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...

BAR

BAR none but for one or two...

no holds BARred but do hold on a while...

please do not disBAR but just go behind them...

that BAR is sinister but only for those bastards...

and the BARtender is really not so tender after all...

l'endurcissement vert

a stone veil...
a verdigris frost...
a slotted regard...
a faraway heart...
quelque chose demeure un peu sur la montagne...*

[*line from "Beauté des femmes, leur faiblesse..."  by Paul VERLAINE, 1844-96]

 

la porte bleu

whenever I had entered into my private paris, it was through large blue portal doors - a blue of a hue almost too intense for this city of muted colours...

I would have preferred shiny lacquered black, softly reflective pearl gray, a dark rich green, that deep burgundy red or even plain polished wood to this bright voracious blue...

until one day when I came upon this slim and elegantly ornamented panel shied away in an impasse behind Rue Saint Antoine that glowed the same cobalt blue, I then realized how much vivacity has coloured my inner world here in this the most perspicacious town of them all...

la petite lacune

an elegant door with gilded frames and a lovely sheen of pale patina - an aging door in a place of great pomp [I won't reveal where, but perhaps some can guess...] and yet, on one side of it there appears a chipped cavity, a gaping gash, a misaimed bullet hole?...

I am riveted by this detrital damage, this ambivalent affront to stately circumstance, a polemic pockmark that is conspicuously festering and inviting an investigative prod...

demi-chinois

 the integration of the chinese in a western culture usually lacks full traction...they remain insular and contained behind real and perceived screens - even if they dare to breed outside their race, the offspring is more often labeled half-chinese...

for those who don't read chinese, where are the french signs?

[Rue Etienne Dolet, 20e Arr.] 

bons chiens

I am pulling open my spring green door to Paris again...
plucky paris where my heart still roams like a pack of wild but well-fed pups...
[j'ai du chien encore!]

cara puerta

 

 something about a face on a door, the long knocker for a nose, the mail slot as slightly parted lips, and those strangely glowing hand-painted eyes looking back so quizzically...

I don't know who lurks behind this door-face, but I confronted it with a bright flash from my camera and it did not even blink...I could have banged on its nose or put my eyes to its mouth but it might have spat up a sharp retort...or worse, the whole face could have been flung open to reveal a much more animated and angry one!

leave ajar

I am stepping out on Paris for a little while and opening an enigmatic spanish red door to Barcelona...
so postings here will have to wait until I am back from my catalonian adventures, hopefully with some wildly tantalizing and freshly plucked images from a city that is stirring up a frothy zarzuela of lightness and zest!

[a door on rue du Pont Louis-Philippe, 4e Arr.]

in/out-up/down

a slightly illusory and mind-bending imagery, to be sure - and no, I was not upside-down to shoot this - but while waiting for the rain to stop, I am lulled by the watery black and white reflections inside the entrance of the Pavillon de l'Arsenal [4e Arr.]...
after viewing such precise and immaculate maquettes of architectural convolutions upstairs, the brain decompresses by looking down and absorbing a scenario that shifts quickly from rational reading to contorted dream-like misapprehensions, all dissolving in a pool of murky dissymmetry...

and the rain comes and goes outside, as always in a novembery paris...

rust in peace

I come upon a narrow rusting door, an ambivalent oxidized portal shut tight to a dusty darkened chamber...
what lies within are perhaps a few tangible symbols of a life long faded...or some consecrated offerings to an obnubilated spirit...
what then when the metal wears thin and the neglected vault finally tumbles to the ground?...
the death of a tomb - a double-death unsung in a sepulchral alley, with only heavy rutilant elements of iron still suspended in the dewy corrosive air...

[Cimetière de Belleville, 20e Arr.]

lying-fallow

I once wrote about a statue beckoning from a building on this street whose name has always plucked away at my intumescent heart...
the contemplative and reclusive rue des Solitaires echoes a nostalgic no man's land, a romantic retrenchment, a sentimental seclusion...
[I returned recently to find my invincible statue still solitary but the building had been freshly repainted an odd green, not the soft celadon it had once faded so introspectively to...]
I walked on by and passing a barricaded lot, I peeked through a crack and find again a wasteland wilderness, a dejected desert - where a new structure has not yet sprouted up, where a community garden has not been measured out, where squatters have not gamely tented on... and where the inviolate red doors may still open up and lead towards the ever receding barren mysteries of les solitaires pauvres...

bleu180

this is an intriguing number on a cobalt blue back door...
not indicating an address, nor a company's name...
a measurement, perhaps?...180 cm high?
a directional key?...180 meters up? 180 steps down...to hell??
180 degrees upside down???
I am still puzzled...
[actually I do know it is advising that the door is 1.8 meters high, but for those who do not calculate in metric, it is an odd number to contemplate...]

[located somewhere south of the Hôpital La Pitié-Salpêtrière and west of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France F.M. in an area where contemporary galleries once had high hopes of thriving...]

red 13

trapped behind 2 bars and glass, I thought a superhero had been captured and incarcerated under this most unpopular of numbers...
upon closer study, he appears to be a proud gladiator or centurion confined in a niche once reserved for a more sanctified figure, [although he does hold a cross to his chest and what seems to be a large black bird lies at his feet!], but now he stands guard within a blood-red wall on a street where nothing much happens...

[anybody knows whom he might represent?]

[13, rue Charles V]

si belle

along the cool and shady arcades of the Place des Vosges, and amongst the newer boutiques and older restaurants, there are pockets still of neglect - desert islands of avoidance - where the homeless curl up for the night and leave their meagre belongings in the day...
I stop before a door struggling to stay relevant, even as it has fallen into disuse years ago, but now reclaimed as a "belle-ile", above which the word is almost exuberant in its curved pink lettering...

abstract door

there must be a million pictures of the doors of paris, many imposing and solid with elegantly carved ornamentation, some painted in bright sheens and decorated with ornate hardware, others are weathered and neglected but the worn patina just adds to the charm...still others are whimsically nondescript...
this one in a courtyard belongs to the abstract minimalist painting category with its worked surface of old paint, grime, scrapes and patches that a dedicated artist would spend hours to achieve, finally punctuating it with a rusty bar and cross-piece for that pseudo-religiose effect...