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

Let Me Clear My Throat Before I Begin... One Of These Days It Will Be With METH!

Let me clear my throat before I begin... One of these days it will be with meth. I need my Benzedrine fix. I need some sort of medicated-codeine-high-octane-behind-the-counter-legit-smack-kind-a-shit.

And so I found myself walking... It was still light out surprisingly as the days fall away too fast, by 5pm it’s like midnight out. I happened upon Lisa. 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.

Lisa was anxious she kept telling me she had to go change her coins into a note to make it something more manageable. I imagine it is less embarrassing at the tobacconist than to arrive splaying a mountain of dirty silver coins on to the countertop. Furthermore I imagine it would be to buy those cheap and nasty ones. The Chinese cigarettes that feel like you have smoked asbestos filled fibreglass through a plastic straw. 

That afternoon was different an older gentleman was passing by and recognised Lisa. 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. I was confused with what sort of pants he was wearing. Until Lisa posed the question, “why he had blue ski pants on?” He replied that he “slept outside these days.”  It was winter so he came cut-corrected in his ski apparel and added that he had made in the passing days, maybe weeks months or even years “the decision to live in his clothes.” I liked this guy.

He told us that he had to go into the bottle shop and would be back. Lisa then left to go make other peoples small coined offerings into a note. The gentleman returned, I told him Lisa would be back shortly. He sat down next to me. I asked him what he had bought; he told me it was a bottle of, “Southern Comfort.”

It only seemed apt all so fitting living in the city of the South under these southern 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 and he had found his in his glass bottle filled up with amber liqueur like spirits. The effect temporary never permanent always wearing off. Perhaps like returning to his mother’s breast nuzzling into the warm and golden licks. I wish I could do that give into something completely with disregard for all other things. I have behaved like this on occasion and believe in addiction there is a relinquishing of living in prescribed modern terms but it is a love affair or liaison with nihilism that ends in fatalism giving into oblivion but I argue that we all must die someday.

I always imagined I would meet my end by being unceremoniously hit by a car. One night in a drunken state I found the location. I recall the lure of the flashing lights of the heavy traffic on the corner of Beauchamp and Oxford Streets. That night on that corner it seemed all so tempting to do such a simple act as to put one foot in front of the other and step into the heavy moving metal.

It was obvious the gentleman had a gambling problem and was on the drink as well. I imagine black jack not the misery of the poker machines with their flashing lights and buzz-cock-high-pitched- ringing-in-your-ears-giving-you-a-headache. He took the large 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 paralytic 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 and one better and said, "Saluté." 

He placed the bottle to his mouth, his southern comfort, his mother’s glass nipple, his comfort. He titled his head back slightly he didn’t gulp or swallow the amber bourboneque-syrup just flowed down trickling down his throat. He had mastered this motion, this ritual, his throat didn't hesitate either it was waiting for this moment.

I felt I was a party to his misdeeds and impending paralysis. I couldn't stop myself I had to say something I said “woo-oh.” He stopped and looked at me. I looked at the bottle he had drunk about one-eighth.

I felt relieved in that moment that Lisa had returned. They now both felt awkward around me and left together. Lisa hadn't made enough money for a $5 note. I couldn't follow them they were trying to get away from me for fucks sake. I knew all too well that I was not low brow enough to beg with them too well dressed with my hair still wet hair from the shower.

At least they could see till the bottom of the bottle or until they made enough coins to make that five dollar note in their hand and they would have company. Unlike me they both knew exactly where they were going. I knew as well, the corner of High Street and Belmore Road just outside the Night Owl. It was obvious that I wasn't invited. Evidently too much like a tourist in their waking world.

I keep coming back to this point that I write in circles but always return to the fact that writing from the heart will inevitably be messy, anarchic, chaotic and in disarray however in trying to make sense of it all when the smoke clears I must continue to write but not like a woman - like a motherfucker. 

Killing Time

I think to myself I could do with another cigarette.

I thought I may be able to drink my way out of this mess. If I were in Paris I could mourn communally at a brasserie with those that piccole tout les soirs killing time and in that atmosphere all is excused with a drink in my hand the wine a substance delicate and subtle.

However here I am left to drink alone in this weekday room never knowing a Sunday. It is more dramatic to sip alone from une coupe de champagne the word much more flat in English a champagne saucer which I occasionally spill as I sway. The radio playing in the background another dreary jazz songs plays with only the blue notes. I dance alone my mind somewhere else nearing oblivion, a cigarette in my hand the smoke making coils in the air. It is with wine drunk slowly and alone that everything is excused and everything is forgotten. Tonight my mind is high in the air up above floating with the smoke from the stem of my cigarette.

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.