Paris encore

 The Writing's on the Wall

I was 22 when I took this picture in a poky little zinc, just by the Bouquinistes on the Rive Gauche of the Seine. I had a Zenith 35mm camera and I perched it on the bar and shot the unsuspecting woman as she chatted with another.

Just the other day, only 52 years later, I had a small glass of white wine in the same bar  with the same tables and mirrors.....  However, sadly, it was a different woman, which blurred my vision.....

Funny how time confuses us. As Paul Verlaine wrote:

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant

D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime

Et qui n'est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même

Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend.

Mon rêve familier

Verlaine died in this building in 1896.  25 years later Ernest Hemingway came here.

39, rue Descartes

Although Papa H only worked here, he lived with Hadley just nearby:

74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine

While, just round the corner, was James Joyce:

71, rue du Cardinal Lemoine

Valery Larbaud supervised the translation of Ulysses into French.

Prenez donc tout de moi : le sens de ces poèmes,

Non ce qu'on lit, mais ce qui paraît au travers malgré moi:

Le Don de Soi-Même

I can see these guys, now, sipping vin blanc (electricity - JJ) in a bar like this:

Although legend has it that Joyce (not to mention Hemingway) enjoyed more than a glass or two in various bars:

While a few blocks away Sylvia Beach had started a bookshop, Shakespeare & Co, and published Joyce's masterwork.

12, rue de l'Odeon

While a little further off, near the Jardins du Luxembourg, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were the talk of the town, with their literary and artistic parties:

27, rue de Fleurus

Which a little later on would have included Pablo Picasso who wasn't to be left out (and nor were Matisse, Gauguin or Ezra Pound):

7, rue des Grands Augustins

Yes, the writing is on the wall, all over the Left Blank (sic), and the bodies are piled high.  Balzac (Who he?  Ed.) died in 1850.  More recently, Oscar Wilde lost his duel with his wallpaper (One of us has got to go):

13, rue des Beaux Arts

Those inter-war years must have been something?  William Faulkner was at 42 rue de Vaugirard in 1925; George Orwell stayed at 6 rue Pot de Fer in 1928;  Henry Miller was on the fifth floor of 36 rue Bonaparte in 1930.  Joyce lived at 19 different addresses between 1920 and 1939, and Hemingway certainly lived in a number of apartments, and drank nearly everywhere, causing mayhem and getting F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda very drunk at times, and all the while Josephine Baker was performing in Paris (and drinking at La Coupole in Montparnasse - possibly with my Great Grandmother and Anna Pavlova).  Samuel Beckett lived much of his life in Paris from 1928 until his death in 1989, and worked closely with Joyce on Finnegan's Wake.

Then, after the Second World War, it was the turn of the Beat Generation, some of whom (though not Jack Kerouac) stayed here:

There are plaques all over the city, and streets and squares named after some of these writers and artists.  They all tell stories, and, for me, the  interest is in being where these people were, seeing some of the buildings they would have known.

Place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris France

It's an emotional thing, I guess, not historical, nor in any way exact (there wouldn't have been so many cars in the 1920s, nor would there have been so many tourists, like me, wandering about.)

I have written about Paris before and, should you be interested, you can see my earlier piece, Paris: City of Light, at https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/07/paris-city-of-light.html

and in that piece I had pictures from some of the high spots, including the towers of Notre Dame.  I had actually come to the city on this occasion with the express intention of seeing the 'new' Notre Dame, but found it impossible to get tickets.  According to the official website between 10 and 15 thousand tickets are issued two days in advance of admission, but, try as I might, not one came my way.  So I went down there to see if there was any chance of getting in, but the queues were so enormous I gave up - it would have been more like Paris Gard du Nord (or Euston) station at rush hour than a cathedral (and it is still a building site).....

And so I meander about the city streets.  The fashionable cafes and restaurants are full, and, as a solo traveller, there is no joy in even asking for a table.....

I am not the only one, of course.  Others manage on their own:

Though how exactly on your own you are depends on your speed dial, I suppose:

One tablet, however, hits me hard.  Not something from La Belle Epoque, but a reminder of how things have changed:

Georges Wolinski was an 80 year old cartoonist and comics writer, who was killed in cold blood, with eleven others, at about 11.30 am on January 7th 2015 in the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo by two men claiming membership of Al Qaeda.  

It is hard to try and connect the mass of humanity, from all sorts of cultures and nationalities, who squeeze into Notre Dame de Paris, with those who use religion as a basis for brutal assassinations.  It is hard to square the hordes of tourists with the inequalities of the world - though where I fit into that paradox is also hard to explain. 

La belle époque appartient maintenant au passé.  

It is evening.  I stroll up to Montmartre, where the crowds are happy.  Windmills still exist, though not as Van Gogh would have seen them.

The old places are still old, but somehow they seem like stage sets:

I have un Ricard in a bar, and write in my diary.  The waiter asks if I am writing my memoir.  I reply that I am writing his.....  Neither of us knows the whole story.

Out in the street, I reach out to touch a cat's nose.  Memories of Meadow.  But l'accordioniste slaps me away.  He is right, of course, but neither of us knows the full story.....

