Manafonistas

Paris is never good for up-tempo-beats in summer. You get them anyway, from cars and ghettoblasters. The town is drowing (nicely) in curiosities, old bike drivers staging their bikes from the times of the Romans, huge photos of old Paris in black and white (with a unique you upfront, multicoloured clothing), les innumerables variations de savoir vivre autour du Tour Eiffel – it’s all there. And you’re just another drifter catching the fleeting beauty of the bathroom paintings of Pierre Bonnard, seeing a younger ego walking through the streets of Paris (with that Ralph McTell-London-Song in your ears, but, hell, you got your crushing desaster treatment at work a long time ago, tears shooting through the sunglasses in Rodin’s garden.) Slow, slow walking through decades. On the final day, just when the rain started, you ended up in Cafe Breizh one more time, a pure delight, when, after two, three crepes and a bottle of artisane cidre, you bought that book about the place, its history, diving into its origin at the Brittany coast. Going there. When did you realize for the first time that you’re a ghost, with good taste and broken stories to tell. Laugh out loud.