Lunch over Sancerre.
Happy hour on the Roquette... and gin au folies.
Take me to an Eritrean dinner in Belleville and let me wonder where I am, not just where the hell am I going?
Friday 31 August 2012
Re-writing memories...
... into the black
Lunch over Sancerre.
Happy hour on the Roquette... and gin au folies.
Take me to an Eritrean dinner in Belleville and let me wonder where I am, not just where the hell am I going?
Lunch over Sancerre.
Happy hour on the Roquette... and gin au folies.
Take me to an Eritrean dinner in Belleville and let me wonder where I am, not just where the hell am I going?
Thursday 30 August 2012
Pigalle, Pastis Pints and Pere Lachaise.
I love La Chapelle.
Not just for the cheapest markets in Paris... an insane mass of sound, scent and colour that give you the impression of being in a North-African Souq.
But everywhere the sadly elegant buildings, crumbling and peeling...
of a Paris slowly fading from the pages of history and poem, overtaken and injected with the vivid and varied.
In a city that has existed in a constant state of evolution for 3,000 years... in La Chapelle you can walk through the streets and see the becoming of whatever is next.
Canalside Petanque of corsicans, africans, arabs, sri-lankans ... mixed in with the old fat-bellied french cliches with their galoises and bushy moustaches.
Basketball under the blue-line underpass. A scratch game that surely represents at least 4 continents, fed by sri-lankan street vendor roasting fresh corn cobs in a shopping trolley.
Kids on scooters zipping in traffic.
Afternoon fruit sales at the metro exit...
and everywhere the hum of a vivid new world growing right out of the slowly fading beauty of the old.
Happy hour is Rue de la Roquette and Pastis by the pint.
Happy hour is conversations with burly tatted metal heads that teach music to 10 year old school kids
... a dash across the road for a crepe
... and a doughnut.
And after happy hour, a night of happily random new friends.
Conversations and exhortations to come to Australia over 3 am martinis.
Not just for the cheapest markets in Paris... an insane mass of sound, scent and colour that give you the impression of being in a North-African Souq.
But everywhere the sadly elegant buildings, crumbling and peeling...
of a Paris slowly fading from the pages of history and poem, overtaken and injected with the vivid and varied.
In a city that has existed in a constant state of evolution for 3,000 years... in La Chapelle you can walk through the streets and see the becoming of whatever is next.
Canalside Petanque of corsicans, africans, arabs, sri-lankans ... mixed in with the old fat-bellied french cliches with their galoises and bushy moustaches.
Basketball under the blue-line underpass. A scratch game that surely represents at least 4 continents, fed by sri-lankan street vendor roasting fresh corn cobs in a shopping trolley.
Kids on scooters zipping in traffic.
Afternoon fruit sales at the metro exit...
and everywhere the hum of a vivid new world growing right out of the slowly fading beauty of the old.
Happy hour is conversations with burly tatted metal heads that teach music to 10 year old school kids
... a dash across the road for a crepe
... and a doughnut.
And after happy hour, a night of happily random new friends.
Conversations and exhortations to come to Australia over 3 am martinis.
Tuesday 28 August 2012
Watching the old lady wake up.
For the two months of summer, Paris is not really Paris.
A holiday truly is a holiday.
Those that dont shut up shop and flee to somewhere coastal, remain with the attitude that they have.
Streets become a bizzarely tranquil collection of shuttered doors, window holiday notices, meandering tourists and half-speed locals smoking and chatting.
Traffic clears.
The sun shines mild, and locals lunch long lazy and languid in the park.
Your favourite bars and restaurants are shut, and night music dwindles.
But the evenings entertainment explodes onto the canals and river, as every waterside stretch becomes a continuous communal bar...
Bring your own.
Play some music.
Picnic.
Dance... and find a new way home.
And then, as the month turns, you feel the atmosphere change as quickly as the weather.
30's become 20's.
The leaves are already on the fall, and the street-sweepers turn seamlessly to their removal.
The shutters leap frog each other to open, and you can feel the angst and energy return to the streets.
