iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Park Life Paris ~ |
Down the side of Notre-Dame-des-Champs (our 'Lady of the Fields', although I'm not exactly sure what she was doing out there) is a funny little park.
This is laid out around a not particularly spectacular central lump of mud, and the benches there form a sort of slightly exploded cabalistic communal area where disparate chips off existence's old block come to pass a moment or two.
As I cast my gaze around this loose circle, everyone facing each other but no-one seeing nothin' (or seeing everything, who knows?) I was intrigued to note: a knot of semi-nomadic, cloppe(cigarette)-swapping vagabonds arguing over a light; a tired tourist twosome of the ever-so-nice middle class type replete with sensible shoes and matching macs, taking a break from the monuments and poring over their Paris plan considering their next conquest; a guy flat-out on his bench, slowly sinking between the slats, periodically spluttering tortured supplications from the depths of his stupor to whatever gods he may pray to, Bacchus perhaps; a single young lady doing the iPhone thing, somewhat startled to find she's only one bench hence (from the delusional jerking maniac); a calm coloured couple, not doing a lot, or possibly exactly the same thing I am, motionless, casting around...; a solitary wannabe travelling hippy type, who no doubt would love to have dreads to match his music (which we're all sharing) if he had vaguely the right sort of hair, emptying his backpack of beer and desperately trying to look like the aforementioned street cool loafers; a calm multi-cultural couple, he with real dreads (I'm assuming, under the tea-cozy) with a sleepy white girl, he keepin' his music to he-self...
Wannabe pant-sagger wanders over to dread-cozy man with a beer to offer, shows him his drawings, engages conversation, offers toke, discusses dope dealing ops - Amsterdam's damn cool - street peeps shuffle off ciggies smouldering, tourist couple still poring, schizoid guy now snoring, iPhone girl shooting uneasy glances, impassive couple... yep, you guessed it, no news yet.
I was going to include myself in the cast of characters and get you to guess which one I was but in the end it didn't work out that way. But I did learn something interesting: Sabazios was a nomadic horseman and 'sky father god' of the Phrygians and Thracians, who were contemporaries or possibly earlier than the ancient Greeks we are so fond of from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Although I'm crap on a horse ever since being terrorised by one as a kid that wouldn't move however much I dug my heels in until the day we went outside when old lazy bones decided it was time for a gallop... But anyway, apart from the equestrian issue, Sabazios'll do me just fine for now. I just need a mane to go with it.
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© 2011 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.
© 2011 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.
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