Thursday, 22 August 2013

Lettre Sous La Pluie (Under the Rain)


Cher amie Roxy Gröebelle,

You would be happy to know that I am smoking again Le Gauloises Brunes Blanc avec filtre. Sans filtre would mean I would be typing from inside gaol! I should bring you back a pack we can go to Sweeney’s rooftop bar on the corner of Druit & Clarence Streets in the dark hole of central Sydney’s armpit and light them up on my return. Not sure when that will be...

I feel shipwrecked here in Paris...

I have stopped getting stinking drunk with the proliterati in the 18iéme arrondisment bumbing cigarettes off hapless-hopeless men out on the prowl. My drunken rampages came to an abrupt end when a new acquaintance spotted me passing his local drinking hole the brasserie Le Voltigeur. They boast being a bistro à vins. My casual acquaintance invited me inside for a drink. Then he and one of his enemies started fighting for some reason and I was the cause. I would like to say I started a war that night like the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra however I left before I spilt my drink or le bégard spilt onto the street.

The brasserie is located near rue Clignancourt the very limit of Montmartre and near the Metro Château Rouge where Barbes well and truly begins, it is not a place a reputable women would stroll alone at night however I have no reputation to keep me from trawling the streets after midnight.

I am always walking after midnight in the moonlight searching for a muse, searching for Orion maybe he is crying for me as lonesome as I can be out in the starlight. I find myself always walking after midnight searching and waiting for the night winds to whisper to me a Patsy Cline song.

I have been here a few weeks and do not know what I am doing here. I came to Paris to see ma mec! Oh how my French professor Alexis would rue the day for me using this peasant form of the French language. Alexis as all lecturers is far removed from the real world and day to day nuances of real French life and language stifled in the rarefied air that comes with her position. Oh ma mec! Oh how he has a world wind of troubles, no in fact a tornado of worries. That is life I guess.

I came here not to warm my heart with his touch but set it ablaze. I am burnt out like the row of motorcycles in front of the Préfecture de Police further down my street. I want life to blaze through my blood. Set this iron lung town on fire with my spirit. I want everyone to see my passion soaring high like an aeroplane that draws words in the clear blue sky.

In French you say, ‘sous la pluie’ which translated literally means under the rain. My heart which I wish to reignite is ‘sous la pluie.’ However ma mec, gave me the most exquisite umbrella. It is made of wood, metal and a dusty maroon fabric and inside there is a little sweet pattern which only I can see, a little subtle detail. Maybe this kind offering is to protect my big red shining heart from la pluie.

Here the grand sky is open and I shelter my heart against it with my unfolded umbrella a threadbare protective second skin against the broad heaving sky.

When I am with him nothing else matters. After we have made love I am in a rapture of contentment.

It is 3am where the fuck is my lover and more importantly where is my drink! Fatigue des mensonges. That long black cloud coming down.
The candles I lit while we had dinner together are snuffed out...
He made dinner for the two of us seafood spaghetti again which we drank with a Chablis.

He shucked the oysters! A true French man can shuck an oyster with any improvised sharp implement to reveal the raw meaty jelly within. Much like a true Australian man will come to the aid of any woman in distress, caught out without a bottle opener to open her beer or cider with anything at hand, a set of car keys, a ledge or visceral with his teeth a true measure of an Australian man as we know it.

En tous cas, so far from home in this charming Haussmannien apartment, the clock is loud especially in the early AM all the sounds resonate. I wish it was me calling out in the throws and thrusts not the tap of the typewriter or eternal clock. Someone said on the radio to either fuck the system or fuck somebody. I would rather get fucked.


fayroze

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