paris mirage

the sentimental skies of a paris spring beckon - pierced with antique crosses, the tall iron maid, the tricolour pride...

the years dwindle, the moss darkens on stones forgotten, the metal corrodes, and the flag frays - and yet...

"dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé

deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.

-te souviens-tu de notre extase ancienne?

-pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu'il m'en souvienne?

-qu'il était beau le ciel, et grand, l'espoir!..."

[selected lines from "Colloque Sentimentale" by Paul VERLAINE (1844-96)]

on skeppsholmen...

they march no more down these halls - the young swedes of a naval order...
outside, the dark trees shield the statues low and the tall ships...
they see a light on - the light that casts shadowlinks in a tight room...
a hollow box, a fulfilled sack - the season's ending in a corner...
the solstice is rounding up, the days lengthening -
and so begins the music again...

[at the Hotel Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden]

swede abstraction

the detrital conflation of peeling paint and sprayed symbols, of pasted notices and torn images, of flaking glue and dried spit - presents an accumulative reading as complex as an archaeological dig, a vertical congregation of visual strife as dissonant as a Twombly passage...

["Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings" at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm  from October 8 to January 15, 2012]

thinktanker

 jag tanker att...jag tanker...tror jag.../lois

think...thinking...thoughts...
he paid a penny for her thoughts...
she was thinking of someone else...

blindcouplebluff

"...their most secret thoughts meet as when two colours meet and flow into each other on the wet paper of a schoolboy's painting..."

[excerpted from 'The Couple' by Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature - finally! - (from 'The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations' by Robert Bly, 2004)]

[on a divider wall outside of Goteborg, Sweden]

metal-liturgy

 the french artist Francois Morellet's inter-locking stick metal "Sphere" [1962] floats in one corner - a primitive steel hive model for a futuristic orbiting space habitat...

the german artist Gunther Uecker's "White Field" [1983] of swirling nails maps the galaxies in a square studded universe - where man can orbit only on the minutest speck of iron dust...

[both pieces are exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Danmark]

pre-occupy any space...

 from the cozy compactness of a single city bench in copenhagen...

to the barren brushland beside looming suprarchitecture in barcelona...

manifest the urgent need to stake out one's piece of ground, if not one's peace of mind...

danish dropped diction

strips of danish lie dejectedly abandoned on a busy pathway...spilling from their frame, the words escape to the incomprehension of foreign interest...

marais nostalgie

Le Marais was my little piece of Paris for years and the Village Saint-Paul was just a cobblestone throw from where my nest had perched...
this was before the Marais was "discovered" and the onslaught of tourists began...this was when the small antique shops had dusty shelves and napping proprietors...this was when the boulangeries did not offer up doughnuts and muffins...this was when I fell deeply in love with a mise-en-scène that does not exist anymore...
the bell of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis may still toll on the hour, but the unseen bird in the garden of the Marquise de Brinvilliers is no longer heard singing in the cool evening air...

l'île exotique

over 400 years ago, La Guyanne was a far-flung colonial outpost sweltering in the fetid tropical heat and  fought over by the sea-faring european powers of the time...

from the island capital of Cayenne to the island heart of Paris, the Marquis de Soumont spent months upon high seas to sail safely home again, never to know of the spaceships that could now launch him almost to the moon in a day...

[Hotel Rolland on Quai d'Orleans, Ile Saint-Louis]

[Guiana Space Centre, established by Charles de Gaulle in French Guiana]

les trucs jaunes

yellow is not a colour I would ever wear nor paint my house in, even if it has always been designated the happy colour...

yellow is the colour of many sublime things - bright flower petals, juicy lemons, melodious birds, fragrant spices - and with any sort of enlightening, may it no longer be an attribution to the most populous race on this earth...

skullfenestra

within the anatomy of a Gaudi vivarium, no artifice is too minor to address in symbolic narrative...
the skull-shaped windows rise up through the aqua-tiled spine towards the surface light from their watery depths...

