Femmes: Elena/Ellen

I wonder if she, in reality, is two people, one for each name. Maybe I met them both, the one in the black dress, the one in the flowers. I wonder which one loved me, if either of them did, this English girl. In all the ways, she said yes. She let me kiss her of course, with regular frequency before the very end, before she left me for good on the metro. But I didn't see her look back. She didn't watch me off, no, she turned away. It was quick, with a rush of wild blonde and blue eyes turning quickly gray. The wild flowers of her dress blurred at the squint of mine as the train pulled away. I'd be her's, the both of her, always.

She'd be my favorite
song if she took me
as her own.

I'm the kind of man that can throw all of me into her, easily. And I shall. It's the best thing I could possibly do, truly. She's true beauty, body and soul, and in her smiling whisper comes the waves of adoration, undulation, admiration.

I'm always impressed by a girl from the Isle with a love of hard drink. It's the curse of me, among more sporting things.

Femmes: Jac Capra

This shall be called Jac Capra And The Curious Premonition of Over-Indugence And No Control.

I simply can't say no. One of these days it's going to get me into trouble, like real trouble.  So far the worst has just been awful morning-afters and head-splitting hangovers.

Real trouble?  Hardly.  A few questionable decisions, sure.  Heartache, of course, but always tied to the best of times and the craziest of times and the most memorable and I hate to say defining, but it's true.  So many sleepless nights walking back home or biking back fast in pace with the sunrise.  This never happened when I was with Claire.

(That's a lie.  There was that prime acid on a Wednesday night with that fucking wildcat drug mule Andrew, but they were so few and far between back then.)

God, I love flirting.
I think I might like it more than the sex on some occasions.
Maybe it's just been so long since I've had any worth writing home about.

She tells me, "Maybe the anticipation is better than the fact."




********



It's raining in Paris on my last day. They're playing Fleetwood Mac in the cafe; Australian cafe in Paris in the Marais.  Je sais.

"Thunder only happens when it's raining."

Why
Do I always love to dive
Into girl's minds

Whatever happens to you over the years as you change and things fade and time slips away, never, never, never forget these moments and the feelings you had in Paris, especially now in the rain on this last day and the deep surging from the pores and the flashes white of what comes of doing everything you can for a person; the wonderful weight of anticipation, like I could explode into light at any second and that would be all right.  There's no name for this feeling, I know it, not in any language.

Femmes: James Joyce Nigga

I told Olivia I'm drowning in a sea of women again.
Like a favorite old record, this place is.
What a wonderful repetition of the soul,
Let's say.

God, that's so cliché.
What would James Joyce say?

Maybe "Mother-fucker, it's crazy this life!"
And "Even our little histories tend to repeat themselves."
They certainly do in mine.
It's divine, the invisible hand of chance.
It's beautiful to recognize.

Femmes: Sylvia's Library

It's quiet-ish. I've been here before. I forget it's summer now, not the lonesome cold of late fall that I remember, and so I'm not alone, no, far from it.  It's not just Sylvia and me set alone with her books today with the windows closed against the biting cold.  I see none of her webs, I hear none of her whispers in the silence.  It's hot outside.  Tourists hush about taking pictures in front of the "Please Do Not Take Pictures" sign.  I'm not depressed like I was, which makes things different and the only free seat is by, you've probably guessed it dear reader, a fucking writer type; or maybe it's just a sneaky mirror.

There's a furrow in his brow.  I know it, I don't even have to look up.  I can feel his messy corduroy pants angst on the humid French from the whispering tour guide, and the Paris air and he's had enough, he's gone.  Good riddance fucking tortoise-rimmed glasses and knapsack bag.  Good riddance to the iPad too, that's what all the writers are using these days, the real ones with their tortured souls and their "poetry"

Perhaps I spoke too soon.  Have you got a grasp on my thoughts now? Have you? Do my feelings pervade?  Good, because we must part ways now, there's a beautiful girl sitting in the corner and we keep making eyes at each other.  Take a picture of her dear reader, lest we forget, the Irishman from the cafe is a photographer after all.