The rue you wandered down the middle of yesterday, reclaimed by cars today.
And everywhere the languid, half paced sleepiness of the past 2 months is giving way to a more frenetic pace and mood.
Theres still time in the sun to enjoy, but its more urgent now.
Every fleeting whiff of crisp damp air on the breeze is notice that time is running out. The whole city bustles with it. The tourists burning the last of their time, looking onward to elsewhere and home.
The locals after the holiday, after the summer... in the grasping now as their attention turns to the long months of dark and damp on the rapidly approaching horizon.
The persistent crescendo of horns on the crowding streets, the urgent sound of fading summer.
The old lady is waking up...
and like the rest, my mind is turning to something else.
A holiday truly is a holiday.
Those that dont shut up shop and flee to somewhere coastal, remain with the attitude that they have.
Streets become a bizzarely tranquil collection of shuttered doors, window holiday notices, meandering tourists and half-speed locals smoking and chatting.
Traffic clears.
The sun shines mild, and locals lunch long lazy and languid in the park.
Your favourite bars and restaurants are shut, and night music dwindles.
But the evenings entertainment explodes onto the canals and river, as every waterside stretch becomes a continuous communal bar...
Bring your own.
Play some music.
Picnic.
Dance... and find a new way home.
And then, as the month turns, you feel the atmosphere change as quickly as the weather.
30's become 20's.
The leaves are already on the fall, and the street-sweepers turn seamlessly to their removal.
The shutters leap frog each other to open, and you can feel the angst and energy return to the streets.
The rue you wandered down the middle of yesterday, reclaimed by cars today.
And everywhere the languid, half paced sleepiness of the past 2 months is giving way to a more frenetic pace and mood.
Theres still time in the sun to enjoy, but its more urgent now.
Every fleeting whiff of crisp damp air on the breeze is notice that time is running out. The whole city bustles with it. The tourists burning the last of their time, looking onward to elsewhere and home.
The locals after the holiday, after the summer... in the grasping now as their attention turns to the long months of dark and damp on the rapidly approaching horizon.
The persistent crescendo of horns on the crowding streets, the urgent sound of fading summer.
The old lady is waking up...
and like the rest, my mind is turning to something else.
Monday 27 August 2012
Summer pop on the Seine
If for nothing else Rock en Seine tops the festival list for its beautifully unlikely venue, amidst the forrested gardens and stone-statued ruins and fountains of the old St Cloud palace.
You've never really bounced happily to a sweet summer tune, until you've done it in the shadows of a grand, tiered stone fountain that looks straight out of Lord of the rings.
Perhaps its the venue that does it.
Or perhaps its just the unpretentious mix of music that seeks more to please and enjoy, than be cool.
It surely doesnt hurt that the usual festival fare of beer and chips, is generously seasoned with temporary bistros, cous cous tents and quirkily amusing side entertainments.
Whatever the reason, I can think of few more pleasant ways to pass a sunny late summer Parisian sunday afternoon and evening, than sipping cold wine and beer, and bouncing like a sugar-fueled child.
Synths and falsetto in the sunshine...
dancing like a dork in the dark, with blow-up monsters and glitter confetti under the stars.
You've never really bounced happily to a sweet summer tune, until you've done it in the shadows of a grand, tiered stone fountain that looks straight out of Lord of the rings.
Perhaps its the venue that does it.
Or perhaps its just the unpretentious mix of music that seeks more to please and enjoy, than be cool.
It surely doesnt hurt that the usual festival fare of beer and chips, is generously seasoned with temporary bistros, cous cous tents and quirkily amusing side entertainments.
Whatever the reason, I can think of few more pleasant ways to pass a sunny late summer Parisian sunday afternoon and evening, than sipping cold wine and beer, and bouncing like a sugar-fueled child.
Synths and falsetto in the sunshine...
dancing like a dork in the dark, with blow-up monsters and glitter confetti under the stars.
Friday 24 August 2012
Would it be easier if I had a guitar?
when you dont have a guitar...
I hesitate to make any grand statements on the basis of what is, possibly, an experience based on my own slightly strange nature...
