midnight

I keep finding myself here on little adventures in the middle of the night - unlike the taxi tour in London, or the scooter ride to l'arc de triomphe and tour d'eiffel that first night in Paris - I find myself tonight on foot, passing more places whose age and meaning I cannot fully wrap my tired brain around.

Camille Claudel's domicile (1899 - 1913) a simple building on Ile St Louis, my imagination stretchs to try to picture her here, working, creating her sumptuous sculptures. Past the oldest house still standing in Paris (circa 1346) tall and wornout, but still standing. Past the longest piece of the wall that Augustus built (circa 1190) to encircle Paris before departing for the crusade. The patron Saint Genevieve's statue in the distance, I wonder what it was that she did/said to Atilla the Hun so that he decided not to sack Paris back in 451, hmmm.

Pieces of history, art, love, past and present...the days and nights begin to blur together now. There is a way of being here that is different, hard to describe, it is old and current in the same breath. They preserve the past, but do not cling to it conservatively, but instead re-invent themselves. I am fighting becoming numb as I feel saturated by the art here. It is not merely in the museums (Chris et al, you were right about the D'Orsay!) it is on the streets, in the buildings, the clothes.

I feel this cultural gluttony, an overload of the senses, there is too much and I am full.