wile dreams

tangled dreams unravel and float through the watery light of the Canal Saint-Martin...
on a soft pink wall across from the still knotted up Hotel du Nord, a reminder medallion of the power of dreams and the always irresistible whim to weave them back together again one by one...

[Quai de Jemmapes, 75010 Paris]

un garage d'automobiles

reminded by a post on garages on Invisible Paris, I find this in a portfolio of students' work from the architecture department of l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1928-29 that I had chanced upon at a brocante...
such progressive vision of bright-eyed students 80 years ago now when the car was still a precious novelty and deserved to be housed in glorified edifices that are mostly looked upon as eyesores today...

mini-macabre

dozens of pairs of little legs and headless torsos dangle from the ceiling of a darkened doll repair shop... a whimsical version of la petite danse macabre swaying in the stillness of the night, while the pretty detached heads look on from below...

tête ou tête

the unexpected finds at Porte-de-Vanves are inexhaustible...drawing the hardcore seekers back every weekend for more thrills of unearthing abandoned heads or legs or surrealistic contemplations in soft covers...

[I read this today... "The disembowelled horses in the arena of heads." [from 'La Bonne Heure' by Tristan Tzara]...and I am relieved of my imagination in the realm of the real...]

dispossessed

the abject poignancy of some sad tattered objects scattered on the grimy sidewalk...just a few now homeless and cast out among the millions of others in this the mother of all flea markets, all waiting to be loved again...

[I see a picture on a crowded wall, music drifting out from a smoky room, wine to make merry again...and high upon a shelf, the mystery of a small wooden box...]

[St-Ouen]

flayed

a grisly substratum discovery through the window of a chic antique store on Rue du Bac...
I went inside to flip through the organs and asked for the price... a reasonable 300 euros, but the only wall space I have left is in my dining room and a lesson in horse anatomy for my dinner guests!

la belle heure

time has long ago stopped here, like in so many hidden corners of the Marais...
the branches will soon leaf out and obscure this lovely old weathered clock and the hours will be forgotten again in the spring sunshine...

[Rue Beautreillis & Rue des Lions Saint-Paul]]