Marie Laforet: dance dance dance

this year I found one of my favorite songs of all time floating youtube to youtube with a young lady.

3: First Few Hours

After arriving in the city of love city of lights city of art city of expats authors poets sculptures we get on the train with our bags. I brought what my sister refers to as the dead body suitcase. Hard black shell. My backpack has books in it that I won’t have time to read but brought anyway. A large suitcase is provided evidence toward dressing like a grownup, and wanting to pick my wardrobe every morning.
I wish I lived in a city with better public transportation. A city where when I walk to the coffee shop to get online less than a mile away I wouldn’t get stared at like a vagrant threat stranger. That means it feels weirdly good to be on a subway again.
Follow the directions at the beginning of notebook.
Check into hotel.
Head to view the city.

Little brown girl – eight? – walking backwards on an empty metro platform. She looks back often but moves quickly. I watch wait for the step stutter as faster she moves across the yellowed tile of the platform. It seems empty but for her reality, and my train starts again view across cross she turns to blur disappear quick in ponytails and jeans.

Arrive in Montmartre. Walk up towards the unmistakable landmark. See a carrousel. My sister loves it, she did not realize a favorite scene of a favorite movie was filmed here. Move up the curve. A man asks to see my finger, I know it is retarded trick but I stick out my hand anyway. He puts a loop of thread around my pinky starts to work, before he can trap me I slip out my finger. Smile at him large. Walk past him while he jabbers and jabbers. That smile of mine is my favorite of the day.
My brother and I explore pathways up and up the edges of this cathedral sitting to judge city. Gnats are easily ignored small doors rocks dirt views of great balconies. I search for rooftop gardens and find some, perched on top concrete. We perch on the border of becoming awed.

I sit on the steps of the Sacred Heart.
Every morning early a man carries a wheelchair up and sits until nightfall, two gypsy women post up at each door – in morning they make lunch for the kids, arrange their multiple scarves and head to sit. They say “Ci Vu Play” all day long, with Mercy.
If not one already, I will turn the woman I marry into a gypsy…she will already be, I’m sure.
I sit on the steps of the sacred heart and listen to children whine, a group of Japanese follow around a woman holding a tulip high, and I watch religion turn to art and tourism, they will never be cast out. And inside I say “Ci Vu Play Mercy” for my own little prayer cards.
An old man dressed like my kayaking grandfather does interpretive dance on the steps accompanied by a man playing the violin.
“Paroles de Rue” pasted page by page along a wall in Montmartre.
Chocolate biscuits, pistachio cookies and a fat flan on Rue Lepic.
I am told later that I love flan because my mother does, that she made it when I was a child. I remember beach and I remember every event flan. I remember pinewood derby and flying constructs floating on string. I remember winning and I remember losing.
Turning the corner and coming upon Moulin Rouge. A little girl stands on top of a metro grate and her hair flies and jeans bellow out. My little sister hops up onto the grate and does the same, she’s recently turned twenty. Her jeans don’t bellow out, but her short hair moves in dark contrast to the wild flame without fireplace that the girl fuels with wonder. Who says we don’t understand physics? Let’s talk human covenant of fire and wind.
We walk. I think about past authors in this city. I wonder if I would have produced things to hit, if I will produce things to hit. More than half journal escapades to fuel desire and want wonder exploration. Something to last in this day of everyone writing for short attention spans. And we move out of this neighborhood to continue on the quick impression of first day in a new city, Paris.

A man leaning over a woman on the metro – they both get off at Ternes, turn left, and scratch the back of their heads with right hand at the same time. The exact same time. She is pretty dark haired dark clothed, he looks confused with himself rumpled ugly. They do not know each other.

Eating pistachio ice cream comes at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, while children, heads pointed skyward, pass in awe. We debate on whether or not to go up, we decide not to instead spin in slow circles under this monument.
“What? Who made this thing?”
An etymology public consciousness lesson – short.
Walk down the lawn slowly. See teenagers, a man with a bottle of wine and a girlfriend, families, arrive to a large building. Then:
“This reminds me of Marie Antoinette”
“This reminds me of walking with my hands behind my back.”
Green cannons.
An old man pushes an empty wheelchair around a military hospital museum tomb.
Color of robotic gangrene.
Buried under a golden tome – small man gigantic man, rusted over optimism the courtyard has cartoon horses on one corner and fierce beasts of war in the other.
Scaffolding portrays teeth – new weapons in renewal. My brother sits with his hood up in the middle of this completely empty courtyard. I wonder about blood. Hospital of infants or the infirm?
A small boy with a wooden sword and crew cut runs by.

Yo, you got jokes Son?

So a man walks into a bar.
It's the bar that I work behind...

Deadpan speech, orders a coffee, and asks if I'd like to hear a bad joke.
"Why not?"

