Notes From Nowhere

I pass some workmen in overalls on my street at lunch time. The one has three baguettes under one arm, a bottle of wine under the other, and in a bag he carries at least two kinds of cheese and a bottle of peppers. Formidable!

Later, I pass birds on the street with crooked, shrivelled feet.

The soul of old objects inhabits new parks. We visit the Parc de Bercy—past Le Jardin J. Joyce, and over Le Pont S. de Beauvoir. Everyone is taking their leisure in the sun, and why not? We pass by the woods with black and green bark and people in shadows; we pass the formal hedges with benches all around. Then, the pure-visual sensation of purple and pink: the pink is stout along the ground, the purple is aspirant, rising higher. They are planted in what looks like free form, but deceptively. Really the beds are shaped to a generous curve like the back of a Christian fish (which meets its underside over the way). What do we need paintings for when we have gardens? I suppose so we may pay our respects to colour and light. So we may study, multiply, the good of sensation!

We give to things a soul which we cultivate in their absence and expect to recover when once more in their presence. I am tracing my steps of last year. I go looking for the same tea-cups and tea, the same candles and soap. I visit the Boulangerie with dark chocolate tarts. I find the place on the Rue Daguerre with black circles of fromage de chèvre. I am trying to gird up the spirit of Paris. I can’t seem to find it.

Besides, there are signs of neighbourly discord with the birds. On one floor, a woman feeds them at her window—they go right inside; when she is not home, they come flapping at the glass. On the floor above, where the wire is, the birds are most unwelcome. The woman living there—she could be a man, or a man and a woman— is invisible; I see only the wire. Have he and she put it there? Or was it there already on moving in, arranged by the building, since: (i) the birds are a nuisance, and (ii) the birds like the eaves best, and (iii) this is where the eaves are?