It’s raining buckets outside…the streets are running water and the hiss and splash of traffic is a dozy background noise. I have Sinead Lohan on my head phones waltzing Bob Dylan’s great song…”To Ramona” in my ears. It always moves me and her version brings me closer to tears. This is the kind of day that reminds me of my first trip to Paris. I never thought I’d get there. When I was younger my horizons were all within North America. I had crossed and recrossed North America and I’d been from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic and from the Atlantic to the Pacific… I thought that Paris couldn’t be more complex than New York City. Oh…well, I fell in love didn’t I? Jet-lagged and grouchy and tired, I was ready to hate the hair on my head. But somehow, in the taxi on the way from the airport, with motorbikes and scooters blasting between cars and horns beeping and soon the city rushing through my eyes…I knew it wasn’t any place I’d ever been before.
I’ve been back many times since…and the love only grows. I explore the side streets (everybody does) and most of all I see the people. Maybe it’s just the change of place but it feels like I can see them more clearly…and they stick in my mind. Bill Cunningham, the great American fashion and street photographer, says that Paris educates your eyes. People have a sense of style. And you know that even if they live in a tiny fifth floor garret they give careful if casual thought to who they are on the street. It may be a hat or a shirt or a scarf…a dress or shoes…It’s also a walking city so the way that people carry themselves…it just draws me in…makes me feel more…alive. Isn’t that what love does?
Like any city, Paris, has its poor and they occupy corners and sidewalks and trim the excess off the tourists. Around the corner from our favourite apartment…not far from the Louvre…this old dragon held down a piece of real estate. I’ve seen her for three years…and she remains in heat or cold or sleet or rain. The flics leave her alone. It was biting cold the day I decided to sketch her…but what struck me was the scarf that she’d pulled out of one of her bundles…It was so bright and striking…I went back to the apartment and tried to remember…
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