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

Postcard from Renaud

Salut Fayroze,

how are you?
I wanted to know if you had a good time in Morocco with your lover?

...and if you are still in Paris? Why did you come back? For a holiday? To see your lover?

Where I am I think often of you.... Do you want to know why?

A few streets from my apartment, there is a mosquée....and five times per day, they bother me singing in their microphone (I don't know what they say, and I don't want to know) ...and guess what...they start at 5am something like that....

That makes me think of our hard polémique conversations at home..... but that makes me think of you.....

Enjoy your time

Renaud the Horrible

Gaële

 

Translation Postcard

Chère Ziwen,

Ma chéré amie...Tu vas bien? Je suis à Paris. I should not be here... I should be in Italy, however as you know I am loves fool. I am so mixed up over here mixed up over him. When I am with him nothing else matters like lovers on the run Bonnie and Clyde. Paris is as edgy as ever and just as gritty. I could say it is rather clean and care free where I am staying however a few hundred metres in the wrong direction and it is the ghetto. There is a real air of poverty and ever impending disaster. The Metro Château Rouge a notorious endroit as my friend Gaële the sommelier was telling me.

We instantly connected it was his day off from working at the famous Café de Flore still dressed well in a shirt and vest, me in my coat-dress and stockings. He received me well instantly warming to me and offering me his American cigarettes at Le Royale Custine brasserie. He told me something I found shocking that when he catches the Metro at Château-Rouge in the morning he sees women selling themselves for €30- si grave and the men that pay are as he described, "le porc". In a Capitalist society money turns everything around me and as it has done so since time immemorial it turns sex into a cheap commodity. Sex of course just another tradeable service. To be reduced to resort to that is frightening just for filthy lucre. There are plenty of homeless and clochards I pass on street corners older men that could not make the rent anymore.

I do not like a world where we are all trying to maximise our bank balance, we are all Capitalists and everything else comes after paying the rent. I hate the thought that money is always a factor in most decisions we make. At this moment in time I am grateful to be an Australienne in the midst of a long deep recession that is putting a spectre over this world, the spectre that is haunting Europe. Where is ‘la gloire de l’empire’ now! As my friend Renaud put it, ‘la suicide collectif de une civilisation.’ The tourists do not see it they just smile at the view of the Eifel Tower. Massive upheaval is brewing in the air.

FAYROZE

What We Speak Becomes the House We Live In

Dear Andréa, 

I have long wondered why I cannot write a poem of this landscape, of the interior of my homeland and I realised it is because I am no countries flag bearer, a symbol of ownership, of conquered kingdom come. I am a stranger in this landscape like many. There is an unanswered question of sovereignty that looms on each street corner, hanging on each street name.

The people of this land had no flags, no gun powder and no uniform or brass regalia. They had their language born of the landscape, the trees, the wood and the wind, attuned to this ancient land. They had their song, their dance, their dreaming. What restorative gesture can undo what is tantamount to cultural genocide? Once those who came from the shipyards and prisons of England struggled to survive in this hostile foreign savage landscape and now the tables have turned their songs silent.

Those who set anchor conquered with their words, laid claim to the untruth of an uninhabited landscape. Although generations later born and bred they are immigrants themselves like me, they are strangers set in this landscape. They have built a nation state on their acts formed on dispossession. There are a few growing swollen off the red dust. They have created this seemingly endless nadascape of autosuburban realities, a skyline forged on banalities. They have given foreign names to the ears of this dispossessed landscape. Collectively sing the song “que será, sera.”

The Persian mystic poet Hafiz wrote, 'What we speak becomes the house we live in'. Seemingly a young sunburnt country. Yet this land is old, it is ancient but dressed in their clothes not of animal skin and painted ochre but of bitumen, concrete and red brick.

The language belongs to the land born of the people by the sea, the Gadigal. This land has not heard its elders speak the language of the Eora Nation for so long. The Gadigal people and their words born of the earth, the rocks and the water, the country and lands of the Boree, Garungal, Car-rang-gel, Cooroowal, Wulworrá-jeung, Turranburra, Woggan-ma-gule, Cookaroo, Yarrandabby Ku-bung hárrá, Kubungarra. Let the voices of the poetry of this dispossessed people's land ring out over the tiled pitched red rooftops. Let them reclaim this lands song, this lands poetry. Let it echo over the tree tops in harmony with the bird song, lost so long ago.

Yours Faithfully

Fayroze

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.