But I've a habit of making grand, sweeping statements, so why stop now.
If they had no greater meaning or attraction to me, the streets of Paris have been for me a venue and source of greater emotion and simple human connection than I (in a life of admittedly limited scope) have ever experienced.
In the entire course of my lifes experience, in joy or sadness, I have never wept as much as I have on the streets of Paris.
...For reasons of my own.
...For what Ive seen.
...For what Ive experienced.
...For joy and sadness and anger... and for when Ive been unable to find reason why.
I stood quiet, an hour upon the the Beaubourg. I watched a twisted man, his face visible only in elevation. I watched him ragged, rotting and with nothing, carefully feed an unlikely swarming flock pigeons surrounding him on ground that his own feared even to walk.
I felt my own privilege.
I felt a moments notion of the loneliness of a man so divorced from his own that the fetid, winged rats of Paris have more affinity for him than the thousands that pass him and coldly photograph him as a figure of romantic urban colour.... if they recognise him at all.
I felt the inspirational beauty of a man, in the truest sense of manhood. A man who, with nothing, has grasped tight upon the fundamental truth that you are what you do and why.
A man who, with nothing, can still find the heart to empathise with the few lives around him, more pathetic, unloved and helpless than himself.
I watched him bent, stinking, loving ... and alone amidst the birds.
I watched him and wept.
I have wandered the riverbanks in sunshine and shower.
Amidst the glistening, cliched entwine I have watched the simple moment of the quiet joy of two people.
No extravagant embrace.
No hollywoood kisses.
A lazy leg draped over another.... soft-eyed glances across the pages of whatever.
Insignificant moments of sweet nothings that carry a weight of love, empathy and understanding.
I watched these moments of simple contact, connection... love... and I wept.
Music.
A minor key struck in a moment of shadowed, afternoon sunshine.
Walking the streets, any streets.
Peopled streets.
Weeping for nothing more than a key-change and a break into late-evening sunshine.
I have wept now, at the thought of all that I have seen.
Because I have seen it...
... and because I am remain frustrated at being incapable of describing it.
I hesitate to make any grand statements on the basis of what is, possibly, an experience based on my own slightly strange nature...
But I've a habit of making grand, sweeping statements, so why stop now.
If they had no greater meaning or attraction to me, the streets of Paris have been for me a venue and source of greater emotion and simple human connection than I (in a life of admittedly limited scope) have ever experienced.
In the entire course of my lifes experience, in joy or sadness, I have never wept as much as I have on the streets of Paris.
...For reasons of my own.
...For what Ive seen.
...For what Ive experienced.
...For joy and sadness and anger... and for when Ive been unable to find reason why.
I stood quiet, an hour upon the the Beaubourg. I watched a twisted man, his face visible only in elevation. I watched him ragged, rotting and with nothing, carefully feed an unlikely swarming flock pigeons surrounding him on ground that his own feared even to walk.
I felt my own privilege.
I felt a moments notion of the loneliness of a man so divorced from his own that the fetid, winged rats of Paris have more affinity for him than the thousands that pass him and coldly photograph him as a figure of romantic urban colour.... if they recognise him at all.
I felt the inspirational beauty of a man, in the truest sense of manhood. A man who, with nothing, has grasped tight upon the fundamental truth that you are what you do and why.
A man who, with nothing, can still find the heart to empathise with the few lives around him, more pathetic, unloved and helpless than himself.
I watched him bent, stinking, loving ... and alone amidst the birds.
I watched him and wept.
I have wandered the riverbanks in sunshine and shower.
Amidst the glistening, cliched entwine I have watched the simple moment of the quiet joy of two people.
No extravagant embrace.
No hollywoood kisses.
A lazy leg draped over another.... soft-eyed glances across the pages of whatever.
Insignificant moments of sweet nothings that carry a weight of love, empathy and understanding.
I watched these moments of simple contact, connection... love... and I wept.
Music.
A minor key struck in a moment of shadowed, afternoon sunshine.
Walking the streets, any streets.
