grrrr

I have been hiding here for months. Out of habit, out of fear, out of poverty. Paris marginalizes me…I don’t have the means to open her up to taste her treasures. I see them, they wink, but when day comes to day I am underdressed, undergroomed and unprepared for facing the city. I don’t have the energy or the clothes, the money, or the makeup. Yesterday, marching to the end of the Tour de France I accidentally stepped on the pointed shoes of a pinched faced Parisian boy. I said “Pardon” and turned to him. He threw his hands up turned his head toward and away from me, seemingly seething with insult ready for me to get into it with him.
“This is what we do, we French, we fight.” There is certainly a long lineage of scrappy French…Napoleon being a mighty one. A well –dressed ego. It is true, the French do it well…they dress well, they intellectualize well, they party with refinement. Aperitifs, entrees, red wine, dancing, clean up. Their ritualized way of partying being dressing living looking. I want it and can’t take it on..Too rich for my blood. Shit! Each day I attempt being at peace with my place in the purgatory of surviving… That I can buy apples and a coffee and spend the day writing reading or walking or rediscovering Paris, because that only costs time and that is currency I’ve got. So I have her treasures. The time that she gives me. There is nothing that is urgent to do...penniless I am free to wander the city, see her casually. Then pushed into the subway, with the manufactured perfume smell that bursts in the underground , through the grates the purposeful perfume that doesn’t camouflage the urine, battery acid smell the subway’s homelessness. Each day hides under the next and I sleep and relive working for the beautiful people in their penthouses. When you step out you are in the throng of it, never alone. And I wanted this, chose it, but it isn’t worth it, according to my estimation. The stressful tightness where you can’t sigh and breathe and see the delights of space. But the tightness here..you can’t hide out anywhere really .There is the anonymity of the city because you are one of many, because my lack of funds I can wander the city casually. Admire her curves and write about them. Write about how she makes men mad. More often than not I see men whimpering on steps. Drinking in squares. Yelling at no one. The madness spreads. She demands madness, tightness, ritual..heavy sleep.