Briana's Apparition Returns

To see Paris on foot is so much better for me than a tour bus because my mind has permission to see the streets and by-ways of the route for what they are and for as long as I want to. The city came into being before cars and buses and I believe it was meant to be experienced... to get lost in... put the phone in my man-purse... resist the temptation to take pictures... absorb it. Coming around a corner, the Eifel Tower loomed in the distance. I decided I wasn't in Paris until I stood under its iron girders.... goal was to be there at least once.

A Faun statue created by a nineteenth century sculptor, Eugene-Louis Lequesne, greeted me as I entered Luxembourg Gardens. It evoked images I'd seen of the films of pre-WWI Nijinsky's Rites of Spring and how most of the public bronzes were commissioned during Napoleon III's reign. Never did like the guy's Franco/Prussian War that got the ball rolling towards World Wars I & II, and the Vietnam War, but who am I to badmouth the French? Especially a generation of the Second Empire that created so much fantasy of the fantastic. Memories are short lived on this side of the Pond of that era in Europe, i.e., like the colonization of Cochin China that my generation of Americans paid dearly for a hundred years later in Vietnam. The history of it is displayed throughout the city.

Chauvinism: the French invented the word, and because of it, became a humbler nation by 2021.

The people of France made the best of the horrors of that time by keeping the memory of the past alive but striding towards the future. How can I not think of the history of this city that survived wars, dictatorships (internal and from without), plus the brutal oppression brought about by Adolf Schickelgruber's Germany? They too have a National Anthem celebrating catastrophic oppression and revolt. I've listened to the Marseille's words whose violence makes our "bombs bursting in air" look like a weekend picnic.

Yes, I can't stop my mind from going there.

 Strolling through the Gardens down the same treelined pathways, had I known then that Hemingway did so, I might have hoped to meet my Gertrude Stein there too.

No, I wasn't seeing Paris through his eyes. I saw its romance through my own as I turned away towards the river.

Yes, I can't stop my mind from also going there.

I hadn't yet realized that I had met my muse in a cafe that day. I wasn't sure. Suspicion blinded me of what had transpired over breakfast the past two days. Serendipity... After all, Aphrodite tricked Paris in such a manner. A lovely young woman opened me up in ways that had nothing to do with her physical beauty... there was something improvisational about the way she spoke, her gestures, nothing pretentious. It seemed to me that she was used to being seen as the most beautiful woman in any room, yet it was simply a fact of life to her, like war, and suffering... so much was bundled withing that frame. I wanted to know more about her. Mixed feelings longed to be a young man again, but my curiosity wasn't that of a kid. There was a mystery that attracted me that only my age could explain.

I wandered past the sculptures of the continents at the Orsay Museum.A poster displayed on a colonnes mauresques of a Nineteenth Century Art exhibit was why tourists were cued at the entrance and I chalked it up to another place I would check out... but not then. I felt like Drake sailing past the coastlines of the New World without seeing the interior of the continent. There was yet more to see. As I drew away from the river, closer to the Eifel Tower, the neighborhood changed. People on the street appeared to be dressed better. It was subtle chic. The apartment buildings had a feel for this being a high-rent one. Adrienne had told me that her apartment was in this area, so it made sense. 

At the Eifel Tower the cue of tourists was long and organized into fence rails like cattle chutes. I had no desire to cue up with everyone. It was enough that I could marvel at the graceful girders from the ground.

Security was strict. Imposing men in fatigues... POLICE in bold print on their caps and backs patrolled the lines carrying automatic rifles. In one of the cues, tourist parted for a bearded long-haired man dressed in chamoes, police on each side and one behind, being escorted out roughly as he resisted kicking at all in foots reach. At first, I thought he was just a drunk until, shouting Allah-Hu-Akbar, he had been splayed face-down on the grass surrounded by a dozen police that suddenly appeared. Weapons, a knife and a pistol, were taken from his field coat and passed to the officers standing-by. These men weren't pussyfooting around, they knew what they were doing. It was a side of Paris I hadn't expected to see. Paris, indeed.

I had enough for one day of Post-Colonial Paris. Just as the French haven't forgotten the past, neither have those they colonized. I strode faster back across the Seine and past the Louvre into the heart of the city where the Notre Dame bridge crossed. The area was packed with people, and these were the kinds of places I usually avoid. Instead of wonder, panic greeted me on narrow streets and crowds... memories flashed back of crowded streets and ambush.

 My room was a welcome refuge for the rest of the day. I could breathe again there. I sat at the desk, fingers on the keyboard thinking. No words came to push my thoughts onto the screen. Pain, Sciatica... old wounds from Nicaragua... all of it relived the sources I had worked hard to live with. I was in severe pain, and I wished I had something to soothe it and the realities. Damned straight-backed chair! The thought of a drink... codeine... anything stood between my fingers and the console. I kicked off my shoes and took to the bed; my feet were tired from all the walking. No blisters. The shoes were good for new ones. They were broken-in now and I was relieved for that. My mind drifted off to thinking about the day I'd had.

I saw a dark hallway. Mora was talking to Briana. I wasn't sleeping but in dreamland. Briana's back was to me but I could see she was dressed in black... a turtleneck under a leather jacket, black trousers. Mora was facing me wearing a Vietnam era a field jacket with her name stenciled above the breast pocket and a blue and yellow Ukraine flag shoulder patch. Framing her pale face, golden locks flowed out from under a floppy Rangers hat. It wasn't clear what they were talking about, but I heard my name a couple times. 

Briana turned and nodded, "Mora will be your guide. The one I told you about... that you would help. Adrienne can wait."

I asked, "You mean a tour guide for Paris?"

Briana's apparition faded and was gone. I was alone with Mora. She said, "Tomorrow. Come my apartment. Near Champ de Mars."

I didn't hesitate but was puzzled. "What is the street... the address?"

"Rue Lèon Vaudoyer, you will find."

"Find! How?"

Dreamless, I fell asleep to awaken at dawn.