nazca lines in a totally different cultural context.

{eiffel tower at dusk}

{carrousel across from the eiffel tower}

I'm not exactly sure what happened to November, but apparently just over a month ago I was wandering around Paris. It still seems a bit surreal. But I do have photographs to prove it, pages in my notebook with writing in it (see below) ... & also little tins of tea in my cupboard that you just can't get here...

Mp3 goodness for your downloading enjoyment: Ne Me Quitte Pas -- Regina Spektor (Songs)
It's a sweet little song on a lovely album -- "I love Pa-ris in the rain!"-- though a little difficult to obtain. It is at CDBaby, though.

* * *

nazca lines, paris.

(oct. 29/2006)

i)

tonight i see paris from the sky.

pushed up against small bubbles of frosted window i see the swirling arms of its galaxies, illuminated spirals of streets reaching out to hold trees & farmhouses in long glowing tendrils, letting the light spill into the darkness: nous existons, nous sommes ici

it’s not that one light gleaming in the darkness, rather in small cobblestone breaths between lampposts there is a flickering absence of light. a girl on the steps of sacre coeur, eyes darting birds scattering the fog like black stars, a man by the metro melting in his fading suit leaving the pool of his tattered hat

& a woman with the duct-taped antique accordion who serenades us for change,
those bellows pushing everything together pulling everything apart –

ii)

dans belle paris, la ville de lumière the night before i left
i was told some were lighting candles to remember

those boys – run down by police, electrocuted in a city power station – those boys, who said they were unseen, that no one noticed, no one knows –

& in the east they were burning buses in anger, as everything swells in them
though the seine has never been so serene –

& now their quick firelight licks ruins, twists down the labyrinths past the filigree eiffel lighthouse searching far out beyond suburbia, lights streaming out into the darkness

but no one answers this bright silence, buses in flames to make
their own break in the dark –

iii)

i’m flying over paris,

watching its electric nazca lines intersect the night as it sleeps sprawling long spidery limbs over that scintillant l’île de france –

& they’re lighting candles, burning buses just to illuminate their presence so they won’t disappear, because everyone is afraid of that dark –

& on the metro the woman with the duct-taped antique accordion serenades us for change, those bellows pushing us together

& pulling us apart –