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The Sea

I left my soul there,

Down by the sea

I lost control here

Living free

A cool breeze flows but mind the wasp

Some get stung it's worth the cost

I'd love to stay

The city calls me home

More hassles fuss and lies on the phone

- Morcheeba

Next Day’s End

It was still light out surprisingly as the days fall away too quickly, by 5pm it is like midnight out. I happened upon Lorraine. I think I could be her some days, sitting next to her begging on a street corner so we could buy a packet of cigarettes together and split the ends or hitch up my skirt as she does to buy myself something nice. I think of what my father would say and my mother’s gaze. Lorraine was anxious today she kept telling me she had to go change her coins into something more manageable. I imagine it is less embarrassing at the tobacconist or grocer to arrive splaying dirty coins on to the countertop.

That afternoon was different a gentleman was passing and recognised old Lorraine. He came and sat in between us on the bench. Purposefully he didn't say his name and he wasn't letting me in on it either. He was well dressed - a navy blue blazer-white shirt and leather boating shoes and a ginger moustache. I was confused by his thick heavy pants. I was staring at them and he replied that he “slept outside these days.”  It was autumn so he came corrected adding that he had made in the passing days, possibly weeks, months or even years “the decision to live in his clothes.” I liked him, most would call him a drongo but I prefer his sort to the big noting men that litter this town.

He told us that he had to go into the pub and would be back. Lorraine was off like a bride’s nightie to go buy something with other people’s small offerings or better put the brass razoos strangers toss her way. The gentleman returned he hesitated in front of me. I told him Lorraine would be back shortly. He then sat down beside me. I asked him what he had bought; he told me it was a bottle of, “Southern Comfort.” Noting it was the real thing from those Yanks in Mississippi, showing me the label as proof. It read, “None Genuine but Mine” and the other label stating cautiously, “Two per customer. No Gentleman would ask for more.” I wondered if he had already downed the first earlier that day.

It then occurred to me it how apt and all so fitting living in the city of the south under these southern crossed skies and it was that other word as well that hovered and resonated in the air, 'comfort'. It seemed to spell it all out for me – my mood. I guess it is what we all look for is comfort. To fill that void inside us that we no longer fill with the love of god as my father would have said. This man had found his, in his glass bottle filled up with amber liqueur like spirits. The effect always temporary perhaps like returning to his mother’s breast nuzzling into the warm and golden licks or nestling into Lorraine’s hefty warm chest. I wish I could do that give into some vice completely with disregard for all other things. It was obvious the gentleman had a gambling problem and was on the drink as well, an old story in this town. I imagine black jack not that low class two-up or slide-of-hand-card-tricks from the hustlers around the railways.

He took the hip flask sized glass bottle out of the paper bag wrapping and slowly unscrewed the lid. He then mentioned if he drank it all in one he would be on the ground-floored. He snarled a laugh. He had enough social graces to say, “Cheers,” to me and made a gesture with the bottle up towards the sky. I said, “Santé,” he then usurped me one better and said, “Salute.” I was intrigued. Where he had found or won the money to not drink the plonk served up by the publicans or to run around with Lorraine. He placed the bottle to his mouth, his southern comfort, his comfort, like searching for his dearly departed mother’s glass nipple or his first lover’s warm embrace or Lorraine’s arms around him. The comforting rise and fall of her motherly breasts the warmth between her legs, underneath her brown stockings and her sturdy frame.

He titled his head back slightly he didn’t gulp or swallow; the amber bourboneque-syrup just flowed down directly, trickling down his throat, splashing into his empty stomach. He had mastered this motion, this ritual, his throat didn't hesitate either it was waiting for this moment. Lorraine returned in that moment and they both shot through like the Bronte tram leaving me on the bench alone.

