A paris summer potpourri: from august 2009

Some pieces of memory triggered by a friend looking for Paris pictures: one summer I was walking around with my almost new camera to carve paths in the town and reading Paris music through lens. 

Going around I found in a courtyard pegs left alone by fresh sheets , still shining colours in the silent courtyard.

A market in Charonne, shoulders and wooden ships to conjure up other horizons hidden in the concrete buildings of an almost suburb.

Intoxicating sun in Menilmontant; the plunge down is like to dive in the town, everything is possible up here.

Getting caught in the neighborhood party, children and grown ups dancing; they all probably share the same level of happiness in different ways of showing.

Everybody has his own way to tango and being together is always as fun.

Abdul, a violinist from Ethiopia: the white hair seemed to infuse experience and wisdom around him, in the pavement up to the trees. He touched his heart when he spoke of his country, when he said he was a violinist. His lips easily opened up in a smile and told me to go away with a couple of book from a large pile in front of him: I tried to say I had already too many in my house, but he did not want to hear and added "to give is good for the heart, and the best thing to give is knowledge"

a lady caught up in a moment of relax

In place Saint Marthe , the children were hypnotised from the cabaret-like show going on.

the evening falls gently and you get trapped for that moment in twilight caught in your world: be it waiting somebody, be it your thoughts or your memories or maybe somebody on the phone inviting you in his or her world.

A glimpse from Saint Marthe square, the children outside the restaurant keep running up and down the street; it is late in the night, it must be summer !

Last one is the best one of all: going home hands in hands, the rare privilege of knowing where home is and having somebody to bring or being brought by.

the day after saint patrick's day

after the big party, one comes back to the family and family is the sea and every sea...so to spend the sunny post saint patrick day I went to the suburbs to enjoy the fresh air 

I did not find the people coming home from sunday mass with a tray of sweets as it could have been in the place i come from

rather the common point was the sweet slowness of the movements of the people approaching the sea and the grace of the empty streets

sleepwalking at sea, the air gets fresh and one hopes to find a hot cup of coffee, warmth and reconforting in this moment of exposedness to the wind and the silence

.....some say we all are islands, drifting apart 

maybe we all are islands, romantically heading for the large sea

i would yet add that islands can make earth tremble and shake when they want to get closer

One Saint Patrick goes

"Kick off too soon , or stick around too late" went a verse from Okkervil River , it seemed slipped out of my  sighs.. a" stick around too late" case scenario is what I have done, purposedly let me confess audience, when I went to Dublin last year for St Patrick's Day.

In fact I managed to arrive after the parade right in the middle of the drinking phase to enjoy streets reeking with beer and echoing with jokes.

I make here a second confession, it is that I secretely and discretly enjoy and taste the moments in between , the before partying expectation and excitation and the afterparty when make up has gone off, where everybody is too drunk with beer or tiredness to remember his or her lines..there I try to catch the most beautiful humanity I have ever known, those of the men looking themselves in their mirror and hesitating whether to recognise the image in face... off balance

So it begins with this weird and surreal flashlight from the night to move into the day after St Patrick

 The party is general, still some shops go on as any other day of the year

I enjoy this take, I shot it the day after where I managed to get lost in close to suburbs , in the pub at 2pm these guys were drinking and they did not miss to make friends with me, when I entered to look for a toilet. Of course all of them could speak the basics italian to charm a girl, old tricks I suppose for dubliners. Of course they all made perfect courtship .

I like this shot also because I think it comes from a more gentleman like time, it could have been taken by Chatwin in any obscure off the road pub.

The small figures for wedding cakes is one of the saddest picture I have ever taken . I cannot resist to put it here, because in this walk through Dublin it reminded me of some of my thoughts about one of my greatest scare ever; to be trapped in a life that may look sweet but it is frozen forever in a cage.

Still walking through the suburbs , looking for something that is not something usually looked for...

At some point, on the day after St Patricks, along the river the music filled the air, it was this girl dispensing happiness in the siesta time.

When I went to Dublin last year, it was not a glimpse of St Patrick but also the afterdays of one very difficult time that is now haunting almost every place in Europe, the terrible pitiless and not too clear as-a-matter-of-fact like economic crisis

Whether the gloomy looks exchanged are the consequence of this crisis or of just the universal moment of anguish and loss we all experience I cannot say...

There goes this walk through the Dublin of the after party, I do not know whether what I caught is a scale off the skin of Ireland or just a speck of my image of a tender , traditional warm and tough place. Like everywhere, one travels with itself as its largest baggage.