallen off over time. A crop of heads was displayed off to the right, but what struck me was this crowd of headless bodies. It made me think about death for some reason. History is death.

It reminded me of an evening I spent in Sienna, Italy going on four years ago now. The town's centre is a circle called Il Campo where horse races were hosted every summer. Apartment buildings with flat curved faces rose all around this circle. Each apartment window was a little glowing light.

For some reason, at that moment, I saw generations of people's lives in those little glowing lights. Living and dying in waves of birth and death and history. Hundreds and hundreds of lives flashed before me and I stood there sobbing while teenagers smoked and looked sullen. Individual life, my life, seemed in that moment powerfully insignificant.

I had to meet my group for dinner and I arrived tear-stained and embarrassed. This grief for people I didn't even know confused me. 'It's the old places,' one of my companions said, nodding. Being our cycling tour guide, he'd know. He'd seen it before.

When I got back from Italy, I read about Stendhal Syndrome – a psychosomatic 'illness' resulting from exposure to large amounts of art. My research today took me to something called Paris Syndrome. A cousin of Stendhal's, I suppose, involving language and culture and an 360-degree overdose of beauty.

But really, when it gets right down to it...I'm just plain tuckered. Your body tells you when to slow down. It also tells you to stop. And this afternoon, as I felt like one of the ancient headless statues, mine said, 'Honey, grab some chocolate mousse and take a wee nap.'