boxed-in

a minuscule cubicle not much larger than the chimney and garlanded by a lush floral smile perches solitary upon the roof...
what could this diminutive protuberance possibly hold - a chair? a cat-box? a kettle?...perhaps a small television set [already so retro sounding!] for which the antenna still stands on guard!

absence du tronc

a soft-focus study in pale greys and stone, the faintest traces of a cross and lettering on the wall...
a creamy ray of light accuses the missing donation box...as if the very spirit of a sacred place has evaporated...
in this large and hollow space of the chapel of the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, reverberating silence drifts along with the revelatory light and I cross paths with the shadows of unquestioning statues...

autoboxes

something about the graphic simplicity and basic lettering and the double language usage of the words in this sign appealed to me [although I have cut out a qualifying word before "BOXES" in this image]...
as if lulled into a semi-surreal auto-suggestion of box-shaped cars or enormous boxes for cars or unenergized objects versus powered machines...
but nothing as mundane as a secured garage to tend to your average automobile...

[Rue de Belleville, 20e Arr.]

les petites puissances

a rough and ready altar for a pair of pugilistic babies commemorated behind shattered glass and a gilt frame...
a pugnacious display of the early training regime of man-on-man dominion in a dog-eat-dog world...
"rien ne m'est étranger de leur joue à ma joue..."*

[*from "Une autre âme s'avance..." Jules Romains]

[Rue Denoyez, 20e Arr.]

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.]

a sign for signs

another old sign flaking off into obscurity...this one for a manufacturer of small plaques and furniture hardware, those exquisite functional and decorative metalwork that one can still find rusty bits and tarnished pieces of in dusty boxes at flea markets, and reproduced for the organized bins in the hardware department of the BHV...

[Rue Amelot near the Bastille, 11e Arr. - and I do believe that is a bullet hole between the A and the R!]

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...

torch-song

le mur est flambé...
a singed serenade...
a flamboyant flash-point...
a flecker flare-up...
a blistering blaze-burn...
a scintillating scorcher...
a grilled grimace...
a concerted combustion...
a pyromanic putsch...
an incisive incendiament...
a contingent conflagration...
an arsonic-laced annointment...

really just another innocuous and inflamed wall somewhere in the glowing heart of pyrexial Paris...

scaling the wall

an abstract symbol composed of snake-scales and bark-veins inflicted onto a blank concrete wall conveys serpentine stasis in segmented curves...
a statutory juncture to contemplate the confluence of sinuous biomorphic skin and static architectonic membrane...

[Rue François Miron, 4e Ar.]

les tuiles céladones

missing my building with the celadon skin on rue des Solitaires, I find another off the rue de Belleville...
another céladonique moment, so to speak... but covered in a web of tiny sea-green tiles that also brings back my need for the sea...
the simple pseudo-modernist design with the plain metal tubing railings is nevertheless enlivened by a pair of ornamental flourishes bracketing the entrance canopy...and the mysterious giant silver spider still guarding the balcony above...

solitary man

one quiet Sunday morning many years ago, I biked by this building when it was a soft celadon green colour...
the white shutters were grimy and the naked young man posing intently above the front door could also have used a bath...
with the sticky surrealist ghosts of Aragon and Breton prodding me on, I was silently beckoned towards this solitary entity hovering above the rue des Solitaires as if...
"Life itself has summoned into being this poetic deity which thousands will pass blindly by, but which suddenly becomes palpable and terribly haunting for those who have at last caught a confused glimpse of it."
[Louis Aragon in "Le Paysan de Paris"]

I recently returned to catch another glimpse, and was relieved to find him still in situ, but considerably spiffed up to seduce younger and more excitable paris-feasting eyes...

sans tête

missing more than just his head, this bottom-third statue of Saint Nicolas still drapes the hems of his flowing robe over a corner niche on the Ile Saint-Louis...
carved onto the stone above the street sign and faintly legible is the more ancient former name of the street - Rue de la Femme sans Teste... perhaps sans tête is more appropriate now for the decapitated St. Nic - and much more intriguing than the present name...
[the older street name apparently alluded to another ancient sign depicting a headless woman holding a glass in her hand, meaning what exactly no one has quite deciphered, even with an inscription of "Tout est bon"...]

"a horse did whinny..."*

at the grand portal doors to the barracks of the Garde Républicaine on Boulevard Henri IV hang a pair of enormous lanternes... sometimes when I walk by, the doors are open and I can glimpse one or two horses being exercised around the grounds... sometimes I just hear them whinnying from within, and I hear again this song that I have heard so many times within my own home...