Femmes: Corners (or Sauce de Piment)

Ah ha! And to think that I'd almost forgotten about my dear shitty Chinois! The microwave heat, the sitting still water oh, the memories.  This was real Paris to me those years back when a floor was suited just fine for sleeping on.  The city's been flooding back all day, walking past Bastille, past the metro at Filles du Calvaire and the corner at Rue Bretagne, the one with the ATMs, where I'd waited for Olivia that cold, cold November night ago.  I'll say it's much different in the summer sun.  No chill in the bone, it's a sweat on the brow instead, and nostalgia, and Cafe Charlot.  It must be the company that a memory clings to; her long fur coat, her deep rouge lips.

I have to smile.  I had been writing in a shitty Chinois that night too.  I was so, so young, pacing in circles in the tangerine light, freezing from fingers to toes right down to the core of me, wishing for her to be there, and suddenly she was, I remember.

It's these muses that cross our path, like glue that keeps the sand from sieving through, they're the heavy anchor in turbulent seas, I remember.  Beige jacket, red pants; of course I remember Rachel when I see the galleries.  They may be different now (JR's long moved on to bigger and grander iterations), but really it's the corners, life's intersections where the streets meet that are most clear and familiar.  Walking with Rachel I remember right where the broken toilet was on the corner across the street from American Apparel.  That memory might well outlast the facing storefront. After all, it's been six years nearly.  A lot can happen for a fashion brand in six years.  A lot of mistakes can be made, but it's still here.  For now.

Femmes: Cafe Shakespeare

I have a knack for meeting people, I suppose.  Maybe it's only when I'm traveling. Yes, for a second while this beautiful girl beside me twirls her hair.  Yes, it's my favorite thing, serendipity.  It's the way a woman in proximity, knowing not, has her hand on the faucet of my words, my word.  Is that a bit too garish?

Twirl, twirl, twirl.  She's a beautiful young thing, young brown hair, young legs, deep blue denim jacket, yes.  She's busy with a highlighter.  That's right, a student no doubt.  I can't imagine highlighting passages just for the fuck of it.  Her face is easily forgivable though, and when she looks up, I look back down of course, to stop from staring.  I've come to the curious revelation that my hand may write -- impressively straight I might add -- for some time without the consult of my eyes.  It can be a subconscious thing, and then I become the weird guy staring.  It can't be a strong look, but in my periphery I can see that she's smiling; shaking her head, but still she's smiling.

Ah! The line between muse and distraction is razor-thin sometimes.  Serendipity though, yes.  Not only fun to say, serendipity is a wonderful scheme.  There's no pretense, there's nothing really, it's free.  All it takes is a little perception and attention to detail.  That costs nothing, like singing Soundgarden songs to the babies waiting in line.

A recreational smoking habit helps as well.  I met the guy behind the counter two hours ago on a not busy street in the Marais.  After all, it's a Marais day.  An empty street I remember because of the clarity of the only few voices in the air, a whisper English in my ear as I walked by and the name Haim as he and a friend lit cigarettes.

It was Haim and the cigarette smoke that drew me to a decided about-face down the block to bum one.  If you smoke cigarettes at all, I swear, you need to come to Paris and walk the streets.  It's one of the simple pleasures in life; walking through Paris with a lit cigarette to drag on.

Anyways, they were Irishmen.  God I love the Irish.  They gave me three cigarettes when I told them I hated the Lumineers; real DB music, the Lumineers.  And we'll all race to marry the Haim girls. "On bended knee as soon as I see 'em!" I'd said.  I'm turning a corner with this Shakespeare place.  I'd left six years ago in the winter with such a sour taste for writer types.  Now it's iced chai on my tongue and familiar English in the air.  Maybe I'm thawing in the summer heat, maybe I just enjoy the company at the cafe better.  I'll poke into the bookstore shortly for a bit, see how Sylvia's doing, weaving her webs in the quiet parlor upstairs.

Femmes: Place D'Aligre

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.