Champ de Mars. Snow and time weave the beckets of the Eiffel shut with a moist, relieved mist that climbs the structures in a persistent, fatalistic manner, as if to hunt down the still perspiring and warm light that rotates on top. A ball of dancing eyes bustles in the corner of my eye, I move through their curves and trajectories with my hand reached out, gently moving them aside like veils of thought. A snowball flies, then another. The tower surrounded by inches of snow, white arcs crossing each other in mid-air, shouts of children, the ominous, white cloth stifling the sound of their run. The snow moves, it has warmth, it has a heartbeat, it follows and surrounds the feet of the holy spectator who is beyond time, clinging to it, resting his back to it, embracing the warm, beating white cloth that hides the realm of mute earth, the realm of ether where language grows beautiful lianas, in superfluous blossom, sleeping in its evening orchard, the heart of communication honest in its retirement. The park veils itself in silence and white in tortured hope and aspiring to walk hand in hand with time, to chain the two companions to infinite play, to not leave one or the other behind, crying on the shore.
The veil lives, moves, crawls, breathes and perspires to the music of its own frenzied rebellion, its wish to remain, to for once not let what is beautiful disappear. It breathes, you can hear it, it breathes like a bullhorn, it spirals in on itself, it is as tall as the tower, its desperation a fierce weapon against the peripatetic benevolence of time, its will to remain a spear by which it will ascend to touch the shoulders of time. And finally, with cold protruding language and thought, the horizon pining the colored splinters of sunsets, a beautiful battle will smolder for a while and then hush out.
Rue Falguière. Fallen hair form a complete terrain of feeble, glassy pathways and bridges on the back of my coat, as though the minuscule fractures of a mirror leaped out of their respective habitat and decided to lay their intricate networks on the newfound, subtle and soft world of quality fabric. Before cursing and briskly plucking the glassy immigrants from my dark, woven skin, I see the seismic crossing and recrossing and crashing of regards that follow (in a way) logical patterns from the back of my coat to the back of the coat of the other man that crossed their future space in such a self-secure and near cocky manner that the mockery, the hate-sharpened ammunition, the malevolence of their eyes nearly proves itself justified in silently unearthing and sniping out, ''retiring'' the small but still so inexplicably cruel stylistical errors of the world. For resting with your hands around and making a pact with the chaotic forces of the world resembles treason to such extent that further questioning and reflection is deemed unnecessary, if not even suspicious. My back, by this time resembling a peeling Rembrandt more than your everyday work-a-holic black overcoat, gets its fix of hardened and predatory looks that run so silently and tenaciously in the afternoon light, invisible by being so ridiculously visible.
I too would stare and judge for, god forbid, not to miss the chase of mental elimination, the everyday liquidation of the value of another human being being by most standards the most fun a person can do with his/her pants on. But I can't look. I can't see their loopholes, only their seeing mine. All I see is their eyes and the trajectory of their thoughts, leaving behind them quivering, warm scents of burned musk. They surround me, pass me, strike me. But I remain unarmed. All I see is the limitless hunt, the unbounded gaze of others. Some fall down as they keep going, their hunting eye turning on itself, their hatred and fear turning on their once cunning master and separating him from himself. The street pushes onward the dust of their shed skins, pierced armor and revealed lies, regurgitated tumours of leather fortresses too soon frayed, the heart of the wóods embarked upon and soiled. A thousand deaths on the way to the underground. Our unearthed jewels fleeing us in masses by the summit of the afternoon sun.
Mont Saint-Michel. My feet are soaked. In front of them rises the spiral, the snake of God that embraces a fountain of stone, rubble and mould in a fearsome and complete uniform, as an artist gently embraces his clay as a long lost friend. The snake's head is a dome, and from the dome a cross ejects as the forked tongue of a reptile. A hollow reptile hibernating in the rain with it's corridors echoing the immense silence dressed in words. The rain carries big, plate-like drops, almost as if it was raining leaves that passed us with great speed, occasionally hurting us with their razoresque edges. There is no heart, nor sense, in our passing through the tourist ridden streets that fork in insane formations, loops and frankly mazes that no one with their young mind set on eating a crepe and finding a girl could pay attention to with serious rigor. Yet we do, because that's all we do, we do, do repeat what's been done and will repeat the deed that's been done of what's already been done. And we have already been here, with cookie boxes in our hands, in the midst of confused, babelesque forests of faux pas's, striving to be heard and understood, kicking and jolting inside our grinning heads, rushing against our preconceived hatreds and breaking our arms in attempt to make the silence of the other clear to us, clear as liquid that hides a lightning.
An egg of water breaks on my forehead like a bullet that disintegrates in entering the frightening, buzz saw-like hum of the mind. So I poison it from the inside, with beer and other relaxants, it exits with a whimper, it's ribs sharp and protruding, it's skin grey and scabbed, it stumbles and lands on its knees on the ground and smashes it's form into water and runs down the hill along with the sweat of the mountain. I criss-cross the chambers of the hilltop church, my strange, divided appearance always attracting a mince splinter of light from a barred window. A fortress of a mountain, surrounded by waves and waves of cries of belief and surrender, surrender in front of a deity that holds his high frolic in contemptuous solitude. No more is there a light in the eyes of the snake. The lightning forms the paths of our rising elders, the spiritual immigrants, forming the map of our terrain of skies, lingering civilizations that habit the ether. The tide is rising and we are still not full.
