On The 5½ Floor

Cara Andréa,

The front of your postcard there is a very stern looking formally dressed French policeman. The photo was taken in 1929 the year of the stock market crash the policeman stands guard to a broken street lamp, I guess lights out! I saw the same thing in Morocco last year except with a post box. Paris these days seems to resemble Morocco more and more.

Here in Paris, on my street, Rue Marcadet opposite the Préfecture de Police, I have seen the burnt out remains of cars. Further away on rue Clignancourt which is the very limit of Montmartre, opposite La Commiserate de Police I saw the brazened carcases’ of motorcycles. The people held responsible call themselves Les Révolutionnaires, quite a handsome title. They dream of anarchy and the destruction of this old Republique.

I recall what Sébastien from the brasserie La Triomphe told me, after I had flown into a rage about the despicable and loathsome nature of policeman. He calmly stated without the police there would be no law and order and without order there is chaos and with chaos there would be no Republique! Alors Vive La Republique, the catch cry of the French politician to this day.

The apartment I am staying in is very comfortable except for the shower which has a large window that isn’t frosted. I am high up here on the 6^th floor and the first time I took a shower I found it shocking. However now I have l’habitude that half of Paris will see my naked breasts each and every morning as I take my ablution.

There is a lift that starts on floor O½ and I get off the lift on the 5½ floor that opens on the stairwell. Like living life in a John Malcolvich film. I watched a film of his, Thé au Sahara of course being here in Paris with French doublage. The film set in the French colonialist period in Morocco, easily recreated as nothing much has changed there since that period.

Here in Paris things have changed it is starting to feel more like Morocco. Some streets still look ravishing, like they are dipped in gold, demonstrations of ‘la gloire de l’empire’ and shout, ‘Viva La République! Viva La France!’ However now is the époque of austerity when cities, when societies become too complex with the self perpetuating greed only offering extreme lifestyles of rich and poor. It is the end the sounding out of the death knell of the middle class. I think of our hometown of Sydney, each city has its own problems and there is still the looming volcanic bubble with all its paper millionaires waiting dormant ready to explode like Pompeii. I know you cannot wait for the day of reckoning to come. When there are rows of office buildings and shop fronts vacant, a ghost town of its former self. I recall you saying that it would be spectacular.

The cost of living here in Paris has increased however the minimum wage has not increased with it in a decade, so people spend less, so businesses close, so people lose their jobs, so it continues, so it turns, and so it goes round ‘n round.

Il n’y a rien dans la caisse ici! The coffers are empty. La Misère is pulsating in the streets. I become quite nervous sometimes especially carrying my old 1920’s black leather vintage swing clutch, which I cling to like an old lady with both hands around the strap. There is a nervous energy, an ambiance dans la rue. I sense it is the dark days of Les Misérables once again.

I fear that people are getting desperate and may do something they themselves never thought they were capable of before. Everyone is hustling trying to make a dollar out of 50 centimes.

I see images that remind me of the Great Depression, the ‘Hoovervilles’ of New York and so I think of today and tomorrow. Paris’ wedding cake façades crumbling with its sour rotting innards holds me for these few weeks I am here maybe more.

In front of the Metro Barbes-Rochechoart men had laid down white sheets trying to sell piles of old clothes in the rain. I guess the rich just stay cocooned in the other life which is St Germaine. Or the assured escape hatch of the well to do. Europe and here in France they play out the end of empires. It does not feel like chaos more like the halls of Château Rouge – Barbes are all around.

You told me once the leader, the once great Chairman Mao had said, ‘There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is excellent’. I wonder if this whole circus is unravelling. Oh how I hope to lead a life of freedom not to just think of it or dream about it but to live it all out not just the limits this society imposes.

I want to lead a life of my choosing not to have a mortgage imprisoned by debt a slave to the office, chained to my desk for the next few decades. Cut down in the prime of my adult life, left to turn into the hunchback of town planning as my individual liberty is circumscribed by debt. I want to lead a more fulfilling life. I do not want to work to feed the bottomless pit of cravings attending to our society’s circumscribed edict of counterfeit desires.

Has the time of la vie de bohème passed? I still search for it. I try to live it out here however it is the life of the bourgeoise bohémien (bobos) now. Oh how I detest those Parisien bobos! Has Paris just become a carnival of attractions of the past of la vie de bohème. I still hope it is not all truly over, hoping for the heyday to return, reminiscing about an époque I never lived through, now long gone.

Oh dear me,

Fayroze