"What do you call a Christian on a Viagra?"
he waits for me to say something, so I shrug.
"A firm believer."
Deadpan.

"Alright, how about another one? I told you they were bad."
"Yeah bro, I'm sure it'll be interesting."

"Why don't lesbians go on diets?"
"I don't know..."
"Because you can't eat Jenny Craig with Mary Kay on your face."

And I laugh and laugh.
I don't even know why but I do.
His tight black jeans, slicked back hair, horrible glasses, leather jacket.
And that voice.
It's not a Southern accent like you think Southern...it's an accent like "tacko."
So.

Why don't lesbians go on diets?

2: Airplane

Blue – Gare du Nord
No

“Just hit zero dude, normally it takes you to the operator” my brother in his sleep.
No

Paris Metro:
Blue, Chatelet les Halles
Red, Charles de Gaulle Etoile (west, Auber)
no Gare de Lyon

No

-Gare du Nord
Fuscha, one stop,
-Barbes Rochechouart,
Blue, west, Anvers is right way
-Villiers
Brown, north, Malesherbes right
-Anatole France

Her address here, written in my notebook after the directions to the hotel.
No, I’m not giving it to you.

Airplanes – you never get beef, right? But I’d been eating so much chicken recently that I did. After first bite I thought it may be alright, after second I was wondering how long the cow in front of me had been dead…not surprisingly I lost my appetite for the small brisket chunk in the black plastic container, sharing sealed home with a lump of potatoes, suspect carrots. There is something about eating on planes though, I guess if the fear: “Would I have this as my last meal?” of flying were persistent I would have stopped altogether – I’m more worried while driving, though, “Do I want to die listening to this song?” is a thought often had. And, there is something about eating on planes.
It’s hard to stop.
I did fleetingly wonder at being in first class. On my previous trips to Europe I was travelling up there...
by now I’d be slightly buzzed, eating shrimp, laid out while watching a movie picked out on my personal pop-out television. You know, I would probably be eating that delightful little lobster salad they serve you. Little pieces of crustacean. Lettuce.
Instead tacky blue pattern and “Fasten Seat Belt While Seated.”
I don’t like having to shit on planes, so no I will not be having coffee right now, thank you.
The anticipation of going to Paris for the first time.
How will it really be?
This anticipation erases the stewardesses’ voices asking about duty-free, eliminates the strange feeling in my gut, and turns my dry nasal cavities into water balloons.
Different old ladies keep walking up and down the aisles, I am time travelling.
I look forward to being on an international – Trans Atlantic – flight with a lover…you are right I will try my damndest to convince her of a duo excursion to the bathrooms.
I’m fearless like that. And deceptively limber. Sans yoga.
Maybe I should start yoga?
I read in a little book:
Codex of Hammurabi. Louvre.
Sundays Marche aux Fleurs turns into a bird market.

The descent after a long flight is like chewing raspberry yogurt.
Once again I am looking over swathes of land demarcated neatly from this great height. Viewing with American curiosity this seemingly ancient of ancient continent, while wondering, “How many of my ancestors if any stood there – there – or there?”
Small crosshatches of crystal rest on my window, turning the growing earth below into a landscape of fantasy. Recalling a graphic novel from my childhood about a patchwork Earth and its Quixotic protagonist, only with less color. Greens browns whites instead of pinks oranges yellows – the picture for me still painted mostly blue, and accounting for the sudden wonder at what being an astronaut must really feel like.
What must it really feel like?
I observe a madman’s golf course.
Then small dense forest shaped like a Christmas tree with fist beside it – middle finger up.

I love villages. Love that they exist and love to walk through them. The fact that I could not live in a village now does not diminish my feelings – only creates a hope that somewhere in the future my temperament has changed enough to explore the lifestyle they provide.
When I see large forests from an airplane’s view I want to walk through them.
Explore roots vegetation get cut on bark sweat hate it, and feel the relief and good sense afterward.
I see grand houses isolated in the middle of tight forests and imagine the clouds around me birthed from their fireplaces.
After landing I realized I hadn’t blinked – upon doing so my eyes stung. I had briefly imagined the shaking piece of wing flying off into the side of the plane. This was not a disaster in my mind, just really interesting looking.
I enjoy seeing the flight plan follow the curve of the world.
I do not know French.
I brought my grown-up clothes with me. She said it sounded like a good idea. Did she? Maybe it’s the impression I got. I will dress like a grownup in Paris.
Whatever that means.
Means to me.
Wheels touch bounce bounce.
Oh goodness…we’re excited enough to refer to ourselves as “we,” aren’t we?

