Boulevardiers
03.23.2011 
Café de Flore. It’s late.
We sit and plan our Book of Dreams.
In our carnet de croquis[1], we’ll draw or collage our wish
on the right hand page, and when it comes true, note it on the left.
When I say “Soupe a l’oignon,…non, un omelette fromage[2],”
the Asian waiter, a professional, gives me the look:
Don’t I know what I want?
Richard orders soupe a l’oignon, a décafé crème.
Then we get down to the business of the night: watching people go by.
A flock of fast-talking British girls in short spangly skirts.
Short stolid couples stroll arm in arm. An elderly gent
with a blond beauty, a young Gena Rowlands.
Quick-walking tall and thin young Frenchmen.
A dark-haired couple and son— maybe Israeli—take the next table.
The single smoking blonde to the other side leaves. Hooray!—
we can breathe. Two French guys sit down and talk of Chet Baker
while do do do wopping sounds to one another.
The waiter brings us food and drink. We eat and drink.
I tear my place mat into the size of a carnet page.
A car parked in front of us tries to leave
but is blocked by the double-parker.
Richard says, “There’s a note on the windshield.”
“Let’s bring it to his attention,” I say.
Richard runs over and hands the man the note. It’s a ticket.
Everyone watches from their sidewalk seats. The blocked driver
is out of his car and playing to the crowd. Two men lounge
beside his car, smoking. One looks like Alain Delon with that boyish
French face, Levi’s and dark blue shirt. He knows where to stand
to be observed. Everyone conjectures. Where could the driver be?
A young woman dashes out of the Café, long tangled hair and jeans,
slips into the car laughing, pulls up, waits till the blocked driver leaves
and expertly backs in. The two young men chat her up.
Pretty and breezy, she laughs and disappears. Everyone approves.
She’s good looking, and handled this with style.
The air musician next to me says, “Tout est bien, qui finit bien.”
We get up to leave, the drama over.
“How do you say in French,
‘All’s well that ends well?'” Richard asks.
“That’s just what the guy next to us said!”
The next morning I read in Baudelaire:
“Elle croit, elle sait, cette vierge inféconde
Et pourtant nécessaire á la marche du monde,
Que la beauté du corps est une sublime don
Qui de toute infamie arrache le pardon.”
She believes, she knows, this infertile virgin,
—Who still is necessary to the world’s parade—
That beauty of the body is a gift sublime
Which can extort forgiveness for the basest crime.[3]
Charles Baudelaire
[1] sketchbook
[2] onion soup…no, a cheese omelette
[3] (113 * ALLÉGORIE) “The Flowers of Evil & Paris Spleen; Poems by Charles Baudelaire,” translated by William H. Crosby, with a few tweaks by K.K.
Reader Comments (18)
Angeles isn't so bad. The double parking outcome might have been a
little different. There would be some shouting, some car smashing, a gun,
a shooting.............
Kaaren and I will probably have different responses. Of course, she is beautiful; I am not. But I have a camera to hide behind.
But I think your last sentence is the correct reading. There must be some school the beautiful go to to learn that trick.
No matter which, I've always been in awe of beauty. One of our dearly loved mentors, David St. John, used to quote the French poet Paul Valery as saying, "The definition of beauty is easy; it is what leads to desperation."
But there may also be a kind of desperation that COMES WITH being beautiful; it seems almost like a fairytale gift, and there must be a part that wants to be Holdfast if you feel your own sense of beauty leaving you. And we know the dragon Holdfast was the very essence of desperation.
So perhaps Valery's quote can be read a number of different ways. I know he had great cheekbones.
--Richard
Did we mention that NOT DRIVING, EVER is among Richard's favorite five reasons for living here?
Then there's his top ten reasons for NOT WANTING to live in Utah: 3.) the Official State Gun.
Many thanks for saying hello, and for the trenchant observations about the cultural differences.
There's also Au Pied De Cochon, in the Marais.
Those are the only two I managed to find in umpteen years of haphazard search...