Peopled streets.
Weeping for nothing more than a key-change and a break into late-evening sunshine.
I have wept now, at the thought of all that I have seen.
Because I have seen it...
... and because I am remain frustrated at being incapable of describing it.
Tuesday 21 August 2012
Monday 20 August 2012
Thinking about something else...
So, in an attempt to escape the rather frustrating days thoughts on what the hell to do with the next 2 months, I came across the following little tidbit... written a few years ago.
My first memory.
"Im safe.
Familiar night music wafts up the narrow hallway, with the random accompaniment clinking plates and glasses being cleaned in the kitchen.
The clear night air is warm and sweet, carrying the summer buzz of cicadas and the lush smell of the garden on a soft southerly zephyr.
As I gaze lazily up at the sky, I can feel my fathers arms around me. Resting my head in the crook between his shoulder and neck, I follow his outstretched finger, pointing out the stars. My eyelids feel heavy and the low murmur of his voice sounds like a lullaby.
The end of my fathers finger settles on the silver face of the rising moon, but the explanation is muffled as I bury my head close in to his chest.
I can only hear the steady beat of his heart now as my eyes close and I let myself drift to sleep… "
out of another world.
My first memory.
"Im safe.
Familiar night music wafts up the narrow hallway, with the random accompaniment clinking plates and glasses being cleaned in the kitchen.
The clear night air is warm and sweet, carrying the summer buzz of cicadas and the lush smell of the garden on a soft southerly zephyr.
As I gaze lazily up at the sky, I can feel my fathers arms around me. Resting my head in the crook between his shoulder and neck, I follow his outstretched finger, pointing out the stars. My eyelids feel heavy and the low murmur of his voice sounds like a lullaby.
The end of my fathers finger settles on the silver face of the rising moon, but the explanation is muffled as I bury my head close in to his chest.
I can only hear the steady beat of his heart now as my eyes close and I let myself drift to sleep… "
out of another world.
Sunday 19 August 2012
The grand notion
Having read THIS recently, I found myself pondering once again the perpetual conundrum of love.
This oddly sentimental habit of coalescing your feelings for each other into a symbolic, inanimate object left publicly amongst a host of similar... is illustrative of our (rather endearing) desire to embrace the grand idea of love as something beyond merely the personal, situational or chemical.
It is that wonderfully innocent idea of some ethereal other that, when and if we are fortunate enough, passes through our lives and through the agency of that special someone, engenders us with the electric force of beauty and meaning beyond that which we are capable of knowing ourselves.
A star-struck two, suddenly able to see and experience the world in more vibrant colour, with richer joys, shared understandings and a more total humanity than we were ever capable of before.
Its a beautiful notion.
And as anyone who knows me would be aware, one that I am (despite myself) constantly susceptible to.
My current pondering is not necessarily specific to myself, more to my surprise at just how seemingly pervasive is our need to embrace this beautifully intoxicating notion of 'le grand amour'.
Paris is, as the well known cliche goes, the geographical embodiment of all our historic, romantic notions of love.
Historically, it has become inextricably entwined with the idea of its romanticism.
It is as though so many loves have formed here, passed through here, grown here, broken here... that the historical imprint of the weight of all of this has been left upon the cobbled streets, along the river banks, in the balcony windows and on the summer lawns of its parks.
There are uncountable words of prose and poetry written about it, and after all this it doesnt surprise me that its reputation remains.
What surprises me, perhaps, is our continued willingness in a contemporary world of consumption, and cold 'rational' material individualism, to embrace such a grandly naive (if beautifully warm) and undefinably uncontrolable idea.
It is evident even in the desire of people to come to Paris at all, knowing its reputation is steeped in long dead historic cliche, as a catalyst for their own desires to find and embrace that life-changing notion of the grand love.
It is evident in the innocently kitch idea of the locks, attached in the hundreds of thousands, to the bridges of Paris, inscribed with the names of people so wonderfully childish in their embrace of the idea that their feelings for each other can somehow transcend themselves and last forever.
