Paris. The Louvre.
Molly and I were frantically following our frenetic roomate who wanted to shove everything from Paris into every orifice of her body.
We were…getting tired.
Who appointed the roommate leader anyway?
Quiet dark places held a certain allure. We paused at an opening on the stairwell.
“What’s is this place?” Molly said.
“Don’t know. Looks like they’re fixing things.”
“I wished I could work there.” Molly said.
We gazed down at the conservancy that held all the broken things of the Louvre: statues in disrepair, paintings that needed a touch up…Everything here was quietly waiting to be on display.
Everyone else was crowded around the famous exhibits; of course, the Mona Lisa – who Shawn Duffy recently photographed in his most excellent photo shoot of Paris.
But Molly and I were quiet. Content to be among the unformed, the broken. The energy here was waiting to be born.
When I travel I like to be around the unknown. The funky. I’m not good in tourist traps. I get irritable. I want to get to the essence of a place. And here was this weird, quiet place.
The weird quiet place is the unknown. It is all the little creative bubble blips you get during day that rise and pop continually into your stream of consciousness. Some of them will never be born, and some of them have been born and are in a state of disrepair.
The Louvre’s bastard children.
Since we only have so much energy – what are you going to do? You can’t birth everything…you can’t fix everthing…
Sooner or later you have to focus your energy. Your precious creative children ask to be born. And attended too. But, unfortunately, there is only room for some of them…unless you want to chop of you head and save it for the cryogenic future – but that’s not what I’m getting at here…
You need to focus on the projects that have juicy passion. Like Brett Legree is doing with his excellent memoir of his wife Cathryn. Things that you will attend to and take care of because they add meaning to your life. And if they add meaning to your life they will resonant strongly with others.
So pick your babies that you will nurture and feed and let fly. You decide.
I can’t.
Photo Credit: © Ellen Wilson