Allez à la découverte de Nao

Translation Letter Nao

            Allez-Allez-Allons-y-!-Allez-Allez-Allez-Allez-Vous-Allez-Nous-Allons-On-y-va  Allez-!

Allez à la découverte de Nao

Allez-Nao,

Comment vas-tu ? Mon amie, merci pour ton message. Alors je ne suis pas en Italie ! Je t’explique quand je vais revenir à Sydney. I found the ‘allez Nao’ in Le Parisienne a newspaper similar to the Sydney Telegraph. I found it in a seedy bar I frequent now whilst in Paris in effect I stole it. GiGi the proprietor of the establishment he named Le Belgerac on rue Saint Lazare close to the Metro St-Georges. There is a wooden tambourine hanging on the wooden liquor cabinetry. GiGi told me that it a gift from the Libertine himself Peter Dougherty another one of his regular clientele. It adds to the idea of just how lowlife the brasserie really is. I like GiGi even when he slips his hand around my waist or tries for a wet coquine kiss on the cheek. The other barkeep and regulars call him ‘le requin,’ the shark. Today he asked me where my typewriter was.

The weather today has returned to the days that are the joys of summer. That soft rose coloured light that gives a great ambiance especially on a Sunday, sipping on a Rosé from Provence with lipstick the colour of Bourgogne glossy on my lips. I actually felt loved today. I’ve stopped living in a Fellini film it is more of a Woody Allen classic with a Parisian backdrop. It’s all an abstraction anyway, a live-action film version of reality. I felt set adrift when I left Sydney and set sail for Europe, then shipwrecked in France now a return to being more at ease.

Is one person enough, all you need? Where ever you may be that can give you safe harbour to love you in their way?

There is the local market square near La Marie of the 18éme there is a fleuriste that only sells roses in all colours. It is beautiful rows upon rows of vases filled with roses in abundance €15- for ten long stemmed objects of beauty and the perfume that radiates from that shop is exquisite. La boucherie when I buy my cured meats for a platter of charcuterie or thick pieces of entrecôte has whole rabbits hanging in a row intact, all the fur on them right down to Peter Rabbits fluffy little tail. I find this shocking yet strangely adorable at the same time. The poissonnerie or fish monger in the same square was selling fish heads. I saw a sword fish head with the whole sword pointing out at me. I find these delightful far removed from the plastic packaging of the supermarkets back home! Et Alors Moi et Driss have a lot of private jokes we share, one of the charms of having a lover.

I would like to stay so I will remain here longer than originally planned. Like all places on a hot sun drenched day you feel like you spirit is lifted out of the monotonous grey. That the sun holds up your heart greets you. It kisses you on both sides of your face and at sunset on your forehead to say bonsoir or bonne nuit and hopefully à demain! It will be high summer in Sydney when I return and I can see the sea again. I feel à l’aise here now. I do not wish to call this place home but to come home to this man Driss.

fayRo3e.

Arrive Singing at Les Folies Bergère

Chère Kellie La Merveille, 

I stopped singing the dirty Delta blues. I hope that I have found some resolution between the sheets. I am tired of chasing dreams. I want to put a spell on him because he is mine, didn't Nina once soulfully moan all that jazz? He is mine for now. I am his always. I stopped stabbing the keys, just a gentle tap, a léger tinkle.

The lady on your postcard holds a letter close to her heart, the caption reads, ‘La Lettre Brûlée. Elle est brûlée. Ah c’était fou!’ Translated it says, ‘The Burnt Letter.’ She is burned. Oh it’s madness! I hope you have not burnt all my raving mad postcards.

I can hear the joyous laughter, cackling and youthful uplifting singing of girls leaving Les Folies Bergère théâtre.

This man of mine seems to be always singing Gainsbourg and his song and tune he hums is, ‘Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais’ (I just came to tell you that I am leaving). Alone I sing like Gainsbourg and Boris Vain's song, ‘Je Bois,’ (I Drink). Like the blithering-blind-drunk young man from the night before. It took him a half hour to navigate my street hardly 500 metres in length. In his drunken stupor people turned on their lights from all floors of these eight storey Haussmannien apartment buildings. Asking him to be quiet, as if that could contain him, I guess it was nearing midnight. I felt sorry for his girl, who could not quieten him or hasten him. I laughed to myself as he sang in his slurred French vocal stylings.

Perhaps I am singing more the likes of darling Ella (Fitzgerald), her and me together, ‘Sippin’ Black Coffee’. Love’s hand me down brew, and from one o’clock to four all we do is talk to the shadows then pour. Never knowing a Sunday in this weekday room.

Without your voice, I suppose nothing is possible, and you are bound nowhere. The lesson from the imbibed gentleman from the night before and his noted appearance on my street, late night on Rue de la Boule Rouge, the only sound to make is to arrive singing.

We must all sing if just for ourselves, to ourselves as we all hold a song in our heart of hearts. Let it be it the low down blues or a hypnotic schizoid scatting number to hopefully sing the world back into vivid being. A choir of solemn songs creating a soundscape that gives the universe a soul that has a rhythm, that beats like an animal skin drum in line with our own heartbeat.

This city can show itself to be beautiful in the sun but oh what the sunlight masks. However I am just a bleeding-open-wound-paper-cut in this postcard town, I rang this city it answered the telephone and called me here. Although it can be mean spirited and however how cruel it is, I am still keen.

I draw open the curtains leaving them wide apart on the fifth floor so all of the ninth arrondissement can see that I have company tonight; so all of Opéra and the people of Les Grandes Boulevards know that I do not sleep alone tonight.

Love,

Fayroze.