Luxembourg Gardens
Again, I sit in Luxembourg Gardens. I fed the pigeons my bread from breakfast. The single green metal chairs lining the path carry such weight in their emptiness. They are holding down the ground. One gets such a sense of presence in them. I love their random fluidity. All of us sitting here are silent. There is a welcome November sun. I’m under a tree next to St. Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. The sky is blue with clouds. Paris whirls around me, the Eiffel Tower is in the distance. I love these metal chairs, strewn about, they have lives of their own, a purpose and a whimsy. We are all together.
Rain, golden leaves and the divinely peculiar arrangements of the green chairs. Yellow mums against the gray sky. The rows of trees, straight then diagonal, always changing perspective. Black benches.
The trees in Luxembourg Gardens are bare and the streets are quiet. The glorious green chairs are mostly empty on this darkening day. Still, grandpas and children are at the park, strolling and playing.
Paris Affair
Paris is coming back to me in my dreams. A mere three weeks and it creeps back in. I was slightly disenchanted this time around. Dealing with the people made it harder, less ethereal. I got caught up in the machinations; the maps, the subway, the outer fringes with their lesser aesthetic. I didn’t fearlessly set out walking, why I don’t know. I let random constructs control my way. I worried about getting lost. I had a bad guide book. I thought I knew more. Everywhere was just busy. I didn’t see the parks and got subsumed in urbanness. Paris kept herself from me. Me who loves her, worships her. She held her secret behind noise and clamor and construction and redundant sights. I felt all the shopkeepers sneering at me. Now here she is taunting me in my dreams once more, beautiful and remembered. The one time I was there for only a day, she revealed her beauty to me everywhere; the park, the church, the government square. I swore I’d come back to find it all again at my leisure. She eluded me completely. I tried desperately to find the Luxembourg Gardens, all that remembered sunlight and green space. I only found mile after mile of concrete and business and crowded cafes and doorways with everyone smoking. I retraced my steps. Why do that in such a large city? I got an overwhelming dose of reality; grit and concrete, steel and noise, the opposite of the sea. And that is probably the problem. Having had too much ocean silence, the land and city were completely disorienting. I couldn’t take this awakened grand expanse of my being and fit it in amidst the clamor. Maybe Paris was jealous. She knew what I’d had, knew I fell in love with another. She kept me at bay, at arm’s length, showed me her bitter side. She hid her beauty and comfort for she knew I’d found the grand and very different arms of another. Another that no matter what Paris ever did, what gorgeous beauty and filigree she offered, would never be the same, never offer what the ocean did. That’s the thing with different lovers. They are different. Not better or worse but different, offering perfection from entirely different angles. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. But Paris is sensitive that way, so accustomed to being the grand dame everyone wants to claim for their own. She’s gotten used to the accolades. And to have one so faithful turn their cheek, I guess that hurt and she hurt me back. It’s not like I didn’t try to share a new adventure with her, but she resisted. I did get something, more than I’m crediting. But I wanted to be swept away again, embraced, led astray. Maybe I carried too many of the sea winds with me. They were in my face and in the tails of my skirt. I was looking for that wide open space in places where it was impossible to find. This was man’s domain and the glory of it was everywhere, but all I could remember was the endless vast blue, so deep and profound. No limits, no human touch, infinite mystery. Paris is a world of concrete dreams, artistic visions, beauty of the human hand, incomparable, but human nonetheless. I brought in the blue-gray ethereal, what all humanity tries to define. I intrinsically carried that knowledge to fair Paree, seemed haughty and unappreciative. She wasn’t going to let me get away with that. She showed me some treasure, without filigree so that maybe my dreams would tempt me back on her terms. Affairs are like that; full of misunderstandings, artifice and show, deep passions and enthusiasms, dancing around the daily whims and whirrings of the heart, and the endless fulminations of a gregarious mind. An affair is putting one’s bright self forward, playing with truths, holding back or giving too much, a dance, a play, a deception, an engagement. By its very nature it is mutable and surprising. Asking for static regularity, structure or reasoned expectation cannot work. One must come in each time new and hope for the best. Give up only when you can’t try anymore. My affair with Paris will never be over.
