more pieces from old paris moments

melting in the air in between two places, we walk swiflty living the life of shadows , living the dream of everyday

Would you like my old disc player? come and have a tea 

outside and inside , still and moving, hot and cool , shadows and light , everything is inside the other

feel like blooming?

just a couple of weeks ago the wind was diminishing me and now i feel like my heart is swelling and my senses catch the newly born smells in the springtime. The clear sky and reassuring rays brings the promise of a summer and ripened fruits, long evenings to pluck and heat to cool off in the nights. I do not know where such fullness and bloom come from, I am just so happy that in these days where I type on a computer, where I trickle my thoughts my body and my soul have not forgotten how to answer eagerly to the call of springtime. So no matter how many i-stuff one can have or play with, still one can not help but respond to nature. So good to know, from the inside.

the man with the pigeons

suddenly the end of summers makes way to the chilly wind: the drastic change is one of the feature of the north and many a times the foreigners get caught out in the street with their sandals and sleeveless shirts, bare arms to the newcome autumn. 

One reason more in addition to the stench from the pigeons that was pushing me away from the man living in the corner between Leroy Merlin and Pompidou. With in the eyes the pictures from one movie in the beaubourg, I would probably have wished to walk past him fast and gain back the metro or even better a warm living room. I just could not move and stayed.

He was chasing away pigeons or was he embracing them ? this misery to my eyes was quite piercing, but I did not want not be human, not to witness his strange dance while the night was falling. The place was coverd in guano , as if being on the street in the first night of autumn were not enough , he had to make his place among the awful fat birds. And then again, he seemed to merge into them into a strange tragic desire to disappear. 

The night fell and everything was getting dark.

Strange as it may be , it was not that cold in the main street where the other tourist were trodding. I still wonder if he is so abandoned, can he become like one of those birds? does he want to ? to forget his humanity ? and what is humanity ? I have never seen him since, I just hope I will still have the courage to watch, to stay there with him, even at distance , the next time I see him caught in the night. 

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.

caps and lids

an old japanese sir

In back light two pieces of very white and wise hair were floating in the afternoon breeze around the oval of wrinkles and elegant japanese eyes. He walks slowly in my direction and I recognize in the twist of his face some sort of pain while he looks down at a plastic bin halfway in the street.

I turn and close my eyes as my heart squeezes sharply inside me as I realise that he is stretching his hand inside the bin. I just grieve at this world we are living in , where an old japanese man has to live his most mature days to fumble in a garbage bag to get by.

As I try to run away from this scene, I stop and decide to catch this and live through with him the despair of this world. The time I take my camera, he has lifted some washing liquid container.

The time I switch it on , I see that he has get rid of the container and walks away gingerly with the red lid in his hand. Amusement makes its way through my surprise : the old man was in fact trying to correct some careless parisian mistake ; the plastic lids have to be recycled elsewhere in this place ! And he took care of the situation even if at his venerable age and in his serious black outfit he had to put his arms through the garbage... A warm relaxation pervades me, I witness a scene of joy and not of catastrophe. I know for sure that the scene I imagined exists somewhere as piercingly painful as I felt it. I know also that people care and we are not lost. There he walks away with the red cap in one hand and the dangling stick in the other.

islands , la defense

Open your coat, leave your head rest in the sunlight, slow down the pace and let the skin warm: summer comes bit by bit , first it hides inside the march buds , but we can guess it is coming...people come out in the sun and take off coats to take up all the sun warmth , to stretch in midday sun with this sense of gentle protection , of starting to feel again the world outside as one stretches in the morning in the bed to discover how wide and supple he can be.

La Defense, this surrealistic place in Paris is opening up to spring, with nonchalance as if not to let her notice we are joining in the party.

This place dedicated to business strangely hosts some condominia at the same time, now and then at midday time  when all the people from the tall skyscrapers are thrown out in the streets you can see some of the inhabitants of the place with some bread or some shopping going home... but sometimes the traces of human and not business life are only left in the balconies.

