Tag Archives: Paris

Third Eye

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears,” Gertrude Stein famously said, in a tumult of the senses.  She was echoing Picasso, and the motif echoes loudly – as a rose is a rose is … Continue reading

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Lightness Lost and Found

Lightness of spirit! I had been chasing my joie de vivre, wondering where it could be hiding. I had been on the front lines of culture wars, in the trenches, laboring to talk to all sides. I was looking for … Continue reading

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A Spectacle and Nothing Strange

Rain in Paris, great whorls of it spinning, falling as knotted string, strung pearls, bird’s nests,gray hair, wire barbed or not, cat gut, old paint brushes,tumbleweeds.  Clean your hairbrush, bad curtainsin strips, cloud shreds, albumen, cauldrons of bouillon, cassette ribbons, phlegm and … Continue reading

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How to Break the Ice in Paris

People suffer and throw themselves into the Seine. The buildings have scars which grow lighter like our skins. Shop women roll their cat eyes jealously,hearing we’re American.   But what provocateurs they’d be, their loving presentation of breastset like cake batter inside a bodice,the body … Continue reading

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Bastille to Puritan Village: Strange Magic

Each time, after countless trips, still strange magic.Hours ago, we were eating croissants in the sun, looking at the soft green column of the Bastille, the genie de la Liberté, golden wings aloft, still leaping.Today I wake up to crisp carpeting … Continue reading

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Baudelaire Walks Pandemic Paris

Walking through Paris in the (imagined) aftermath of a pandemic, I had the uncanny feelings of déjà vu, that things had disappeared and been replaced, leaving behind a residue of scented melancholy.  The gap between then and now ignited a … Continue reading

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Passover, Notre-Dame and the Book Thing

The idea that Notre-Dame might be reduced to a hole in the ground, a collection of rubble terrified me.  When I lived in Paris, or before that, or after, the Cathedral lodged itself deeply in my being. A friend mentioned … Continue reading

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The Intimate Nature of Radical Times

Oh, the curse from the Chinese: “May he live in interesting times.” We’re living those interesting, precarious times: we are in the middle of structures, nations, assumptions breaking apart. London is calling, Paris, Brazil, US falling.  We’re deep inside that … Continue reading

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To France: The Gift of Not Knowing

  For Noël, the French received a gift of unknowingness. It’s a lucky gift!  Les gilets jaunes have doled out confusion to their compatriots who are singularly sure of themselves, gifted in the pur et dur, the absolute.  Their clipped … Continue reading

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Lèche-Vitrine

“Lèche-vitrine,” in French, literally means to lick windows, and seeing the smart and composed surfaces in Paris, who wouldn’t want to do just that? The phrase refers to window shopping, and it cleverly underlines the magnetism of the object and … Continue reading

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