Part I: The Empire of Death
Aesthetic gluttony may as well be a cardinal sin. The Louvre, like an all-you-can-eat buffet, is simply indigestible in mass quantities. When visiting such places, it helps to have a guide—but sometimes your best guide is your own intuition. Long before entering the palace, I knew exactly what I wanted to see first. Ironically, that choice was conceived in the bowels of the city: the Catacombs.
When you descend some fifty-six feet below the streets of Paris, the inscription greeting you at the entrance reads: Arrête ! C'est ici l'empire de la mort—Stop! This is the empire of death. The air immediately changes. It becomes cool and damp, smelling of ancient earth. The empire is vast. It is also, perhaps, the most democratic place in human history.
Walking through tunnels lined with neatly stacked femurs and skulls is a stark reminder of death as the ultimate equalizer. In life, Paris was—and in many ways still is—highly stratified. Even in horrific places like the Conciergerie, money once bought privileges: a cell with a window or better food. But here, in the dark, there are no distinctions. Nobles and commoners, saints and sinners, are indistinguishable, their remains mingled in a vast architecture of mortality governed by a single rule: bone is bone.
The Catacombs were born of grim necessity in the late eighteenth century. Paris's surface cemeteries had overflowed, creating a public health crisis. The solution was to exhume the dead and stack their remains in abandoned limestone quarries beneath the city. For centuries, Lutetian limestone had been quarried to build Paris itself, including the Louvre. Eventually, the city grew atop this subterranean labyrinth. Its instability caused sinkholes and collapses—another reason the underground ossuary came into being.
As I walked those corridors, I recalled a story told by a friend of mine, Chris. In his youth, he traveled through India and later became a successful stockbroker. A wealthy friend of his was airlifted from remote Alaska after a hunting accident and admitted to a hospital in critical condition. Chris flew out to meet him but arrived too late—the man had died. A nurse asked how long they had been friends and whether it was true the deceased had been rich and respected. Chris said yes.
"Hm," she murmured. "The man who shared his room also died. He was homeless. Funny how that works. We come into this world butt-naked, and we leave it butt-naked."
Bone-naked, I thought, looking around me one last time.
When I finally ascended from my underworld time travel, I felt an unexpected surge of pleasure—the simple caress of sunlight on my cheeks. What a delight! Descartes's I think, therefore I am morphed into I feel, therefore I am. After an hour among the silent weight of six million skeletons, climbing the spiral staircase back to daylight felt like a rebirth.
The city assaulted my senses: the roar of traffic, the scent of fresh bread from a bakery, the smooth leather of my wallet (as I was making sure it was still there), and the flash of color from a passing scarf. Everything felt magnified.
Another story came to mind—one far older than Paris: the tale of Psyche and Cupid.
At its core, it is a tale of ordeal. Psyche, a mortal woman of extraordinary beauty, provoked the jealousy of Venus. Enraged, the goddess commanded her son Cupid to strike Psyche with an enchanted arrow and doom her to a miserable love. Instead, Cupid fell victim to his own spell. He carried Psyche away to a palace where all her needs were met, but he visited her only under cover of darkness, keeping his identity hidden.
Consumed by curiosity and urged on by jealous sisters, Psyche decided to discover the identity of her generous host. She entered his chamber while he slept and lit a lamp. A drop of hot oil fell, burning the god. Furious, Cupid fled, vowing never to return.
To win him back, Psyche was subjected by Venus to a series of seemingly impossible tasks. With the help of divine allies, she completed them one by one. The final task required her to descend into the underworld and retrieve a box of beauty from Proserpine, queen of the dead. Psyche succeeded—but curiosity once again proved dangerous. She opened the box and fell into a deathlike sleep.
Spoiler alert: this is not how the story ends.
Part II: Giving Birth to Pleasure
The Louvre is the next stop in both the myth and my journey. I went straight to Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. The pristine white marble appears almost fluid, capturing a moment of suspended tenderness. I doubt I could have fully appreciated the light held in this sculpture had I not first walked through darkness.
Psyche likely felt the same. After returning from Hades, the world must have appeared transformed. She was reunited with Eros, and together they gave birth to a daughter named Voluptas — Pleasure.
Pleasure goes far beyond sexuality or indulgence. You won’t find it explicitly listed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, yet it permeates every level of the pyramid, from the most primal to the most transcendent. It begins early — with warmth, touch, and the felt sense of being held.
In the 1940s, René Spitz and Katherine Wolf studied two groups of infants. One group lived in a nursery within a women’s prison, raised by their incarcerated mothers. The other lived in an orphanage, cared for by nurses responsible for eight to twelve children each. Both groups received adequate food and medical care. Yet the infants in the orphanage, who were rarely held or touched, suffered severe developmental delays and frequent infections. Over two years, 37 percent of them died. In the prison group, none did.
It seems counterintuitive.
Just as it seems counterintuitive that the more comfort and entertainment we accumulate, the more pleasure we should experience. The opposite appears to be true. Despite endless opportunities for stimulation — from infinite phone scrolling to weekend escapes — we seem increasingly incapable of feeling pleasure at all. With pleasure, as with sleep, the harder you chase it, the more it slips away.
Psyche had every comfort in Cupid’s palace, including his love, yet she remained dissatisfied. When she tried to grasp him fully, she lost him. Pleasure became possible only after her descent.
Experience is amplified through contrast. Without absence, presence loses intensity. Light without darkness flattens into glare. Heraclitus observed long ago that without tension between opposites, there is no music. A string must be stretched to sound — and if stretched too far, it snaps.
Our diminished capacity for pleasure is not merely a matter of overstimulation. It is shaped by social conditioning that treats pleasure as selfish, by ancestral negativity bias, and by disconnection from our bodies, from nature, from one another. We believe — erroneously — that we can think ourselves into feeling good. Add to this our addiction to the familiar and our habit of dampening joy when life feels “too good,” and the picture sharpens.
Paradise is not lost; it is hidden.
To rediscover it, play with contrast. Return to the senses. Let yourself feel fully. Create. Stay curious. Stay connected — to those around you, and to something larger stirring within.
In the Louvre, resist the urge to see everything. Visit Canova’s masterpiece, then stop. The less you consume, and the deeper your relationship with what remains, the more pleasure you will feel.
You left me blindfolded with the taste of wine,
Its sediment runs dark, yet so refined.
And as it settles at the bottom of my heart,
I find that light and darkness aren’t far apart.
🖤
— Vibe & Verse
From page to thread — a story you can wear