I remember, too, being pardoned for (almost) any infamy. It seemed to go on for years, until it stopped. I read it in the eyes of a stranger whose shoulder I jostled, a driver's angry look as I crossed against the light.
Anyway, it was over.
I can walk anywhere now, and simply observe (just as I always longed to do). And the sweetness of that outranks the bitter. And the further I fall back into the chorus, the more I'm being forced to be kind.
another page you turn in your book of dreams
i am transported to a boulevard
i have never been
to a city I do not know
the photo of
cafe de flore is my visit:
"When the evening is spread out against the sky"
I think of "Breathless" and the women of Godard
"In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo."
And Chet Baker and his "Happy Valentine"
Drunk on the blood red red wine of Baudelaire.
Drunk with the neon blue in his eyes.
Drunk with your words and images.
Drunk with how you both made the Paris dream
- so real
- so delightful
- "the body is a gift sublime."
- the body is the work
a bientot
until then
with love jon
Mais oui! Tout est bien, qui finit bien! :)
love,
dawna
Merci for the comment on the photos. As I see the difference between the shots in the RAW format on my screen, and what I must do to compress them as JPEGs for the Web, so they load quickly and make your reading/viewing experience pleasant, I see the difference between day and night. It's good to know the images still hold up even after the amount of compression and detail loss required.
It is such fun to learn as we go.
--Richard
Fear not! The French still regard beauty as ageless. As I write this, Catherine Deneuve stares regally out from the covers of this week's magazines in Paris. She has a new movie opening, and she's only 67.
Here's one of the most beautiful (and gracefully aging) things I've seen so far in Paris. Only a few centuries old: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mythyes/5520003349/in/set-72157625026093234/
Hugs,
--Richard
Good to hear from you. I have an screenplay that incorporates my father's and my search for french onion soup in Paris. Of course, my screenplay sucks (subtle reference to your wonderful book, available at http://willakers.com/ ), but the upshot is, we were told it is a seasonal dish. Now, in a position to test this all year, I'll see.
--Richard
Your photo looks a bit like HDR -- did you use that? I featured Dan Burkholder's work a couple of years ago, and he has pioneered that technique:
http://www.thescreamonline.com/photo/photo7-1/danburkholder/NewOrleans/neworleansgallery.html
Be well,
SB
Thank you, no, I haven't tried any HDR yet, although there are filters that one can apply to give that effect. This was very sharp daytime shot that I ran through a couple of Topaz filters, including their night effect.
I am still unsatisfied with this as a JPEG. You should see it in the TIFF version. Resizing it as a JPEG for the Web (which means it will load faster, thus giving journal readers a better experience visiting here) stripped about ninety percent of the subtlety from it, made it blocky, etc., etc. Any photographers reading this who can offer advice?
Oh, kvetch, kvetch. Is trying to make art just a perfectionist complex? ;-)
Richard
but I know men who find you irresistibly attractive. One illustrious writer told me he gets weak-kneed when you are around. The chorus? I see you as the lead singer in your own rock band.
But as for that phenomenon of being swarmed by male attention when you’re in your teens, 20s, and 30s, attention that has nothing to do with who you are as an individual—it’s a relief when that is over. It made it hard to think. As you say, to observe. How can you clearly observe the world when you’re being swarmed by unwanted male energy?
Becoming kinder? I was too kind when I was younger, which made the generic attention harder to deal with, more distracting. Although when it comes from a man to whom YOU are attracted, what could be more welcome?
A snow globe without snow? What a beautiful image. You must be a writer.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
You would feel entirely at home in this city. I don't know of any other city where people so enjoy the drama on the streets. It's non-stop theater. A delicious 3-D film.
Thank you for the eloquent poem, and for your appreciation.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Thank you for your appreciation. Life is always a braid of the delightful and the difficult, isn't it. We've tried to emphasize the delightful for our friends and family, but maybe we need to include more of the difficult, so no one gets the false impression that all struggle has evaporated from our life. That's what the post "Mama Said There'd be Days Like This" is meant to do, balance the picture.
May the delightful soon outweigh the difficult for you.
Love,
Kaaren and Richard