We booked this appartment in Montmartre because it had a view of the tower and when I arrived there it was blinking at me in the night. The next day we discovered that everything was white from a heavy snow, the street was icy and empty, passers by grinned at each other and waved. We waved too. It was easy to slide down to the métro and soon we were trying to go up the tower, but it was closed because of the snow. So we came back and watched it, and the city below, and the sky above, snug on… Continue

From my window I see the whole city dark under grey
clouds. In between, the thin red line of a pale sunset. One last song rises
from one of the last birds after the destruction of the last trees. People
stroll by. The sky darkens. I wait. This is when the accordeon starts, playing
always the same Fugue from John Sebastian Bach.

In the garden, there is a large earthen jar, very tall, taller than me, very heavy. I walk around it, my hand lightly brushing the blue glazed surface. I wonder what’s inside and I haul myself over the rim. It is empty, so empty that is enticing and I want to get in, so I climb lightly into the jar. The surface there is different from the outside, unglazed and not as smooth, but I settle comfortably inside this emptiness, my back resting against one side and my feet up on the other. Then, just… Continue

The young Japanese girl who rents my attic wears high black boots and a short waisted red coat over tight jeans. Her long black hair and the black thick scarf she wraps around her neck frame her oval inquisitive face. After graduating in political sciences, she has started to work for L'Oreal, in a tower somewhere in the Banlieue, the gloomy outskirts of Paris. When I ask her what she does there, she answers, in her little bird's voice, that she is in charge of creating the stories, the magic… Continue