"a horse did whinny in the afternoon - he had no pity for the old buffoon...
a horse did whinny in the pale sunlight - he had no eyes, he had no insight...
a horse did whinny, or so I was told - he had nothing else to befoal...
a horse did whinny and that's a fact - he had nothing at all to give back...
a horse did whinny, but who cares...
a horse did whinny through the air...
a horse did whinny in the middle of the day...
a horse did whinny as if to say...
go away...go away...go away.........go away..."*

[*lyrics from "a horse did whinny" by my son Enzio (copyrighted 2008), as performed by his very cool band "Half-Chinese"]

objet suspendu

it hangs heavy like a giant silvery spider, but staying quite still above the balcony...
it catches my eye as I am photographing the building - I zoom in on this araignée grise and marvel at its elegant design, its mysterious purpose, its decorative placement beneath its thick wiry web... waiting oh so patiently for an unsuspecting prey to come along...
I am still in suspense as to what kind of spider it is...

[really, what is this thing??]

pot-of-iron in repose

like a hollowed out pumpkin "round upon the ground", it reclines "gray and bare" on the step of a neglected tomb...
"it did not give of bird or bush"... its angle of repose betrays a state of rusting dissipation, a dirge to its complete disengagement...
soon it will be removed altogether, perhaps repaired for sale by a wily brocanteur...or discarded into a cauldron of melting iron, sparking embers into the dark, dark night...all the while "[taking] dominion everywhere"*...

[*quoted lines are from Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of a Jar", 1923]

potiron de paris

towards the end of summer all carefully cultivated and even the not-so-well-tended plots are yielding their bountiful harvests...
I am proud to present our firstborn french pumpkin..."Jaune gros de Paris" - all glowing buttery roundness in his full perfection...the promise of "très beau fruit rond, très côtelé, aplati, écorce brun orangé, chair jaune" on the seed package when I chose it at the marché aux fleurs on the Ile de la Cité has been fulfilled!
I could have left him in our jardin potager a little longer to grow larger but he had actually tried to run away and was found hanging precariously on the other side of the back wall [and in fact his brother has sneaked right through the other fence to live secretly in the neighbour's garden where he is getting quite enormous!] but we decided that this is a good size to perform certain culinary experiments on...
he sat happily on display to admiring human eyes for a few days on our dining table... and then it was time...
I reluctantly cut into him, quartered one half, scooped out all his seeds and stringy pulp and baked the pieces flesh up - [the other half I baked flesh down, draining off more pumpkin juice!] - and when the pieces had cooled, I spooned out the mushy yellow flesh, to be used in various recipes...
so far, my simple pumpkin crêpes have been quite delicious, especially with some confiture d'abricots!

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...

lilolila

crumpled-up silver net clouds loom over a rambling open post and beam walkway awkwardly hung with sheets of colour-splotched graffiti like so much drying laundry flapping in the breeze on this little island of green relief...
on a small corner lot on rue de Belleville, an experiment in democratic design within a neighbourhood garden has been implemented by L'association l'îlot-lilas...
based on the theories of artist/architect Yona Friedman, a very loose hanging "museum of graffiti" was installed as a participative project to encourage local residents to effect change in their own environment... redefining their public spaces as they see fit and evolving them according to their needs...
[or devolving into organizational chaos, as some might grumble...!]

[295, rue de Belleville]

stair-stockings

the entry courtyard of the17th century Hôtel de Sully is one I know well as I frequently trespass through to the parc of the Place des Vosges...
one day as I entered through the rue Saint-Antoine doors I was confronted by clunky barricades, spindly scaffolding, and metal stairs sexily clad in a giantess net stocking - all sullying the usually drowsy elegance of this domain overseen by no less than the Four Seasons and the Four Elements...

[designed by Jean Androuet du Cerceau and built between 1624 and 1630 for Mesme Gallet, the Hôtel de Sully was soon acquired by the duc de Sully, Minister of Finances to Henri IV... it is now the Centre des Monuments Nationaux to manage monuments and historic buildings belonging to the state... since 2004, it also houses the state's contemporary photo collection in the Jeu de Paume museum... as well as one of my favourite bookstores with a comprehensive collection of books on Paris...
Hôtel de Sully...62, rue Saint-Antoine]

chain-link-lace

the art of chain-link crochet made manifest by this example at Le 104 imbues plain-jane fencing with a sublime decorative value... transforming a mundane common-place necessity into giant lacy doilies to mysteriously veil the harsh urban landscape or certain neglected gardens...

[Le CentQuatre, 104, rue d'Aubervilliers et 5, rue Curial... I forgot to jot down the artist's name...]