Hmmmm . . .

Surely this can't be right. I know she told me to meet her here, but I'm certain this isn't the Rue Madeleine.

Wait! Of course! I sometimes lose sight of how subtle the little scamp can be. She has directed me to seek out the shadows which lie within. The fog of being which is nothingness.

Ho, ho! How truly French!

L'Oiseau

Oh, no, no. Although I can see why you think that. The picture is a little ambiguous in that regard.

No, I’m not the fortunate man kissing the young woman in the photograph below. I’m the fellow in the background. The one wearing the beret. Rather allegorical, don’t you think?
My, I do appear so intense. Of course, it stands to reason. I was madly searching in vain for the woman I love. The bosch were on the move, and I didn’t want us to be separated at such an unsettled time.

There was a fellow . . . um, . . . Ronald, Ronsard, Robin, . . . no! Robert! It was Robert. Robert Doisneau. His last name is easy. It reminds me of “l’oiseau”. After all , it was late in the Spring.

Anyway, he snapped the photograph as I was hurrying by. He stopped me long enough to ask whether or not I would like a copy. Why not? I have so few pictures of myself, and one has to make a living as best one can.

I never did find out exactly what happened to that happy young couple. Doisneau told me that the man was rushing to his posting on the Maginot Line. I’ve heard variously that he either joined the partisans, or that he became a gendarme for the Vichy government, or even that he fled to Algiers, where he opened a café. I’d like to think the first is true, although the Algiers version has a sort of exotic charm. I do not dwell on the second possibility, as I consider the thought rudely discourteous.

Whatever happened to the young woman? Ah, that’s a sad story. Maybe at another time.

Espresso?

Tri-Colors

Such a wondrous thing.

There. Above the boulevard. Ascending through the purple morning haze.

Ah, you can see it so clearly now. A perfect, neon salmon disc. The morning sun.

There is so much in life to bring us awe and wonder. Even the ordinary things are sometimes rendered, well, extraordinary.

My. It almost evokes a paean from me, were I of such a barbarous inclination. Even so, the sight of the morning sun can be such a surprising delight, sometimes. After all, how many billions of years has it been? We really would miss it if some morning it decided to miss its appointed round and go scurrying off to some more appreciative globe. Where heathens stylishly attired in states of deshabille make offerings of willing young virgins Or whatever may be lying about, should virgins be out of vogue.

Oh, there would be such a gnashing and a wailing. To be so forsaken by our old friend. You must admit, it would be a sad thing.

Ah, they’ve kept my table for me. The proprietor here is so kind. Un vrai homme. Coffee, yes. I make it a habit to have no wine before ten. Calories, you know. I have to watch my waistline, you know. Actually, I should be seeing less of it.

Let me see. What hilarity lies within the pages of Le Monde? Where are the theatre pages?

Tsk, tsk. The American militarists are working on a position paper to allow the use of a preemptive nuclear strike. Why do they find it so hard to understand that the world regards the United States as a very dangerous nation? And why are they so insistent in believing that one doesn’t need friends as long as the rest of the world fears them? I would think one would much rather have friends than enemies. After all, friends will come to one’s aid in times of need. Whereas an enemy is just awaiting your moment of need to pounce.

What a sad catastrophe in our old colony! Oh, but here’s something new: “Government Response Sadly Inept”. True. Sad. It makes me a tad uneasy to think of an inept government with the expressed desire to use nuclear weapons first and ask questions later.

“Monsieur Le President, you simply must accept our apologies for the reduction in force (so to speak) of your city and the unfortunate, um, negation of its population of seven million inhabitants. Still, you must bear in mind that there may have been as many as a dozen terrorists among them who may have wished to use some kind of weapon of mass destruction against our nation. Our evidence is airtight and unimpeachable, consisting as it does of the suppositions of a former aide in the Department of Weights and Measures. Unfortunately he happened to be vacationing in your (formerly) wonderful city when it was, um, “set aside”. So we pretty much have to accept his testimony on faith. Again, you must accept our apologies.”

An act of God, they call it. It rather seems that God would choose to act in more benign ways. Odd that we should be thankful to a God that brings us pestilence, famine, and flood. What a puzzlement. Now, health, plenty, and soft warm breezes, those are true acts of God.


What now? Ah! Those jolly students from the university! What injustice has brought them to into the streets this morning, I wonder?

Aux armes! Aux armes, citoyennes! Yes, let the rascals hear the voice of the people! Mount the barricades! Liberte, egalite, fraternite. Vive la revolution! Bravo!

Waiting

I do believe it true that most people spend their lives in wait. Anticipating the time when everything will be "just so". When their lives will be complete. When the waiting is finally over. Unfortunately for most, when that time comes their lives are at an end.

Tsk. Which is why I try to live for the moment, with no more than a passing regard for what is to come. Only enough to cast a nod in the direction of responsibility. Because who can really know what is to come? Oh, we can make an educated guess. We can live our lives as though we are certain they will unfold as we plan. But then come the accidents; the phone calls at odd hours; the prognoses. And suddenly we know things will be quite different than how we’d planned.

Now, we may mourn these changes in circumstance, but we really have no call to feel that life has cheated us. Life offers us no guarantees, and we should be thankful for whatever good fortune comes our way for whatever reason. Karma, cosmic kismet, whatever one calls it. Accept it gladly, and continue to live.

It shames me modestly to admit that like most I, too, live my life in wait. To the casual observer I may appear to be simply lounging carelessly beside the boulevard, watching those with real lives as they hurry from there to there in pursuit of the next thing they're waiting for. But I've been where they're coming from, as well as to where they're going. And it's always the same. Just another place to wait.

So what could Le Boulevardier possibly be waiting for? Silly question. I'm waiting for her.

I'll know her by her walk. A selfless stride. A gliding movement amidst the jostling crowd. I'll raise my eyes from the pages Le Monde. That long, dark hair. Falling to her shoulders; cascading toward the middle of her back.

Can it be she? Her glance will tell me. That steady, knowing gaze above a whisper of smile. It is that smile which tells me that she understands those things which I long desperately to know as well. And that we must speak together softly in hushed tones as lovers do. So that I may also come to understand.

We were that way. Once. I think it must have been the autumn of 1939. Before the unpleasantries began. We became separated, and we haven't been that way since.

So I continue to wait beside the boulevard. It's been so many years. Decades. Still, after all. For how long do most of us wait for our lives to be complete? I only know that on some beautiful day, much as this, I'll see her form. And I'll call her name. She will turn her gaze upon me. And I know my waiting will be at an end. My life will be complete.