I knew what they thought of me, another pom with my toffy nosed accent from the mother land that held no sway with either of them. I have heard others like them call me a Chardonnay socialist in their waking world of drinking, standing on corners chasing brass razoos trying to battle the hunger and relentless flames of thirst that screamed, quietened only with liquor, cigarettes and somebody to lie down beside, no closer, to feel another’s heart beating against their bare chest. To feel life race through them to make it to the next day’s end.

Of The Inky Blues Fading Into the Inky Blacks

I had taken him to one of my secret places. I walked the few wide steps to the welcoming water and took off my leather white sandalled heels. I dipped my feet into the dark blue harbour the water warm and cool in the night air.

I gestured for him to do the same he was reluctant as he had laces to untie. I told him to sit on the top step next to the water’s edge. I sat one step down placing my heels on the step below me. He played an Arabic song by a woman named Narwhal. Telling me it was a sad love song. He sang the first line in Arabic before she began.

We spoke of Arabic words. I was trying to pronounce his Middle Eastern sounds with my lyrical French ear. The words summoned by breadth and the placement of my tongue in ways unfamiliar to me. He would repeat the word several times. I looked up at him focusing in on his mouth, studying his lips and the position of his tongue and the movement of his mouth drawing breath to emit a word.

I felt his lips grow shy with my gaze upon him, a slight smile of awkwardness and a light crushing laugh. The ends of words almost silent to me pronounced and produced with a breadth. The music played on, the sounds of the oud, the Lebanese woman singing. My body facing towards him I turned my face away from him to the side and upward to regard the Harbour Bridge and beyond it across to the Opera House. The night sky lit up by these two profound monuments, then across to Luna Park shining like a diamond in the night, the moon the only witness to our scene. The water rippled towards the small jetty like ink spilling towards us, the wash and fall of what I imagined was the inky blues.

That dark cobalt blue ink that rose from the mixture of  ancient wine and iron salt over a fire to make the final bluish-black wash. The black India ink rising from the other lamp shade black of the skyline and that diamond winked out of the darkness with the effigy of Old King Cole’s face, with his ghostly mouth broad and wide smiling at us across the water. The sky raised above it turning into the inky blacks, the rise and fall of the water’s edge splashing like champagne then drawing back, slinking away, withdrawing and sinking into the night.

My eyes fixed on the scene. My face in profile towards him I felt his gaze upon me. My mother would have caught his gaze in moment such as this and fixed her eyes upon him not lowering her eyes piercing the moment. I felt myself shy and timid in such a candid moment. I then felt myself a woman the gaze I long for from a man. I lowered my eyes and passing my fingers across my soft mouth and lips to awaken a feeling I keep hidden. I felt my lips blossoming making the moment linger. I turned slowly to look at the moon behind him playing witness to the scene. I turned my face towards him. Charmed by his big eyes, his slim soft lines, the way he crosses his legs. He is delicate like picking saffron from the mauve coloured plant yet I am simmering with a slow colour that permeates from the stem of the crocus flower.

Or is it rose water with slivers of almonds, crushed pistachio and amber glass caramel. Is it a metal oil burner swinging or musk incense, powdered with jasmine petals splayed with dates and oranges peppered with cloves?

I revealed one of the few charms of this city to this young man and as we walked back making our way under the bridge, the train rattled above reassuringly. The views of the night making me feel him far from home far from Riyadh and the warm air of a summer’s night in Sydney. Of the inky blues fading into the inky blacks the gentle stroke of the water’s edge caressing the jetty in the midnight hour. The night lit up, illuminated by the sails of the Opera House and the sturdy dark iron bridge, tinted pastel, the romantic tones and hues of love. We parted ways at the railway station. I greeted him kissing him twice, once on each side of his face. I am charmed.

A moment later turning to see him, he had disappeared into the street, into the night. He is my Arab June, my muse never to be Henry. I decided to never see him alone again. I am ten years his senior and I do not wish to deflower him in the many Western ways I know how. I want to enclose him in his innocence, preserving him, prolonging his youthful charm. He has given me back my tenderness, my gentle swerve. How a new soul can remake an older soul and now knowing that there are many types of love. I am certain of this now.

Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal up in here!

Salut Roxanne,

I am waiting for my man to come home to me and prove once again that he loves me. I get tired of waiting for him and the jazz radio plays in the background. I really understand why Billy Holiday drank. PUTAIN! Last night I drank like I was your age and smoked Les Gauloises. I smell like a beggar this morning. He did not arrive at my apartment door yet again. This man, who I came here to see, is loves low down dirty shame. Forever my big secret, I was so angry last night I wanted to slam the kitchen drawer on my hand put out the cigarettes I smoked on my naked skin. However to cowardly to act it all out. My bowl of coffee could not be big enough this morning.

I am attempting a self portrait. I have not attempted such a drawing since my last year of art school so about a decade ago. It is strange to look at yourself in a mirror studying it and mapping out what you see on the paper, my hand still steady from a decade of neglect, rarely putting pencil to paper. The last portrait I attempted a charcoal drawing, my hair a high rise of matted twisting curls I titled it Medusa's Child, like I drew the serpentines beastly shadows within letting it all spill out to draw out the beast's sorrow like drawing blood out with a charcoal syringe bloodletting pulling out the sorrow inside me out of me onto the paper rescuing me from a dark winter all those year ago.

I am a little mixed up at the moment and I don’t know what to do. It is like Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal up in here. Poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine laboured to phrase a psychical map of this city's terrain of beauty and the human condition of life lived here. Those who have lived here before have passed through this soul-plagued landscape. A city weighed down heavily by its past trapped inside its memory which is beauty's affliction much like myself.

I find solace in the knowledge that the likes of Apollinaire chose to avail his heart and I hope mine as well to the art of living in a poetic manner. Living it out those days of yesterday here and now however wounded by this beautiful city still indentured to it its hypnotic timelessness.

Aujourd'hui je marches à Paris ensanglantées. Today I walk through Paris blood drenched was Apollinaire describing me whilst I am exploring the undercurrent of this landlocked 19^th century stone facade landscape. I feel wild like I am in a wilderness of solitude when left alone. All my friends all my past lovers abandoning this city, all departed only one remains here, my lover the only one that carries on here.

FUCK! PUTAIN! All my karma comes back to me. I am enjoying the hangover headache. C’est une douleur que je m’invite heureusement. Things are always clearer in the morning. The sun rose in the same place and will set tonight in the same place and mon cœur il continue de se battre sans l’amour ou avec, il n’y a pas de différence. So my drunken rampage has passed and I am alright. FUCKING PARIS! Please have a drink or ten for me at the Paper Plane exhibition hopefully my work is hanging next to your sexy Dresden outpourings.

I had a thought last night that you would appreciate. Why I am so vocal during the most intimate act maybe similar to your reason as well. It is because I need words even though they are not written down or typed out there needs to be some sort of exclamation point expressed made through sounds of words, screams, moans and a well placed slap acting as a full stop.

Je t’embrasse

Fayroze

Au Coin (On the Corner)

Chère Spéciale K,

Çà va ? So I am typing from the beautiful city of beige, Paris. My heart has not moved one step away from that man, mon amour. I think the suffragettes did not fight for me to behave like some 1950’s house wife. When Driss arrives back from work to my apartment it is cocktail hour! He cooks better that me. He made a seafood spaghetti with a white wine that I could cradle like a baby with scents of passion fruit, then for dessert a raspberry tartelette with pistachio and la créma,magnifique! It is not such a pretty picture as the jolie couple on your postcard. It is like Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal ici. He left after dinner and did not return as promised to keep all the hours in my bed.

He said he would be back at the apartment at 9pm sharp so I waited au coin so all of the 18^th arrondissement could see me waiting instead of going stir crazy in the apartment. I stood there outside in the street. It began to rain, it grew cold and I waited for hours outside on a cold night in Paris for the promises of man not kept. I grew weary the shop keeper Mohammad at the epicerie arabe au coin asked me who I was waiting for I answered, "ma mec." I knew he would only be coming by train so I waited in full view of the stairs to the Metro Lamarck-Caulaincourt on the corner, pacing, wandering in circles going nowhere and he did not come.

