Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House
Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House.
No that is not metaphor, I am in Paris, living in a dead mans house. I fold out the fold out couch and sleep amongst the dusty detritus of another mans recently abandoned life. Boxes containing the gathered personal history of a holocaust survivor attempt to interrupt my sleep. Today I took a moving mans load across Paris on the metro. I felt a bit like one of the men in Polanskis first film, "Two Men and a Wardrobe". Hobbled by goods too large for public transit in a city too large to care as we cajoled our goods via our only possible conveyance.
I came here to visit a friend convalescing. Glad to report he is doing well enough to challenge me to the daily duel that is cycling the streets of Paris. We get the "Velolib" bikes, available throughout Paris. We ride to galleries and cafes and places I am lucky to see through the eyes of my good friend who has lived here for many years. The streets are a constant movement. The streets live and breath as some being made of all the attempts, successes and failures that surround us.
Still I am not convinced. I love the history, the Paris Commune, the very birth of a socialist notion. The French Revolution and the very clear fact that none of that history is forgotten on the streets of this city. People may try to hide it but like the bad behavior of a tiresome brother whose thoughts provoke and annoy, it is never forgotten.
Oh ya, there are buildings jammed with art. But you knew that.
I have insinuated myself into the Pere Lachaise neighborhood through my friend. As in every city every barrio is a small town. Small gestures. I saw an old man having difficulty with groceries. I helped as anyone would. Gesture noticed and now I am a neighbour in a city I do not pretend to know, but a barrio I recognize as the barrio I always know.
Paris has a special place in collective memory, well deserved. Still as I dig into it's history I wonder if all here know that streets have names changed from " Scratch ass street, or, pull the sausage street to ""Rue St. Martin Rue saint no look away nothing here to see street". We once had a more colourful language.
Paris does not fit my usual travel routine. I was asked to come here. Still every obligation is an opportunity. Paris to me is the Paris Commune and the birth of socialism. A hard task that.
There also exists a weird tourist Paris but I need not see it. I went to the wall in La Pere Lachaise Cemetery where the brave and betrayed remnants of the Paris Commune were executed. I regretted that I had not written a poem to pin to the wall three blocks and three days away. I promise to write it and tuck it in the crack that is the Paris I have come to know.
No that is not metaphor, I am in Paris, living in a dead mans house. I fold out the fold out couch and sleep amongst the dusty detritus of another mans recently abandoned life. Boxes containing the gathered personal history of a holocaust survivor attempt to interrupt my sleep. Today I took a moving mans load across Paris on the metro. I felt a bit like one of the men in Polanskis first film, "Two Men and a Wardrobe". Hobbled by goods too large for public transit in a city too large to care as we cajoled our goods via our only possible conveyance.
Still I am not convinced. I love the history, the Paris Commune, the very birth of a socialist notion. The French Revolution and the very clear fact that none of that history is forgotten on the streets of this city. People may try to hide it but like the bad behavior of a tiresome brother whose thoughts provoke and annoy, it is never forgotten.
Oh ya, there are buildings jammed with art. But you knew that.
I have insinuated myself into the Pere Lachaise neighborhood through my friend. As in every city every barrio is a small town. Small gestures. I saw an old man having difficulty with groceries. I helped as anyone would. Gesture noticed and now I am a neighbour in a city I do not pretend to know, but a barrio I recognize as the barrio I always know.
Paris has a special place in collective memory, well deserved. Still as I dig into it's history I wonder if all here know that streets have names changed from " Scratch ass street, or, pull the sausage street to ""Rue St. Martin Rue saint no look away nothing here to see street". We once had a more colourful language.
Paris does not fit my usual travel routine. I was asked to come here. Still every obligation is an opportunity. Paris to me is the Paris Commune and the birth of socialism. A hard task that.
There also exists a weird tourist Paris but I need not see it. I went to the wall in La Pere Lachaise Cemetery where the brave and betrayed remnants of the Paris Commune were executed. I regretted that I had not written a poem to pin to the wall three blocks and three days away. I promise to write it and tuck it in the crack that is the Paris I have come to know.
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