Days like these
when things don't matter
when you don't matter
when
I only want the smell of rain
of cities & streets
& eyes dreary with sleep
indelible & sublime
swallowed dappled light &
leapt in air, soared
& curled up in love & silk scarves
This is where I belong
in liquid sound
I am going heady with grey
douse me in flowers & sweet tea
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'So, we have now spent three & a half days in Paris. It's been such a long time since I've sat down & written in this journal, which is strange because I have gone to a great many places & many things have happened since the last entry but somehow nothing has warranted the action of picking up a pen to write. But Paris is something else altogether.
Even as I write about it, I feel a smile forming & a strange tingling sensation under my skin - I can't help it. For many years I wondered if I loved Paris truly or simply the idea of it, the conglomeration of blurry images & romantic associations pieced together from books & films but when I finally arrived here two years earlier, I knew that I wasn't wrong at all about my intuitions. I remember being bleary-eyed & restless from the flight, but as we rode into the city late in the night, everything felt new because the landscape unfurled willingly at my feet, glowing & resplendent. The city in the day is magical, but at night & in light rain is when I love Paris the best.
There have been moments before in my life where scenes & moments have stolen my breath & formed images in my mind that stay for a very long time, but Paris two years ago & Paris now are rare instances where the singular scene lengthens into long & beautiful films & last for days. It is a city that resonates deep, within & into my soul. All those beautiful scenes - walking along the love-lock bridge, browsing the tiny bric-a-brac shops by the river Seine, the curly French consonants, smooth like meringue & light as air rising like coffee swirls around us, & yes, all the ugly parts of it too - the dingy backstreets & dusty flea markets, the crummy cafes at St Michel. It is in those places where I can imagine Henry Miller carousing the streets with his ragtag bunch of newspaper men, the Lost Generation writers' bent heads in Sylvia Beach's antiquarian bookstore in the Latin Quarter, & Ezra Pound & Picasso discussing art in Gertrude Stein's house. Paris is all at once a culinary feast, a lovers' destination, an embodiment of art & culture, a sanctuary, a bastion of the finest literature ever written & I love it, I love it all.
Tomorrow, we leave for Stockholm. After days of French pastries & glasses of wine & bookshops, the Swedish capital feels somewhat drab. But I'll be back soon, it's only a matter of time.'
14/11/2013