This man reminds me of my father. When I was sixteen, my mother had come back from working abroad in Saudi. She had been home three months and my father at the dinner table said one evening when he caught the train home that evening that he did not want to return, to our home ever again. A year later my parents were divorced during my Higher School Certificate exams. In France if a man says he is going out to buy a packet of cigarettes (cherche une cigarette) there is a chance he may not return.

My fella aint no good, it makes me want to throw every glass crashing against the wall, break ever mirror. I started smoking again. Oh fuck! Fuck this! He is no good to me. I am like Billy Holiday that loves this man. Oh god damb it! I am drunk again and the Rosé has turned warm.

Cold empty bed. Nobody will unmake the sheets tonight. I will not undress tonight.

Losing my mind he is the type who could save me. Knowing its safer dreaming in my empty bed. Swinging between this misery and joy. I am feeling quite insane because I am mad about that boy.

When I was a little girl the devil called my name. I saw his face in a corner behind my bedroom door. He called my name he had the face of my father who do you think your fooling he said sparingly my mother loved me she rocked me like a rock. I want this man to love me like a rock.

Oh dear fayroze.

Carte Postale Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal up in here!

To :                  Mademoiselle Roxanne Gröebelle

Madama Nao

Cara Nao,

I am typing from Paris. The happy couple on the front of your vintage postcard are picture perfect in their embrace. With the black and white photo and hand coloured turquoise for her dress and her fuchsia pink lips ready to be kissed. I rarely speak of my romantic life to many as it hurts too much. I think you would understand... I came here to find a certain man which I have travelled here to see. Be it 20,000km away or 20 minutes on foot is too far. I feel like when I am here I wait. I get so tired of sleeping alone and for someone to wake up next to in an embrace. To go down to the corner to bring back that Parisian delight a pain au chocolat and make me a cup of coffee. It is not as cold as you would think. L’amour est dur toujours. I am not sure if I have the courage to pack up and make the move to Melbourne. I am in a café called de la Poste. I love the name. No one bothers me in Montmartre when I type outside au terrasse but towards Barbes - Château Rouge I get looks, complaints from other customers, people laugh and point, cars and motorcycles beeping and tooting their horns at me, god damn! Incroyable! However amongst the bobos of Montmartre I do not lift an eyebrow. I have to start to accept I behave like one of them the bourgeoise bohemian. I dream of la vie bohème like they do which no longer exists, those days are long gone. Amy Whinehouse is playing in the background of the café. A Parisian punk tries to talk politics with me over her espresso while we politely light each other cigarettes how fitting rattling on about the end of days and anarchist hopes of days to come. I think what time does to my soul and how distance cripples my spirit.

  

= fay =

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

Cara Andréa

Cara Andréa,

On 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 have seen the same thing in Morocco last year except with a post box. Paris these days is beginning to resemble Morocco and beyond.

Spiralling into the depths of poverty where everyday life seems more chaotic. Chaos seemingly out of place in a more programmed and organised city not to mention the well heeled mobs that flood the streets. Is any city deserving of austere times some sort of punishment played out by capitalism and a guilty partnering world. Are the people of Paris to be, as in the Damnés of Fanon’s oddly translated title, The Wretched of the Earth, finding that they are also worthy of condemnation and already suffering it.

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 daily ablution.

More peculiarly 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 skyrocketed 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

Lettre à Mon Amant

Ooh mon cher Driss ooh,

 Comment vas-tu ? Je suis à Paris et c’est la même l’histoire comme à Sydney. Alors you have passed by my apartment late last night after I arrived, sadly I was apparently dead asleep and did not hear you knock. You left a piece of paper under my door that you would come by this morning I will see which hour that will be. I have stayed awake in these early hours.

