The Louvre

A stolen moment on display, two lovers making a pact between pursed lips - while I make love to this ice cream sundae. I feel sick. Here is all the beauty in the world. Here is the good, the bad, the wicked and the desperate. Here are my dreams, my hopes and fears. Here is Paris, spilling out before me and I can't even look up from my sundae.

I once swore that if there was only beauty before me, if only my purpose in this moment was meaningful, I would not want for any of the consumerist platitudes that distracted me; and so here I am, with all that is brilliant and golden in our age. All the resplendencies of class, wealth, intelligence, angst, struggle, poverty, and enjoyment lay at my feet  And I feel nothing.

All I can think about is the thick creamy mixture of dairy fat turning into broad protestations in my belly and how much my coat clashed and how much my feet hurt and how much money I had spent and how tired I was and how cold it was. . . and miserable. Miserable. Swimming in fog and chaos. It is my imbalance that brings forward my obsessions, my fears.  I can feel it. The temporary sense of well being, of being well, it overtakes me with every chocolaty bite. Bright pleasure secretions balancing out the darkness. Is this really what it means? The pointless suffering and the end-less-ness of it all? This factory line of work and sacrifice and emptiness?

NO ONE SAID THIS WAS GOING TO BE EASY.

Well isn't that just the point? No one says anything at all. You are just thrust here into the unwelcoming world and given some fridge magnet philosophy in which to get by.

SEE THE BEAUTY IN EVERY MOMENT. LIVE LIKE THIS MOMENT IS YOUR LAST. DANCE, LAUGH, SING LIKE NOBODY IS WATCHING. . . 

And what about the inbetween?

The one too many donuts and senseless bullying? The parents and the institutions and the friends who could give a shit about you and you know it. Because if you took off that Harvard grin and the cheap way you make them feel Oh! So! Good! about themselves and got down on your fucking knees and begged for money in the street, with the other gypsy's and hobos and pirates, they'd walk over you too. And right on into the nearest Tommy Hillfiger to buy themselves a pair of jeans and forget that no one really gives a shit about them either.

But I digress. I mean, after all, I am at the Louvre. . .