Begins with the end: back to Paris from China

When i get out of the train , the sky is grey and the lion statue seems as lost as I am, forgotten there half asleep and so annoyed to be in the middle of the square, nor on one side nor  the other.

It is exceptionally luminous to be 7am in the morning.

I remember where I put my key but I totally forgot the digicode to enter the building.

Then after a long number of trials I manage to find my way in.

It seems one of those gray mornings when I begged my grandma and my mom not to go to school.

I check that the dolan rubab, the one from Mohammad Emin in Kashgar; the one I picked among all those other fancier ones in his Kashgar store , the simplest one and the more harmonious in his body curves, the one that only Mohammed Emin’s father can play, is all in one piece and I put it to rest in front of my bed. Under its watch I can fall asleep safely and build fat dreams, just for a little before resuming my life or getting to think how to resume my life. I suddenly wake and cannot remember where I am, I know I live here, but where is here? This is something that happens to me more and more, I cannot just recall what am I doing in Paris…how did I drift here??? A coffee will fill the air with home scent.

I shower and get down to go to work. 

The courtyard is bizarrely empty; is it the rain that chased everybody inside or the town has been deserted after an atomic bomb? I cross the front door and a shy sunlight is greeting me. The trees , still burgeoning with a lot of impatience one month ago , are now dressed up in an abundance of leaves. The branches and the sun draw for a second a contorted checkerboard on the pavement . The small kid from the other side of the street slowly plays inside it ; his racket is larger than his back and his knees are wobbly. I think I know his elder brother, he has given up the tennis racket and has a guitar now. He is probably moving on to another type of sport. 

I suddenly see all the other people around me. The middle age concierge in front that is bringing out the rubbish in a red striped shirt. The blond girl cycling across the streets. The forest of cigarettes held up in the street bar. All is silent and I feel I do not want to talk, eventhough eventually I am in a place where I can talk the language and not make my way out of smiles and looks. Then I suddenly realise, if I talk this all will be real.

I think of the Kim-KI DUk's BinJip, I remember that the shouted word brings the violence, that the silenced is the feathered dream of peace and love. I stick to the silence as long as I can.

But then I pop by my friend and I have to say who I am. Strangely I remembered this digicode, and not mine….

I come to the office. It seems that people in the metro are all startled to see me, I do not know these people, what did I put on, how am I dressed? How can they possibly guess that I have not been in paris these last weeks? Maybe I have a tan from yesterday .

Two blues eyes are singled out inside a dishevelled fringe, I remember that this is Paris, plenty of eyes and sighs ,and  I turn back ... but i cannot tell whether they were there or i had made them up...
I arrive to the office, I realise that slowly all the actions that seemed unknown to me are coming back to life, little by little I relearn the talk of the town, of the metro card , of the office badge and of the different codes to enter worthless and virtual worlds. 

I relearn the way out here by actions. 

I relearn to swipe the card at the market , to choose fruits and products. The boy must just come for the summer stages, he is wide and youngly uncomfortable, he looks and stutters with its pen as a broken heart that cannot avoid to keep still thinking to his love somewhere. In the fleshy eyelids I see the blank forming , that moment when your guard is off and the thoughts come in pouring. To stutter and then come back, the click on the black color and the pen is ready for my signature on the slip. I would like to tell him that I know, that you are bound to lose , if you fight and if you do not , you can only wait. But as tears , as daydreaming are not reusable, not recyclable, not resellable , I do not say anything. I cannot tell him how long this siege will last, maybe forever, maybe just another click on the pen.

All day my mouth has uttered words in this un-native tongue, I find myself hesitating but not for the lack of words, not for forgetfulness, I am just amazed by the fact that I am all of a sudden able to speak french again, I make jokes in it again and it all pours out of my mouth without me commanding it.

so who am I?

glimpes of Naples

Napoli when we were still waking up to the day and to the bright sky ...
old and bright fresh as his inhabitants that can keep this place alive just by their wits notwithstanding the neglect from the governement.

A door bell is like a ticket to another world

Music from traditions bring new life to the square, it is impossible not to feel the feet and the hands tickling to dances, I do not remember this music but I know my body is made of this substance too

 

Naples could look like a Mitteleuropean city in some places

and in spaccanapoli the only feeling is like being at home

In some parts it reminded my of Bombay, yet I would say that Naples has more the sweetness of Calcutta

still a place where you can warm up in the sun , where the streets are one's garden 

la melodie dans les choses

in the dazzling unexpected sun, my head becomes suitably lazy and heavy and rests onto the bus window as outside as lazily  the town seems to move in patterns of music at the rythm of the bus lullaby of stops and starts. The couples and the friends string along the seine's paved banks or stretch out to the newly born warmth , one by one from one bridge to the other. 

In another summer in buenos aires, when the heat was promising endless nights of friends meeting in squares and bars, I remember bumping into the end of the year parents students rehearsal from the town conservatory, when I was looking for a live concert. I stepped out fast, aware of the mistake as soon as I noticed the clusters of dressed up youngsters surrounded by proud families. 

Few seconds later I saw up the theatre emptying his audience into the large street. The small figurines slowly crossed the highway

 

I could not help being tricked into looking at them as notes stringing the patterns of the road , one by one or in small group bringing back the music in the auditorium to the patterns of the city. Playing the city alive.

On and on one by one they all went on the either side small dots playing the notes of the streets , as if wise architects had hidden a secret pentagram in the streets and in those far away building at the end of these reoads so that every human being cannot escape this playing un unknown and unheard music...

Rilke said that one should always be aware of the big music that is animating this world, be ready for your hour of speech in this larger symphony ...

a winter fairy tale city

a glimpse of San'a in a brief stopover ... I entered the city with a half charged photo camera and the large smile of Hussein , the taxi driver and his big smile showing his children .

I was almost tiptoeing into the streets as old as history, as old as the sand: the peace of the town were making me wanting to be silent, not to break this enchanted sleep.  

San'a is a dream dreamt by children and shares its same sweetness , as if the houses were made of gingerbread and coated in sugar. 

On the other hand , this was a true fable and no witch was lurking in the dark, but in the gentleness of the air it was as if you could hear a distant music of children and crickets. Maybe it is the sound of the happiness of the holiday. 

 The city was like a bubble suspended in another world, a world before that our world became a popart object.

The town slowly was waking up and the people gently coming out

I did not remember this girl , i did not remember her as this picture, I remember rather when she burst out laughing and ran away, to friends or family I do not remember either

 

I was hesitating to enter the Mosquee, I was so unexpecting this encounter that i did not even have any shawl to cover and yet the people invited me inside and urged me to take pictures, and even then they did not pose , they were just being who they were , giving the gift of self as generously as their town was letting me wander.

then the pictures ended with the battery of my camera and I cannot tell other than with my words the colours of the bazaar, the laughs and jokes with some merchant and his scared little son, while waiting for the taxi to get unblocked, the break at the tiny square to have lamb and lemon juice, the benevolent looks and smiles.

I just wonder now; in this world in turmoil , that these dear friends are doing fine and are doing better than some years back when we briefly crossed our ways for a short afternoon... I just long to see them again

 "you are a good person" Hussein said when i got out of the taxi , I could not feel more proud of the sincere love I felt for this city , for its people ..."not as much as all of you , I should have said "

arrivando a Capri

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.