J'attends, I wait, I heard everyone in the building waking up and leaving for work. J'attends, I wait, the birds started to sing there morning song. I saw from the window a man on a bicycle on his way to work. There was another man smoking a cigarette walking towards the office. The police sirens are starting to whirl; their noise starts to fill the air. The sound of the traffic starting up then to starting to halt and the sound of their horns as the circulation congests in the peak hour traffic. I turn on the jazz radio to drown out the time, to drown out the sounds of a city waking up.

I do not know if I am asleep or awake. J'attends, I wait for you as always. J'attends, I wait caught in a dream of waiting. I walk the wooden floor boards towards the window. At the window I take a sip of coffee and I have the hope that I will see you in the street crossing the street to my apartment. J'attends, I wait and the wind groans and I do not see you in the street.

Si tu pouvais juste aimais-moi. I want to believe that tu m’aimes.

It’s funny how love can become a cold rainy day like an autumn day in Paris much like today. Dit-moi que ce n’est pas vrai. My tears will dry before you are here. Je t’aime mais si tu pouvais trouver la sensibilité de juste aimais-moi. You are French, Parisien you do not understand the distance like an Australienne like me. I am not certain that you understand the secret wishes in my heart. You are my low down dirty shame... You are my heart ache made better, comforted in the bed. Come toward me...Come to be against of me...Come to my door...Come to be by my side... Come to be opposite me... Come to be in front of me... Come to be on top of me. Kiss me! Give me a slap as I demand! Baisse-moi! Put mouth on my mouth. Pull my hair. Choke me.

The sky moves slowly moving further away edging closer to eternity. I am here in Paris and you cannot make a plan to be by my beside a plan nowhere near my heart. Somewhere in Paris tonight you were sleeping but not by my side in this 6th floor apartment with a lift that start on floor 0½ come to the top where you will find me on the 5½ floor where you will find the door to my apartment where you will find me.

F.

Bonnie & Clyde

To the other half of my heartbeat,

Once like lovers on the run in Morocco I am your Bonnie, be my Clyde. Just as she had sympathy for the devil so do I.

I no longer have a long way to travel to get to you. Lost in a crowd of six million people you came to find me in my hotel room ghetto-suite-styling down by the water. Never knowing before what a Sunday could be in this weekday room.

You don’t have to pick the lock I gave you the keys to the city and I am free for you to lock me up. I can hear my house key jangling on the metal chain in your pocket all the time knowingly telling me love has my address.

I think you know my mother gave me something that gives me good swerve. You know I have it as you ran to me and I put it all together makes me everything a good man needs.

We run this town you beside me bombing down to The Spot with my red lipstick kiss tattooed on the nape of your neck beaming above your white shirt collar, for all to see. With my lipstick matching gleaming up on the high street that you are mine and my navy blue linen dress swinging hitched into the elastic on my black panties like a modern-gypsy –outlaws. Linked arm in arm my tattooed garter belt showing on my upper right thigh acting as a holster for the tattooed grey metallic gun glinting underneath.

We can play stick'em up at the Night Owl index fingers blazing. Sneaking into The Verona cinema to hide out after running out on the bill from Bar Millazo - Claudio hollering - shaking his fists. I do all this as I love you my man and I am a liar if I say I won’t. I would be a liar if I said I don’t.

Sleepwalking through the days without you and walking where the mood takes us together through the nights to my secret places in this city. We can dive into the harbor on a hot night I know just the spot where the water is deep. We can sun bake at midnight in this concrete paradise - this hot bitumen city made of brick. There is always my apartment to wash this place off your face it sticks to you like glue gets under your finger nails with the summer grit. Just as I have pieces of you stuck to me so I will never let you leave you are my slave now.

Singing in the street with you whistling on my arm I know I don’t have to put my dreams to sleep and my heart aint got no obituary no more.

XXXX

F.

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