Palms

the loudness of quiet witness

Paris was immediately familiar once I arrived even as I had feared to accept the invitation…I both was relieved to find my way back to the peace in the north, yet sad for the fact I felt more welcome at ease…is Paris the Los Angeles of Europe? What would the rioters think of me then?

I felt at home because I had dreamed of the streets in my sleep decades ago when I began writing poetry-not because I thought I should, but because I received a couple of poems from my college boyfriend who turned me from an absolutely-never-having-kids woman into the painfully mother wanting to be gal that catapulted herself to Norway.

Now, somewhere between the two extremes, I did not stand but walked as many streets in morning, day, night as I could in the wonder of Paris…how could I remember signs in a street I had never stood before? How could a new place feel so familiar?

I came to write poetry, so I do regret not exposing more film than you will see below the paywall. There has to be a wall of sorts now, akin to cities past having access points for entry and egress. I used to believe in a fully open border policy until I realized the little litigious hurdles are put into place to maintain a certain level of order that allows for more peaceful flow of life…a flow that was disrupted during the riots in Paris this Spring.

I would like to think humans could come up with more playful rituals than trash and plastics burning. Such volatile substances harm the lungs and the blood. 7 years since I read The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager and am still fully accepting the reality of the soma relative to the mind.

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