Took another tour on Friday night, to find a lot of folks dining out. Some may go to the opera, others to theatres, clubs, jazz palaces, hip-hop bars, literary nights, and considering it was Bloomsday, some should have been at Shakespeare & Co for the readings -

... and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts and the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the psadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessaline and geraniums and cactuses and Gibralter as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

But nobody was there for Joyce. They were across the street beside the river sitting on the stone quays, waiting for a boat, and the boats were racing through the channel between the Left Bank and Cité with the last tongues of sun chasing them through the bridge arches. Everywhere you looked they were on the quays and the guard was chasing them out of the Notre Dame park and they were watching the rollers on the bridge curving between the cones, and walking down the stone stairs to the quays beside the Seine, by the gutter with the cathedral hanging overhead and across the water on Saint-Louis, lining up for ice cream and gathering below the Tour d'Argent with its lighthouse outlook. On the other side facing west and the Hotel de Ville, the usual mob having a picnic, washed occasionally by lights from passing bateaux mouches, but otherwise in no hurry for the streetlights.

Meanwhile it has become darker and most of the pilgrims have had their fill of the insanity of Notre Dame and some of them have crossed to the south and been sucked into the gaudy Huchette or the next one where there are no hairdressers just restaurants edge to edge and the sweepers are out looking for the swept and plenty have been gathered, and there is a smell of frites and warm cheese, beer and wine, all together all over just like the people in shorts with their phones and cameras and bags and excitement, aided by neons and many yellow lights shining on the blackboards with the fixed-price menus for pizza, frites, salads, fish, sausages, and green peppers. Compared to the quays it isn't Paris but it's been here a long time, because tourists were invented for Paris by Paris and it's a well-worn hustle, like an old shoe.

… on a warm Friday night

Photos and Text, Copyright © 2006 - Ric Erickson, MetropoleParis