l'ardeur rouge

somewhere in paris a shiny red camper van encapsulates the inflamed fervour of a neighbouring nation... the full flush victory of la furia roja charges in all directions - a bullish taunting toro for the enervated les bleus faibles...

beau comme un camion

the grittiness of the Marché d'Aligre spills out of many forms of transport modes...
a daily olio of stuff tumbles out of vans as primitive as they get on the streets of Paris...some with panels of crudely vibrant graffiti stop for a while at a brocante to disgorge their messy innards onto the ground, then move on again weaving through traffic and flashing their bold images to weary commuters...

rejointoiement

from messy working garage to pristine art factory, this slimmed down solo citroen by Gabriel Orozco, our part-time neighbour in Paris, has pride of place on an upper level of the Centre Pompidou...
in the end is it just a lovely old french car cut in half and re-served as a clever sculptural counterpoint to over-slick showrooms of over-sleek new models promising yet more roomy joy-rides...
[or looking backwards in my rétroviseur, I may be slightly regretful for the missing middle...]

rejuvenation

she seems so vulnerable and violated - her belly exposed, her mouth opened in a silent cry, her eyes blinded, and thin wires like delicate veins pulled out through various orifices...
I am seldom witness to the mechanics of rejuvenation surgery of older models, and the inner workings of a traditional messy garage with its scattering of strangely shaped tools and instruments and bottles of toxic ooze...
all in the service of beautifying and reinvigorating a once sweet young thing that refuses to stay off the streets...

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]

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...

autobush

at the elegant and recently renovated Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature there was installed the most incongruous piece of "sculpture"...[un objet trouvé by some hunters? and modified by the designer/artist Vincent Dubourg] of the shell of an old car with saplings having grown and wrapped their limbs around it like those of a desirous woman around a mysterious and immobilized man...
[displayed in the Salon des Oiseaux, it is a telling indication of the state of woodlands being used as dumping grounds...humans soiling the natural environment with their rejectamenta]