Against all odds and varying degrees of je ne sais quoi, let's call it scatter-brained indifference, I've woken up in Paris once again, and for only the second time alone. It's new to me this Paris, not the 14th, my familiar stomp, nor the 7th that's familiar from Lili. No, I'm holed up in the 12th now, not far from the Marais and Sacha's flat and still, entirely different. No, the 12th is a much more generic, wholesome humble Paris.
I arrived at Gare de Lyon late last night, near midnight, and walked myself north to the tiny square of Place d'Aligre. Only by good grace did I make it into the building without the code. A kind woman let me in, an older blonde, but ah, it's always a woman with me.
Still no wifi, but that's not important. I tried at the cafe but the password didn't work. I don't really care. Fewer and fewer things faze me now I'm beginning to realize. Perhaps it's a Paris thing. From a space beyond interconnectivity it takes on the specter of a master and hostage reality. We have a sort of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to our technology. We've been enslaved so long now that the thought of being free is frightening.
But free I am now, at least for the moment. The mind is open to more important and more beautiful things to be thankful for; like this market right outside my door, and the smile it brings to me, and more discreetly so, the dawn of thought that has come to me as I walked up and down the stalls of old antiquities and fruit. I was searching for something more to buy her, but I found nothing, and perhaps that's because I need nothing else to give up to her; not a trinket, no jewelry or a shiny stone, not my love, and certainly not my life.
It's exhausted, finally, this merry-go-around of holding on and letting go and so the comfort, I should say, is only natural. Its the little things; an old pencil and bound paper, a borrowed cigarette, a table to myself outside on the corner, and an espresso in Paris. Paris is a power like that. I can only find this here. I might walk all day around the city I think, and let my feelings fly again through the streets like they haven't in such a long time.
The soul is whole again; anything is possible.
