secretfragileskies: September in Paris

Monday, September 6, 2010

September in Paris

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Shakespeare & Co.

"Everyone returns en masse to the city - after a long summer of lazing on the beach, the locals are back, bronzed and ready for action.

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This month Paris regains its literary persona: La rentrée is also la rentrée littéraire and all French publishers release a spate of new books ... There will be 701 titles published (85 first novels) with particular hype around the new Michel Houellebecq, Virginie Despentes, Amélie Nothomb, Olivier Adam and Philippe Claudel books. In celebration of all the literary flurry, listen to FestivalandCo's podcasts now up on our site at www.festivalandco.com and see interviews with the authors chez Roederer. Come and get a copy of Shakespeare and Company's The Paris Magazine, only available at the bookshop - have an initial browse on the new website www.parismagazine.org"

3 comments:

simon said...: I stumble on your blog via Bricolage.

This book shop is an absolute favorite of mine. I just love to sit upstairs.; September 8, 2010 at 4:10 PM
Lydia said...: Darn. I want to go there! At least I have your post to study and enjoy, so thank you for that.; September 12, 2010 at 12:55 AM
Anonymous said...: Paradise; September 16, 2010 at 10:16 AM

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“Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.”

—	Queen-Anne’s-Lace, William Carlos Williams (via sketchofthepast)

Then there was someone else I met,

whose face and voice I can’t forget,

and the memory of her

is like a jail I’m trapped inside,

or maybe she is something I just use

to hold my real life at a distance.

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower

plucked from a river of lava

and held aloft on a tightrope

strung between two scrawny trees

above a canyon

in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it—,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it

everywhere, for years,

while right behind you,

the footprints you are leaving

will look like notes

falling

Damiel;

It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. I'd like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say "Now." Now and now" and no longer "forever" and "for eternity." To sit at an empty place at a card table and be greeted, even by a nod. Every time we participated, it was a pretense. Wrestling with one, allowing a hip to be put out in pretense, catching a fish in pretense, in pretense sitting at tables, drinking and eating in pretense. Having lambs roasted and wine served in the tents out there in the desert, only in pretense. No, I don't have to beget a child or plant a tree but it would be rather nice coming home after a long day to feed the cat, like Philip Marlowe, to have a fever and blackended fingers from the newspaper, to be excited not only by the mind but, at last, by a meal, by the line of a neck by an ear. To lie! Through one's teeth. As you're walking, to feel your bones moving along. At last to guess, instead of always knowing. To be able to say "ah" and "oh" and "hey" instead of "yea" and "amen."

Catherine Hessling, La fille de l’eau, Jean Renoir, 1924.

secretfragileskies

Monday, September 6, 2010

September in Paris

3 comments:

august

an altered space

“The world is airtight
yet held together
by what it does not house,
by the vanished. They are everywhere.”

Dead men make such convenient Heroes

falling

secretfragileskies

Monday, September 6, 2010

September in Paris

3 comments:

august

an altered space

“The world is airtight yet held together by what it does not house, by the vanished. They are everywhere.”

Dead men make such convenient Heroes

falling

“The world is airtight
yet held together
by what it does not house,
by the vanished. They are everywhere.”