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dimanche 2 mai 2004
 

Deadly gang rivalry being a feature of life in many cities, Paris is no exception. Yesterday evening I unfortunately got an excellent bird's eye view of a street killing from my 4th-floor window overlooking the intersection of Raymond Losserand street and Gergovie street.
A youth barely into his 20s was mortally stabbed.
I watched the whole incident, which lasted perhaps three minutes in all, calling the emergency services as I did so, just in case nobody else had, but by the time they replied, I could see the fire brigade ambulance hurtling up the street. Some of the newspaper reports say the victim died in hospital, but he didn't.
By that time, I was down on the corner elbowing my way through. At close quarters, before the cordon went up, it seemed pretty evident to me that he was already very nearly dead. Anyway, they covered his face as well as his blood-stained chest and the rest of the body as soon as they put it in the ambulance.
While that's but a detail, if not for the lad in question, it was one of the little recurrent visuals that kept me awake for much of the night after the police told me hours later after I'd signed my statement at the central commissariat of Paris's XIVth arrondissement and I was allowed to walk home to the Kid and what I vainly hoped would be instant sleep.

It was the third homicide I've seen personally in 23 years here (Marianne stayed clear of the window) and the first where I saw more than enough for my evidence to be of real use to the police.
Much I what I subsequently learned I leave out. I feel totally disinclined to say any more about these gang wars tonight, and, as 'Le Parisien' (Fr) reports, the police investigation is still very far from over and the incident follows a murder in a café not far down the road in October.
Despite what all but a few "hard cases" merely pretend, as a journalist you don't become blasé about such events, so I was pretty exhausted even before I arrived at work this morning and knackered by mid-afternoon. Since Africa was surprisingly peaceful, I slipped off home, determined to spend at least a couple of hours of the weekend with the Kid. Now I'm just waiting to get so tired that I'll be able to sleep for a good 10 hours, since I don't have to be in the Factory early tomorrow.

And my southern part of town is still largely free of serious crime, friendly, vivacious and full of "proper shops" -- so I rejoiced when Lady E. found it that way too when we met up for a while on Friday. I like her district too; though I don't know it especially well, it's another one of the few Parisian "villages" left... But just being with her again made me feel so good -- and blow the Condition! -- that I subsequently developed a severe case of "blogger's block".
Which persists.
I know there are still dozens of unusually newsworthy or very amusing things out there, several of them on the sites of my blogosphere friends. But for the past two or three days, virtually nothing has seemed as remotely interesting and important as the deliciously timed appearance of Lady E. in my humdrum life.
On Friday night, the book of Eliot's poems I'm browsing gave me this:

"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."
For an online rendering of, 'Portrait of a Lady', (Datatonia; you could go to any one of a dozen sites, but Washington student H. Tyler Amick blogs with OS X and is a fine fellow who lists 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock' on the same page as Eric Idle's 'All Things Dull and Ugly'...)
Next to some of T.S.E.'s work (and while it's only that snippet in the poem's conversation that had reason to chime with my mood), some passages of my own 'Gaia's Complaint' -- the stab I made eight years ago at writing something for our own times modelled on 'The Waste Land' (the admirable Loren Webster mentions some good links at her blog, In a Dark Time) -- now seem awful. Here's a bit, nevertheless, from Gaia's 'May Day' passage, which started out with a description of the annual appearance of dozens of people selling lily of the valley. Yesterday was the same before that sudden explosion of violence soured the street:
At seven she was among them,
her flowers wrapped in plastic
& her head in a colourful shawl.

Today, I failed to tell her:
''I am going to write my Fire Sermon.''
''Is that all?'' the woman did not respond.
''This May One, this Workers' Day?''

tigerlilyWhat Lady E. needs now is a flower, though. Yes, now there's a chance that feature of this place may start blooming again. And, like last year, what each of the flowers is widely held to "mean" is part of the secret.
Thus my first conundrum comes, but it's a question.
And with gratitude to Rickert's Garden in Minnesota.


8:52:24 PM  link   your views? []


nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit
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