coucou

peeking up her wide iron skirt, through delicate layers of gray metallic lace...
her long graceful neck held high, soaring above all that we strive for -
not realizing that in the end we can't take it with us...

la cuc

the anthropomorphization of a feisty and tenacious insect is championed in this boisterous bar...where in any language, a cockroach is still un cafard is still a creature that will survive to the end of time...

for the love of books and blooms

  

el dia de la rosa...y por amor...
a little belated for wishing all a lovely Sant Jordi day [April 23rd] dedicated to St. George the patron saint of Catalonia - and a combo St. Valentine's and Mother's Day...roses for mothers, wives and girlfriends and books in return to fathers, husbands and boyfriends...
el dia del llibre is also in remembrance of Cervantes who died on this day in 1616...

medieval cache

the follies of youth are somewhat contained in this hostel sanctum of the Marais... they come and they go, storing their little green bottles on the corner ledge  - beyond the reach of the unrefreshed, all so thirsting to be anointed with a dash of spring ...

antique light

one spring day a celestial beam found its way into the dome of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis...
ethereal faces lifted towards the nostalgic light where the spirits of kings and cardinals converge...
Madame de Sévigné silently slipped into her chair, a dark veil hiding her delicate face...
she prayed for her forebears and her progeny and for her charmed ascendancy in the Marais...

antique ghosts

sometimes they hover behind window panes in the darkened chambers of private needs...
sometimes they drift across your field of vision then vaporize into the fading light...
sometimes they loom before you like peripheral gods from the antique mists...
and sometimes they enslave you in their stony embrace and engraved kiss...

of kings and lost lizards

a short distance away from the extreme sculptural opulence of the Pont Alexandre III, a golden salamander bask alone in the sunshine...
in search of the king who had once held it in such high regard to symbolize the mandate of his reign "nutrisco et extinguo"*...

[*"nourish the good and extinguish the bad" - vive la France!]

of kings and old clochards

strung out along the Pont-Neuf  like so many pulled teeth dangling on a chain, these grotesque pearls grimace and glare at the sanitized masses...
they finally found the head of the gallant Henri IV, embalmed and unjuggled, who once crossed over this bridge of vice beaming the glories of France...

gardien d'escalier

the mythical herder contemplates the rise of a steep climb while his baby pan watches for the lost flock...
I descend the winding stone steps and confront their trespass upon my modernist reverie...

[cozying up to greek gods in the Rue de Turenne neighbourhood, 3e Arr]

yellowbricksfloat

"My glass crushes a puddle of yellow beer against the marble table top, a bubble floating in it."*

[*from Nausea by Jean-Paul SARTRE, 1964]

...and below, the seine floats on wordlessly, ever reaching for the great big sea... 

[merci, Peter, for reminding me the name of the artist of this "shadow man" pochoir - NEMO has been leaving his mark around Paris since the early 1980's and has long been established as an officially sanctioned street artist]

bawlingbaldhead

I shout for more...

I holler and I roar... 

I yell in pain...

I cry in vain...  

only to reverberate against the intimate wall...  

     

doubledeergirls

large peartears of cherry drop from the honeyhalo...
the tieredtree sprouts from crossed twintrunks...
a pair of bambigirls reach for each other, eyes closed...
and stroke the grittymouth of the blankeyed stump...

burlybirdman

the buff and muscular adjutant scrunches up in a rude finger pose atop a roof, oblivious to the open orifice through his hip...

rainbow rods spray out on another wall further down the block - delicate veined wings mocking this flightless big-beaked manhawk...

parfois l'oiseau arrive vite...*

"attendre s'il le faut pendant des années

la vitesse ou la lenteur de l'arrivée de l'oiseau

n'ayant aucun rapport

avec la réussite du tableau...

...alors vous arrachez tout doucement

une des plumes de l'oiseau

et vous écrivez votre nom dans un coin du tableau."*

[*selected lines excerpted from 'Pour faire le Portrait d'un oiseau' by Jacques PREVERT, Selections from 'PAROLES', 1965]

BONNE ANNEE A TOUS!  

[chirps the sweet little bird from the Jardin du Luxembourg]