my writing

Tag: Paris

  • Inside the Tower : pages from ‘Diggers and Dreamers’.

    Aug 21I’ve worked steadily. I finished the panels and glazing in the tower roof and it stands empty. No purpose has revealed itself. Why did I build it?I go in and stand and look around and wonder what it’s for. An orgone accumulator? A meditation chamber? A folly? At present, simply an empty space. ‘What…

  • La Balme in 1976 : pages from ‘Diggers and Dreamers’.

    p.54. I go to the door and stand in the sunlight and look out over the garden, the valley, the hills, clear and bright on this midsummer morning and now more alive in my eyes than it has ever been, because of the songs that are already weaving their way through me. What happened yesterday…

  • Return to Albi: Cycling the Green Meridian, Day 19.

    Day 19: Belcastel to Albi, 51miles. The first smile of the South. Dante and tripe. ‘Benveguda en Tarn’. Pink city. Crusade against Christians. A congregation facing hell. The great explorer lost. Diagonals of the Hexagon. The garden restaurant. Burger à point. It is another cold night and I hardly sleep. I’m up, packed and ready…

  • Cycling the Green Meridian: Day 10

    3am thoughts. The savage river dreams. Norse pirates. Theodulph’s oratory. The saint at the abbey. The Apocalypse. The first heretics burned at Orléans. Joan of Arc and visions. Max Jacob. The failure of la Méridienne verte, the success of letterboxes. 3 a.m. Writing, in the cold, unfamiliar light of my new, illuminating pen. The third…

  • Cycling the Green Meridian: 7

    Day 7: St-Ouen to Fleury-Mérogis, 53 miles. The flea market. Reuniting two lovers. Suzanne’s grave. A hectic ride across Paris. Satie’s flat. The undertaker. Erik’s grave. Cultural tourism. Gabrielle. The bell not pressed. Depression in a metal cell. I eat breakfast in the bar. Bright sun outside, washed streets, deep shadows, few people. A bar…

  • Cycling the Green Meridian: 6

    Day 6: Villers-St-Sépulchre to St-Ouen, 46 miles. On the Move. The Jacquerie. The Republic and laïcité. Nerval. Chantilly. Questing Quixotes. Heat exhaustion. Madame le Maire. My guardian angel of St-Denis. Abbot Suger and the birth of Gothic. Class and race. Ricqlès in St-Ouen. I set off early, glad to be on the road. I slept…

  • A Walk across, Paris along the Meridian : 4

    I walk down towards Pigalle. Cheap, grim hotels. Graffiti, ‘CHA CHA I HEART YOU’, many times, obsessively, I remember someone we knew in London, fixated on a call girl associated with a politician, fired shots through her door, blew up a scandal. Walking in front of me an oriental woman in black wide-brimmed hat, leopardskin…

  • A Walk across Paris, along the Meridian : 3

    The Blut-Fin (location of the Mire du Nord, first siting post for Picard’s measuring of the meridian across France, to begin the first accurate survey of Louis XIV’s realm) was one of thirty Montmartre windmills in 1700, milling grains, pepper, spices, locally-quarried gypsum for plaster and porcelain, crushing grapes. By 1830s most had gone, as…

  • A walk across Paris, along the Meridian 2

    I am standing on the Paris Meridian. (A meridian is an imaginary line connecting the north and south poles of a sphere.) The Paris Meridian was decided upon 6.6km (20,317 pieds de roi, in those days) south of here, on Midsummer Day, 1667, when members of the Academy of Sciences gathered to outline on the…

  • A Walk across Paris, along the Meridian: 1

    St-Ouen. Outside le Périph. A large silver ball has landed on a small traffic island. The sun blazes at its centre. Mirrors reflect; a curved mirror bends. And eventually deflects. Passing cars appear, swell, are gone, into St-Ouen. “St-Ouen Bienvenue.” Under Napoleon III, I see a marshal of France on horseback, sabre raised. Between the…