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

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

If The Sea Were Whisky

To you,

Your surname means youthful, tender, smooth and in French pronounced souplé and all for me crémeuse. As you talk to a crowd you have an awkward stammer and stutter, slightly punctuating your speech .The way in which you eject the words and bring them forth, like you are tripping over your own tongue not able to utter the words whole... I find it compelling, un attirance. As if it were how you would speak whilst in the carnal act finding it hard to form structured speech, hesitating... lost under the weight of your own pleasure. As though when I hear you speak to a crowded room you make love to me alone with your words. I imagine that as you are stammering and stumbling trying to spit out the words as if it were the same sound you would emit as you frisson.

For all the talk and protest and politenesses I care for I just sit around the circle listening to the socialist vitriolic sermon. However all I am aware of is where you are orientated in the room and I cross my legs facing away from you so no one is aware all the time the speaker spitting on capitalisms effigy. I just want something animal from you that has nothing to do with the political economic structures of this decaying landscapes of modern civilisation or a nakedness of the mind just pure unfettered desire ultimately a nakedness of the soul.

I need a drink and if the sea were whisky I would swim to the bottom and never come up.

Your awkward spectacles and thick pink lips – angular nose – your obvious choice of shoes. I still recall the first time I saw you dressed in black – black blazer – suit pants – black leather shoes – a white shirt – looking refined however these days you have done away with such formalities which does not make me swerve. As now underneath your purposefully modest apparel I do not want to simply peek – I want to see you at first upright only wearing your thick rimmed specs, I would only be wearing a cigarette lying on the bed and then we would be wearing each others' sweat, clothing ourselves in each others' naked skin our bodies knotted and knitted together as woven cloth of skin and hair and you would be stammering loud in my ear for me alone your sole audience.

XXXX

Anon

My Siren Song

Cara Andréa,

I am lost at sea here! No shipwrecked! A refugee! I lost my passport! PUTAIN!

I dream of the Indian summer in Firenze, my café doppio made for me by a real paysano, served to me in a white ceramic coffee cup. Not set adrift here in an apartment with a view of the Eifel Tower. However the apartment is comfortable but there are no tea cups so I took my coffee in a Bonne Maman jam jar this morning. When will I leave? Do I want to leave this place? I am lolling here entranced in the limbo of no-man’s-land. Presently I have no country, no papers no proof of my identity, as if I were a clandestine so for now I call this home.

Here in this city there are apartment buildings that have ornate bare-chested bronze and stone statues of beautiful larger than life size women, avec le monde au balcon. Sirens with their chiselled cloth swirling around them, engulfing the balconies as if they were holding up the building somehow like Atlas himself, the Titan. I sense them as if they watch over me as I pass by, as though these beauties were the sirens that hang like the figure head on the prow of ships in this land locked beige wilderness. They peer at me from across the street at this dizzying height of the 7^th floor. The sirens navigating this stone man-built terrain and let the buildings that they cling to rest anchored in this safe harbour. They give their blessings not from the Roman god of the sea Neptune but from Pluto, the god of earth or is it better put Hades, my unknown hell. Singing their siren song to me perhaps in words that I cannot hear a silent choir, I understand this as I cannot sing aloud so when I write it is me singing aloud on the page, this is my songbook, my silent chorus.

There is the most adored ornate old fashioned mirrored, wire and timber elevator to let me down from my perch high up here. It is cold here in Paris and I watched the hail bounce off the old lightening rod yesterday. It glows at night as if it were my lighthouse that has guided me to here, where I have set anchor for now... Oh memory bliss. I have suffered all the nightmares of being left destitute to be close to this man un Arabe en plus! So I stay no longer enamoured...

...with this city and with him, I am no longer certain. I slept alone last night. A man told me he would not leave me alone, not even for a second; he would ‘donnez les yeux,’ in effect give his eyes for a woman like me. Putain! Bientôt, je vais chercher une cigarette. However he is all things to me we are both creatures of the wind. The difference being that I blow towards him and he is set free, wild like the winds in between the sails of a ship. Or is all that billows and blows the indifferent winds of fate.

Perhaps I am just blowing smoke from French cigarettes that seem so very strong. I take a long deep draw. I sip my Bonne Maman coffee and I look out over the grey metal rooftops, dormer windows and endless terracotta chimneys that stretch out seemingly forever to form a distinctly Parisian skyline.

I think and wonder about these old vertical cities of people who dream on top of one another. In these austere times what happens to all those dreams, those hopes and prayers. Do they go unanswered? Left to float into the ether like the smoke from the stem of my cigarette, left to gather like the grey storm clouds above and fall back down onto the tin roofs as rain, the sky mourning with them solemnly.

It is Friday so I lit some candles as if it were Shabbat. The candles glow with the same coloured light as the old girl. I had a thought that she is one big candlestick for the people of this city and for me, it lights up a path in the sky, to let me navigate my way back home, my own land locked Robins & Crusoe tale. I want to live in a landscape, a wild manmade terrain where my stalwart heart is set free not left to lament over it as if love had turned cold like the weather on a winter's day.

It is raining now and the old lady is cloaked in heavy fog. I would prefer to think she is hidden behind a cloud or a haze of my cigarette smoke. It is heady, the smell of the Les Gauloises. When I exhale as I walk in the street it is my smokescreen, as I sit at cafés it is my camouflage.  As though when I breathe smoke there is a fire inside me that comes out when I exhale that no rain, no pompier (fireman) could put out. I am the keeper of my own flame it smoulders and burns inside me. The candles which I lit are burning low so I put on the radio, TSF Jazz and they burn higher - brighter.

The sun shows its elusive face for the first time today heureusement. I look out over the square and I think to Jacques Prévert who had his parc Montsouris and I have the Square de Carpeaux. As I look down on the heads of the tall proud slender poplar trees that are still clinging on to their green leaves, it does not look like an autumn day with the gleaming gold between the trees, a new day reborn on a winter’s afternoon.

Dear Andréa à la proxima.

F.

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. 

In Search of the Prols in a Hipster Wasteland

A city’s skyline forged on banalities a true representation of what runs this town. As Marx put it, "money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold. All other values are defeated - honour, integrity, truth, justice, loyalty, even blood kin. Nothing remains but filthy lucre."

I went out late night moonlight rolling out before me in search of derive in search of some of life’s truths I came up trumps. This city has spent decades trying to erase the face of the poor and now even the characters, the true individuals have been erased designed out pushed so far out of sight all that is left is a wasteland of hipsters. Who the fuck wants these pro-conformist–pseudo-counter-culture-profiteers that are or esteem to be the moneyed contradiction that they are. 

Truth be told I was out in search of the prols. I believe the term is called going slumming. How could I forget this town has no recognisable venue for them to inhabit all there endroits have been razed to the ground, renovated beyond recognition or turned into upmarket apartments. I question if these places still exist perhaps only in memories glimpsed in my youth.

All in bed at 9 or glued to the TV screen still tut tut tut off to bed in time to make the daily commute. 

Fuck this postcard town. Fuck everyone in it who is sleepwalking through this city languishing in its ever present.

I felt defeated last night the only signs of life were the police siren whirling giving me a head ache. I understood why men in this city glass, king hit and kick each other, it is to feel alive. To see blood surge and bring the shock of life into vivid being. I am now assured this city  has no heart beat anymore just the ring of the till. The prols are sleeping. This city is expensive. The only light on in my street was from the bedroom of the video game addict that lives above my apartment and his occasional, "fuck you!" yelled at his television screen.

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.

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.