As I wander the streets and parks and river of Paris, I see people living every moment in a desire... a hope... that they can find and embrace that great love that will change everything for them and their chosen one.
Perhaps it is all just a silly, naive cliche born out of tired romanticism that has been so overused as to have been stripped of all but its most riddiculously childish notions of a love that cannot ever really exist.
But even if it is, I love it.
I love the wonderfull innocence it represents.
I love the simplicity of it.
I love the blind, unquenchable hope of it.
I love the way that it goes against every cheap, commercial, material, cynical, cold, individual, selfish current of a contemporary culture rapidly stripping us of the simple joys in our lives.
I love its hope, beauty, and its basis on sharing something rather than taking it for yourself.
If for nothing else... I thank summer in Paris for reminding me of it... silly romantic that I am.
And, with the usual inability to find my own words to adequately express all, I shall leave my final words on the matter to Tom Robbins...
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
This oddly sentimental habit of coalescing your feelings for each other into a symbolic, inanimate object left publicly amongst a host of similar... is illustrative of our (rather endearing) desire to embrace the grand idea of love as something beyond merely the personal, situational or chemical.
It is that wonderfully innocent idea of some ethereal other that, when and if we are fortunate enough, passes through our lives and through the agency of that special someone, engenders us with the electric force of beauty and meaning beyond that which we are capable of knowing ourselves.
A star-struck two, suddenly able to see and experience the world in more vibrant colour, with richer joys, shared understandings and a more total humanity than we were ever capable of before.
Its a beautiful notion.
And as anyone who knows me would be aware, one that I am (despite myself) constantly susceptible to.
My current pondering is not necessarily specific to myself, more to my surprise at just how seemingly pervasive is our need to embrace this beautifully intoxicating notion of 'le grand amour'.
Paris is, as the well known cliche goes, the geographical embodiment of all our historic, romantic notions of love.
Historically, it has become inextricably entwined with the idea of its romanticism.
It is as though so many loves have formed here, passed through here, grown here, broken here... that the historical imprint of the weight of all of this has been left upon the cobbled streets, along the river banks, in the balcony windows and on the summer lawns of its parks.
There are uncountable words of prose and poetry written about it, and after all this it doesnt surprise me that its reputation remains.
What surprises me, perhaps, is our continued willingness in a contemporary world of consumption, and cold 'rational' material individualism, to embrace such a grandly naive (if beautifully warm) and undefinably uncontrolable idea.
It is evident even in the desire of people to come to Paris at all, knowing its reputation is steeped in long dead historic cliche, as a catalyst for their own desires to find and embrace that life-changing notion of the grand love.
It is evident in the innocently kitch idea of the locks, attached in the hundreds of thousands, to the bridges of Paris, inscribed with the names of people so wonderfully childish in their embrace of the idea that their feelings for each other can somehow transcend themselves and last forever.
As I wander the streets and parks and river of Paris, I see people living every moment in a desire... a hope... that they can find and embrace that great love that will change everything for them and their chosen one.
Perhaps it is all just a silly, naive cliche born out of tired romanticism that has been so overused as to have been stripped of all but its most riddiculously childish notions of a love that cannot ever really exist.
But even if it is, I love it.
I love the wonderfull innocence it represents.
I love the simplicity of it.
I love the blind, unquenchable hope of it.
I love the way that it goes against every cheap, commercial, material, cynical, cold, individual, selfish current of a contemporary culture rapidly stripping us of the simple joys in our lives.
I love its hope, beauty, and its basis on sharing something rather than taking it for yourself.
If for nothing else... I thank summer in Paris for reminding me of it... silly romantic that I am.
And, with the usual inability to find my own words to adequately express all, I shall leave my final words on the matter to Tom Robbins...
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
Thursday 16 August 2012
There and back again.
It has to be done.
Once at least...
And so, a sun-drenched day and a long winding walk to the Eiffel tower...
Around.
Under.
Past.
... and back
There it goes.
Once at least...
And so, a sun-drenched day and a long winding walk to the Eiffel tower...
Around.
Under.
Past.
... and back
There it goes.
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