Who do you think you are? (Honor)

This afternoon I experienced a crisis of sorts - a failure of confidence on every front.

I had forgotten that this is part of the intense fortnight of art-making and art-viewing that is the LCAD tour.
Just like last time, I became so saturated with art that I ceased to see value or meaning in any of it, and felt a deep tremor in my sense of self to accompany it - for, if I can find no meaning here, where the contemporary greats are gathered - to what purpose am I making a life in art? Why this struggle? Today I could barely paint a small watercolour. Who do I think I am?

I think this experience is not peculiar to the Biennale tourist - it is part of any kind of travel. At some point, the aching limbs, the strain to communicate, the unfamiliar breakfasts and the baffling streets combine to render one temporarily stupefied, small and sad.

At day's end, I walked back down the long, dusty path beside the Arsenale, catching flashes and buzzings from the doorways as I passed - all that energy, all that straining to communicate the great and tiny aches of existence, to give them order, to package and sell them, to unravel and reconstitute them. I felt delirious, on the verge of a very profound sorrow. My feet hurt. Everything to right and left looked like art: a leaf, a scratch on the wall, the endless path, the white dust, like ash, swirling about my shoes. And none of it mattered, none of it helped.

In Via Garibaldi, I re-entered Venice.

The low sun was dazzling and made the shadows long. In a bakery the cashier looked at me without expression, then served the woman behind me. I felt like a ghost.

I propelled myself back out into the street, breadless.

I thought, tomorrow, all this will have mended in me and I will feel reborn.

And then I stepped into the cheese shop, where I was greeted by the owner, a man my landlady described as 'a really kind and special person'. He has gentle eyes, a soft voice, a neat moustache and a white apron. He asked how I was, and I told him how tired I felt, after looking at all the work in the biennale. From there we chatted for ten minutes or so about this and that, I in my stumbling Italian, making myself venture into sentences and stories I was not sure I had the words to complete, to see what resources presented themselves. He was as patient and gentle as though tending to a wound - which, indeed, he was. He told me that Venetians, especially those in Castello, have an exceptionally long life expectancy. The diet is good, the pace is slow, and everyone knows one another, he said. Everyone who lives here is greeted by name whenever they enter a shop, or pass a neighbour in the street. Being known, he suggested, is very good for you.

I put out my hand, "Mi chiamo Honor, " I said.
"Mi chiamo Gabriele," he shook my hand with a smile.

I walked out with waxed-paper bundles of ricotta and parmigiano reggiano, some bread rolls and yoghurt, and a wave from the cheese seller, who knows who I am.