driving into delirium*

like a sleek black panther crouching outside a disheveled garage, this shiny dew encrusted machine was primed to take flight...
I prowled around it a few times absorbing the primal energy of italian engineering and wished that I could drive away into my delirium...

[*"Driving into Delirium" is a song title from Malcolm McLaren's Paris album]

red-i-vivus

a prairie barn in a field of wheat??...reflected back onto a Pariscape of monumental edifices...
hard to guess where this mirrored image is located, isn't it?

mes boulets royaux

roll with them here...tilt their world to catch the light...loosen the chains and let them free...float them up to the silver skies...let them fall as mercury bubbles...to burst upon the cold hallowed ground...

wolf at the wall

it is always jarring to walk by a solidly bricked up façade of a seemingly still usable building...
what is it shielding behind such a finite barricade?
how long has it been this way and for how much longer?
does the wolf still come huffing and puffing to blow the house down??
and what of this curious altar-like niche so perfectly placed to break up the brick pattern and perhaps even endow it with an art installation status?

om

the transcendent soaring of a vertical garden sends the eye gazing heavenward... an uplifting meditation upon a living green wall to dispel thoughts of the rampant consumerism transpiring behind this "slice of nature" billboard...

[this mur végétal by the innovative and eccentric Patrick Blanc is part of the entry façade of the BHV Homme department store on Rue de la Verrerie]

naufragé

a sabotaged ship, an abandoned ark, cut adrift below the colossal glimmering glass barge that is the Bibliotheque Nationale de France...
its smashed glass windows howling helpless angst at its sinking, the pattern of black jagged openings an expressive code for a mercy rescue before it completely submerges...

sarko

five green letters methodically spray-painted on five closed shutters of an aristocratic abode on the Ile Saint-Louis...
a minimalist and simplistic statement for or against?
a high-jumping child with green paint to spare?
mere blank canvases evidently begging to be defiled?
a spontaneous tag by a deliriously voluble president out on a walk??
[most probably:: a love-giddy declaration of a well-fed and victorious first lady!!]

orangina

on the window of a closed up grocery store, this artistically modified advertisement for the iconic french fizzy drink is worthy of the company's grateful endorsement...
I am often gifted with bottles of this barely orangey tasting drink by kindly frenchmen just because my name is part of its name!...[one even awarded me with an "orangina" trophy cup that he had found at the flea market!]

for more "orangina" fun facts, visit www.musee-orangina.com