1: Home

I see everything about her as if I were in a daze. The nights long and sunshine hardly starting, before it turns into a dream. The colors of the walls are white, and her room is decorated with blankets hung from the ceiling instead of placed on the bed. In her kitchen there’s an old ivy plant, I forgot its name but I know there is one. The furnishings are light wood, like blonde, or kissed into unfeeling by too much sandpaper.

I can’t remember what she looks like.

That’s why I’m crawling now, inch by unsteady inch across these broken glass fragments. Old bottles, mostly liquor and beer, litter the path of my memory. Cover it until what’s left is hard to piece together. Like take all those shards and make new containers with nothing but duct tape on a freezing day.
I do see parts of her body still. I know the color of her skin. Take an almond in your mind and think of the light skin which covers the flesh, and give it more of a glow and make it taste like honey without roasting it. I taste her slightly salty, and smell her delicate womanness – not overpowering like some women I have known. It is subtle and makes for heaven.
All throughout my life I have worried and thought little these worries. Just let them occupy certain spaces in my being. Places that could have been reserved for trust and receptors of grace or love. But they aren’t there, only these broken things and delusions which still rob me of sleep. Which still laugh at me in the mirror and try my dreaming moments with fury and confusion.

I live in a small house. It’s a converted garage, two car. There’s an old canopy over my front door with blue and white stripes. It is the first cloth I have ever seen with real rust spots. Not like the sails I see in my childs eye, but real worn and the color of the dirt that pineapples poke from. My door is blue. I don’t trust the gas heater because I can’t see a flame, and my oven is on Broil set to HI every day. Some weeks or so ago I came home too tight and peed on the open door to my oven. The smell was strange.

When you walk in my house through the screen door and the blue door you are first arriving in my kitchen. It has the normal appliances. Next is the great room, or simply, the room. Entertainment, a small table with ceramic birds overhead and poinsettias on the ink stained top. I taped a pack of tarot cards onto my wall with the help of my sister. They are bright and engaging and remind me that life is full of things that I don’t understand, full of unimportant things that some would place too much emphasis on.

The great room is bedroom and living area rolled into one. Large enough for the table, a drafting desk, amoure, bedstand, bed, and large coffee table. I have a cover hung on the wall opposite my bed…it’s a bright print full of foliage in oranges and pinks and reds. It is as vibrant as my large blue cockatoo, staring at me with green mohawk and peach bill…as colorful as the two smaller birds hanging beneath him in yellows greens and bright purples and pinks. As bright as the old drawings on the tarot cards, a heart stabbed through with swords, a skeleton on horseback, a blindfolded woman and glorious suns.
Next is my bathroom. It’s not large but it has plenty of room. The tub has a small window of fogged glass, and most every time I bath I imagine someone taking pictures of my silhouette through it, my distorted and blurred image. The shower curtain is a brilliant blue with coral reef and tropical fishes, the window creates a brilliance from the light shining through, and the curtain glows every day that isn’t rainy…and some days that are.
When she first saw this shower curtain I heard her intake sharply and sigh. It was a noise of the surprise of beauty. The noise I made when last I saw her sleeping.

I don’t like carpeted floors so I have fake Persian rugs covering the small expanse of my dwelling, my large and spacious room, fit for an SUV. I can hear garage doors opening in the mornings, and recently there has been a hound from hell braying, making noises halfway in between barking and strangled. Death cries of all those who’ve lost their way to the great and horrible unknown place where surely they are supposed to burn.

Last Saturday this is what I did:
Served the mayor and other public officials who I’d only read about in local news martinis. This was three hours at the new SPCA building in Dallas – for which I received 94 dollars, a new bottle of Kettle One Citreon, and a slight buzz. I also accepted an award on behalf of my boss from a news anchorwoman whose name escapes me.
Had two beers and a giant shot at The Bar of Soap – our local bar/Laundromat/punk venue.
Tried to flirt with a girl I desperately want to flirt with at the bar she was working at. A guy came in, bought us two shots, told me he was a town car chauffer (his first night on the job…good going) – I spilt a shot on him and didn’t want another but she poured one anyway, so I took it. Total at this bar was 3 shots and two pints.
I should have gone home at this point, but instead I went to the “VIP” lounge at House of Blues for an AFI Dallas wrap-up party that a friend was spinning at. It was a list event…I vaguely remember taking off my hoodie for the doorman before getting in the elevator and then putting it back on once upstairs, this of course could have been imagination or part of a vivid dream.
Actually the whole night could have been a vivid dream…and I suppose that now it is, accept for the consequences – which were back pain and offending friends.
When drunk in a room full of assholes, I invariably turn into one.
What is this logic?

I danced with a man in a wheelchairs date.

I’m 26 years old. I am an artist.
And I laugh and laugh and laugh.

You can call me Zachary or Reflect June. They are becoming interchangeable.