Yet there are some people playing making the time stretch , the time for the ball to touch the ground canbe as long as a minute and as long as eternity , the eternity of those who live the moment and not need more.

they seem to be people of the sun , they left the heavy cloacks but keep a scarf here and there to leave a last defense against a winter biting back. Somewhere a long ago I read that these days of march are summer in the sun and winter in the shadow, I think it was during my school days and I still remember the immediate feeling of hot on my skin and the cold lurching back. 

Anyway here for the few moments of the lunch break , a piece of south has made its way into these box places which are skyscrapers and meeting room. The people are transformed back to gauchos from another time guessing their chances and approving of the courage of some.. For some seconds I can believe it is the new summer coming.

belleville nights, where the streets are paved with gold ...

The moon looks out of the clouds for a few seconds, a charming and  rare composition i was about to miss just to catch a living room window, arty but much less evocative, if it were not for the two chinese ladies who showed it to me and made me wait for the clouds to let the eerie white ball through. They were very eager to see my shots at the moon , they showed their approval and then in few minutes they were already back to ..ehm ...work. The Belleville boulevard is studded with these ladies that wear discret make up, smile and chat as buddies meeting after having prepared dinner to their husbands, and are wisely covered up in thick coats to stand there for the winter.. Whatever they might do they have a contagious laugh ... and definitely a good eye for the pictures !

Belleville is a place for everything and everything is never at its place here...

These are not from the Boulevard it is much earlier, around 19 when the rue de Belleville is gently turning to calm after the bustling day of commerce.. The rain is very festive here and put on carnival of colours on the damp streets.

The area is full of all sorts of immigrants , very tough life for most of them, either to struggle without permits and official papers or to make a living and find a place to stay.

Yet the colors and the scents of other places nourish the soul; i come here once a week to teach some rudiments of french to some of the migrants, motivated , big heart chinese, egyptians , brasilian , philippines, bangladeshi and tamoul. Most of them they have worked for 10 hours , sometimes at chilly and freezing weather, and still show up to get to learn french . They do not come with papers but a lot of heart and laughs to spare, and i get back with a little of their infectious joy of life 

everytime.

Neil Young used to sing that in Heaven "cupboards are empty but streets are paved with gold", who could deny this tonite in Belleville ??

dissolving squares

walking in any kind of day, moving ourselves from a point to somewhere...
it is funny to wonder when you feel your body so heavy in sunday afternoon what does it make it move... i was scrolling in a dazy paris afternoon through some pictures from seoul and i was playing this game:





the orange lady (?) , i think she is brought around by her eyes , she is pulled by her look through the meanders of markets and alleys , she is surely going to make it home

these two are certainly pulled by something less physical, one portable phone maybe, one is already talking the other one probably is probably reharsing the last call (or maybe just thinking about his fiancée), anyway they seem just to be passing there and their thoughts floating in the air above...

these two , well i cannot see them , i think they have an old story and just bring the memories around .... i think it is the weight of their head that brings them around, to shed the tiny particles of their memories around so they can become less dense , that is how pictures turn to sepia and paper so thin , everything ages, beautifully

well this one is certainly pulled by her sharp , amazing dashing beautiful nails and long fingers, so harmonious and made to cut throgh the summer air that the energy they have waves back to the rest of the body and opens up that captivating smile

run rabbit run , i cannot tell, maybe she is just thinking what am i doing for dinner tonite ???

winter light

there is something peculiar in the winter light;
so short and so precious, this pure dash of blue and white ,
so unerringly bearable by the eye ,

I secretly wish it washes pure all the exertions from past falling,
the hard labour of falling into a sleepy winter night ,
not so easy to do in the end to skin off the summer heat and to wrinkle to winter

and then finally this pure light comes in and like an aseptic lazer it seems to want to
clear off the warm nights under the duvets and the effort of hiding inside them

and a new brisky warmth comes along and makes you glow in these still short days 

where noon looks like a sunset and the light gold trickles everywhere and drips out of the stones and the asphalt 

short blinks of the eyes to stir to the fake heat of this sun , a moment more and it will be spring 

even in the ice of the concrete springs seems to remember her dates