sans-travail

in a more primitive pariscene, this small but hefty 2F saucer once dotted one of countless café tables... but it has been unemployed for a long while now - with the franc a lost currency, many cafés a faded memory, and paris-paradise a fouled foreign investment museumville...

[I have this petit plat in my possession now [found at a brocante], but no knowledge of what its home was like - if anyone out there knew of the establishment and the meaning of the word "NOUBLANCHE", please do let me know*...I will also be posting it on my parigigi antiques site to find a new home for it ]

*Thank you to Peter for letting me know that Rue de Paradis was a street of china and faience manufacturers, so the name and address of the stamp under the dish were for the maker.

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]

va-vroom

at a vide-grenier in a Neuilly neighbourhood, someone's precious collection of old toy cars is meticulously laid out on a pristine white tablecloth...what courage and sadness he must feel to finally decide that it is time to part with a cherished part of his boyhood, and hoping that their new homes will treat them just as well...

baby battalion

a disarray of head-wrapped infantry at a bastille brocante...