It is busy on the steps of the Basilica of Sacré Cœur de Montmartre.  Youthful spirits curl in the wreathing air, the city a mosaic carpet stretching away below:

And when I turn to look back, the basilica seems to crown the  crowd:

But back in my room the view is somehow more complex.  I have to travel away, and I think of my home.  Greatness is not everything.  I am conflicted, always wanting something else. 

 

I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man

James Joyce

So take everything from me: the meaning of these poems,

Not what one reads, but what appears through them despite myself:

The Gift of Oneself

Valery Larbaud

*****

[Dedicated to the memory of Lindsay Webster, À la recherche du temps perdu]

*****

Gran Canaria

The Great Canary.....

Our third trip to the Islas Canaria - the Canary Islands...... 

Maybe our last.....

Winter sun.  Warmth.  

A touch of exotica, erotica, carnaval.....

Cosce di bue....  Carne Vale

A break from the SAD syndrome of our desperate northern climes.

Four hours, and some, in travel. Oodles of pounds/euros/dollars/pesos. 

Concrete. Lava. Cinders. Sand.  

The odd cactus (prickly pears)......

Some fish.....

Yeah!  Some fish!

And some papas arrugadas con mojo (wrinkly potatoes with spicy sauce), the local version of chips.....

We make some friends, though they don't say much.....

We drive five hundred kilometres to admire the scenery.....

Which varies from mountainous.... to mountainous by the sea.....

To mountainous with a view of the sea (and El Teide on Tenerife just sneaking into view in the background).....

To a few grains of Saharan sand blown over from the African mainland by the Riu hotel at Maspalomas.....

I am a bit puzzled by the bird life.  On my first evening I notice some little ringed plovers scurrying at the waters' edge, then witness a yellow-legged gull swallowing one of these lovely little creatures.....

Have you seen this bird? 

Wanted on suspicion of murder

I thought these were the Canary Islands?  Where's the canaries?  Where's Humph Davy when you need a light?

I do see one or two sweet little yellow birds in cages, trilling for their supper, but the avian choice here seems to be the Macaw, which is weird because they are natives of South America and the Caribbean.....

But nonetheless they appear as the motif in many a carnaval costume.....

Maybe they are just Big Canaries?  Canarios Grandes?

Or perhaps it's because they look a bit like the bird of paradise flower, which thrives here (though it comes from South Africa).....

I begin to wonder whether anything is indigenous here?  The volcanic origin of these islands is all too plain to see: black beaches, calderas and monoliths like the Roque Nublo, which is an eroded plug sticking up at 1803 metres above sea level.

Though there are remains of human habitation going back two and a half thousand years, most people here are considerably younger than that.....

I did once have a brief relationship with a girl from the Canaries - her name was Aceseyle, or something similar (she told me her family preferred African names to Spanish) - and I look for her up and down the Paseo de las Canteras, but she's not there....

Perhaps this is her?  Dancing with her beau in the Parque Doramas?

Nah....  She probably looks like a walnut now (if she's still alive....)

Anyway, Great Canaries....  

Vegueta, the old quarter of Las Palmas, has some character, even though it creeps up the hills in ever increasing piles of concrete.....

And we visit the Casa-Museo de Colón, a fine Canarian house where Christopher Columbus may have stopped over on his way to America.....  His bed is unmade (perhaps he'll be back?)....

We swim a little.  The sea is still chilly, but the Hotel pool is 'quite nice'....

We marvel at the expensive (though impressive) Poema del Mar Aquarium by the harbour, close by the parking lot where the most enormous cruise ships discharge their restless thousands.....

We visit villages, like the vertiginous Artenara, beautiful Tejeda, where we dine with a picture of Hemingway and friends on the wall, and delicately restored Agüimes, where the tapas are excellent....

But the restaurants of Las Palmas are disappointing - overpriced and in some cases, really not very good (an example being how a number of different staff, without clean hands, gloves or other prophylactics, scatter dried oregano mindlessly over any and every pizza that they may be tasked to deliver to innocent clients)....

A stroll along the front at sundown is pleasant, with the palms rustling in the breeze.  

You could almost be abroad.....  On holiday, even....

But, despite the charms, it will take more than one of Miguel Portillo's puce and lavender outfits to entice me back to these cinder and concrete islands.  

But then, WTF?  My role as a Grumpy Old Git needs to be practised and there's plenty of other places to explore.....

I return to the idea of the canary, the pretty little bird that takes its name from the islands (and not the other way round - the islands were named after dogs - Cani....)  

And I return to play the wonderful music of Mina, an Italian Diva (who last performed in public in August 1978).  One of her finest recordings (in my opinion) is the double album Canarino Mannaro, issued in 1994, whose title combines the idea of a Canary with that of a Werewolf.

From the local press

Have you seen this person?
Wanted for the murder of a dream

And, without wanting to put anyone off a holiday in the sun, that combination kinda chimes with my recent experience of these islands.....  

Sweet warbles and agonising howls.....


Night night.....

Anzi ti chiedo scusa
Mi son sfogato un po'
Ma sai che al posto mio
Io restero'