from very tiny holes...

...issue the most minute and valiant of green life in the midst of the most busy of cities...
cracked star-burst black pearls of sidewalk aggregate somehow seeded, rain [and spit?]-dampened, germinated and sprouted underfoot on the mostly barren and aptly named Rue de la Perle...
a miniature collaborative art-nature installation that I almost stepped upon!

tower power

like an enormous Escher puzzle, the intricately crafted architectural models of the most progressive tower designs are arranged on a raised curvilinear-edged platform for giant humans to view from above...
the twisted bottle-shaped Escher Tower by the high-powered-design BIG [Bjarke Ingels Group] of Copenhagen emitting its multi-hued light patterns projects as a beacon to another eurocentric rise of a visionary vertical renaissance...

["L'Invention de la Tour Européenne" Pavillon de l'Arsenal, 21, bld Morland 75004 Paris]

twin graces

they dance in place to the undulating rhythm of the street, to the shadow-dappled flow of the canal...

holding up each a perforated star-flower, sliding into hiding for the day and reappearing again when the metallic darkness falls...

[Quai de Jemmapes, near the Hotel du Nord]

fire sale

always a tragic sight, the charred remnants of a fire... these neatly bagged and bundled piles of debris were left for removal on a narrow sidewalk in the Marais - the sad remains of an interior life now reduced to shades of black and sooty ashes...

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...

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]]

détaché

in a small private courtyard in the Marais, a pair of heavy scrolled ornaments lay casually on an ancient well-used work-bench awaiting their fate...
I walked around the hôtel particulier to find their rightful placement in the exterior design scheme and realized that they may be discards, removed forever from their original decorative purpose and now considered as more superfluous artifacts of another century...

schéma vers

stumbling into a courtyard on the rue du Bac, I find the building's floor plan dated 17 avril, 1963 by the Prefet du Police, with a list of hieroglyphic symbols below...
if something goes awry and SECURITEX has to be contacted, the very out-dated telephone number posted with it will not be of much use!
[but good to know that things stay in place for as long as they do here, and that with age, they can even attain a collectible status!]

projet ooks

we read this exasperated question posted on the wall inside this space where many brilliant and original ooks are offered for sale...
"pourquoi fatiguer ton esprit d'éternels projets qui te dépassent?"
and happily skipped off down the street, relieved to put off another scintillating ooky project indefinitely...

[Librairie Florence Loewy, 9, rue de Thorigny]

gibus off

the music has drifted and tidal-waved out from under this phallic top-hat for decades now... the crowning of so many musicians who left their soul-baring jetsam in Pa-reee...
do the blue/red, green/blue square lights still flash for the fallacious flotsam or just for the anointed ones dancing on the current?

[18, rue du Faubourg du Temple]

light industry

an underwater quality permeates this brooding environment of steadfast functional concern...
the industrial peasant has to swim hard against the indifferent tide to be hauled out of such sublimely forlorn but now leaking aquariums...

[floated into somewhere along the Rue du Faubourg du Temple]

tagless*

finally, the commercialization of graffiti to advertise for a truck rental company... the unexpected sanctioning of the long-"established" and prolific Miss Tic's work takes the bite out of her more subversive defacement noted for their arresting images of scantily clad and wantonly posed femmes paired up with short provocative phrases playing on words and double meanings... [er, find-her keep-her??]

[*a subcultural footnote on the heel of Adam's "challenging" post on "No Tag"!]

ma bête favorite

my secret lion is perched high, shaded and half-hidden amidst a bountiful feast of ripened fruits...
he is sated and watches me lazily as I cross over to the riverbank...
as I venture to the other side across the Pont de Sully...
he was once so blackened that I never noticed him, but when they finally cleaned off the Hôtel de Fieubet, he appeared like a royal vision...
ever le roi de la jungle...

[Hôtel de Fieubet/Ecole Massillon...2, quai des Célestines...dates from the 16th century...acquired by Gaspard de Fieubet in 1676 (he was a chancellor of Queen Marie-Thérèse)...madly decorated by the Comte de la Valette after he bought it in 1858 (he published the Journal de l'Assemblée Nationale)...and subsequently occupied by l'école Massillon in 1877 to the present]

l'ami de Alexandre

a pet sanglier wandering happily around a sumptuous hôtel particulier in the Marais...
ahhh...to be a wild boar in a splendidly eccentric home in Paris is never a boring thing!