Sitting in my car by the grocery store. Waiting for things to be done. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything. But sitting there, waiting, in my mind I traveled back and forth across the North Atlantic, up and down the coast of the Ocean from here to Key Largo and briefly onto the South Pacific. Reminiscing about where we have been and what we have done and where we might go one day. All the while asking, what‘s the difference being here or there? Does one ever escape the inner circles and thoughts, the deathless yearnings and limitations, the need to expatiate and promulgate and exasperate? What do I need to buy, a house, a car or a costume of clothes; a ring perhaps, another gold ring to compete with a bishop or a football player, an accessory or an article of solid hardwood furniture with a polished veneer, maybe another ship’s bell? Precision for me is my French leave (filer à l’anglaise). Have I already been there? Have I already done that? Was it ever any different, then or now? Is it too late? Does it even matter? Will I only pine to come home again? Home to watch the plateau of the dreamy river magically flow upstream with its circular twists of shiny calm? And the streaked fields of burgeoning green and yellow and magnificent flourishing trees diminished by the immense azure dome above?
Frightened by the encroachment of sight and sound and movement, I descended to the subterranean cavern removed from the pallor of it all, to recommence my historic fashion of artistic sublimation and recovery from Nature’s peril. There I could count from one to ten, straighten my back as I rode, assuring my posture against crippling arthritis, balancing myself and my present and past, reconfirming my self-satisfaction and propriety of deliberation and deliverance.
And then the car wash. The vital catharsis, cleaning the mats, opening and closing the doors including the button on the trunk (partly to ensure it works), lifting it high and closing it abruptly, reconfirming the mechanical dexterity of the vulnerable piece of artistry operating at unimaginable speeds, sometimes within torrents of rain, best suited to the boulevard ride on smooth winding roads, ribbons of highway, up and down along the countryside. And they too lead to home. I recall the day Ricardo Schmeichler (no longer whinnying among us) and I drove from Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris to the countryside with Jean Luc Meyer to settle in the back yard of his thatched roof villa with the donkey and 200 rounds of ammunition and my glass of Cognac before we departed to Tivoli in Copenhagen then home to Stockholm. Surely that is enough!
Avenue Victor-Hugo is an avenue in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It begins at place Charles de Gaulle (also known as the Étoile) and ends at place Tattegrain (becoming avenue Henri-Martin). It is one of the twelve avenues beginning at the Étoile, and the second longest of the twelve, after the avenue des Champs-Élysées.
Stretching my limbs and bending the arthritic resolutions subdued by Tylenol and caffeine. The grey skies have gone, the white clouds have replaced them, the river shimmers below.
Tomorrow will be warmer. I anticipate to see the crops grow overnight. We’ve congested our lives to overflowing. I marvel at the unprecedented beauty of my perilous ambition exposed to imminent ruin. Was it ever any different, then or now?
Photo Substack Ipso Facto©