Henri Cartier Bresson – Ile de la Citie, Square du Vert-Galant, and the Pont Neuf, 1952

Sometimes knowing where to begin is important. At some point we just have to start with language. At other times we have to start with a sentence – this one maybe. At all times through, we have to start with an image, and in this case I am just as well start with this image here.　

There is here a sense of eternal return. A chance I am always caught in a loop, which always brings me back to this point, to this image. Time holds me here and there is nothing I can do to escape this longing, or this place. There is no other description, just the sense of what has been lost and won, and that change, time, age, are what hold us together.

It is as if I remained, and lingered. As if I stopped here once, even though the image had been taken, nearly, twenty years prior to my own birth. I can still remember looking down river towards the Pont des Arts, even though that was in another decade in the future.

In the end I keep coming back to the history, nature, and images of this bridge. It is as if I am haunted by the essence of it’s existence. Haunted by the very stones from which it is built. When ever I see an image of this bridge time slips with me, and then I am else where, not within myself. I can only explain it as a discontinuity. What else this is, is for others to decide.

If any thing this has nothing to do with the solid nature of reality. Nothing to do with, the here unseen statue of Henry IV, or the fact of the Parisii, but rather, has everything to do with the brightness, the light, and the haze. For this can only be memory or a trace of something which was once experienced. This is what the rower is in the foreground of the picture, nothing else but a cipher of light captured and remembered on film.

The same could be said about the tops of the vehicles and pedestrians seen over the parapet of the bridge. All of them ciphers to the light. Along with the lightness of the water and the brightness of a non-existent sky, combined with the dark suggestion of the bridge and the rising of the shadow behind it of the island. All exquisite in the cipher of the light and haze.

Within the light the bridge becomes a place of appearance and disappearance. For not only does it blacken and attempt to fade within the light, but it also pushes it’s way out in to the open of the city, only then to disappear once more back in to the labyrinths of streets and boulevard once more.

It is as if the dark pedestrians on the bridge, or the walker, can no longer escape the fact of the pavement, and the existence if the city for any length of time. Other than that of the time it takes to negotiate the length of the bridge. It is they will be swallowed by the city, unknown in name, unknown in nature. Unknown even in the sense that they are only ciphers of light.

At this juncture, as well as pedestrians and vehicles disappearing in to the city, it is as if the, city, the bridge, the water, the sky, the island, are all about to give way to the light and disappear in to the nothingness. As if it had been sucked through the shutter and iris of the lens and then returned to a world of hazy delirium. May be, this is the discontinuity we all experience at sometimes in our lives.

In the end this can only be what we long for through the haze and light of memory. This is what holds us together, even though it only in the end becomes a cipher of what we remember. It is an essence of the stones of this bridge, but also the frailness of the way memory has the habit of returning to us in different forms over the years.

Even though I always return to the image of this bridge time and time again.

A dusting of snow on the Square du Vert-Galant.

Place du Trocadéro Photos by Theadora Brack

Place  Dalida

By Theadora Brack

Incelebration of Leap Year, come hither! Let’s give a smouldering nod to the late, great Éric Rohmer and his movie  Les Rendezvous de Paris. Lights! Camera! Action!

Here are a few of my favorite rendezvous-worthy places, squares and gardens in Paris, along with the statues that bring them to life.

1. Place du Trocadéro
Place du Trocadéro, 16th arrondissement
(Métro Trocadéro)

At the fab Trocadéro, you’ll find one of my favorite views of the Eiffel Tower. Let’s first share a brownie and a soda pop at the bustling Café Carlu nestled inside the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine. Hands-down, this is my new happy place! I think you’re going to dig the bookshop, too.

2. Place Dalida
The tip of rues Girardon and Abreuvoir, 18th arrondissement (Métro Abbesses)

Pilgrims from all over the world flock to the impressive bust of Dalida (the female Elvis of France) and touch her for luck! By the way, the pop diva’s house is located nearby on rue d’Orchampt, and her grave is in the Cimetière de Montmartre. (Katy Perry’s fireworks got nothing on you, Dalida!)

Jardin de Tuileries

3. Jardin des Tuileries
1st arrondissement (Métro Concorde)

Next stop! Let’s meet at Métro Concorde, and then we’ll pick up reading material at the W.H. Smith Book Shop. For inspiration, let’s not forget the Jardin de Tuileries gift shop either. How green does your garden grow?

Flashback: Created by Catherine de Médici (with a slight Italian flair) in the 16th century, the Jardin de Tuileries wasgiven a redo by landscape architect André Le Nôtre during the Sun King’s reign. After the Big Wigs’ big move to Versailles, it became one of the first public parks.

Sadly, this was also where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were held prisoners during the French Revolution. At that time, due to years of neglect, the gardens were rampant with duckweed, prostitution, and angry mobs.

Fast forward: Cafés, chairs, and one hundred statues (including many by Maillol) now seductively tempt. Writer Henry Valentine  Miller made no secret of his profound attraction of the bronzes.

“No appointments, no invitations for dinner, no program, no dough. . . sitting down on a bench and squeezing my guts to stop the gnawing or walking through the Jardin des Tuileries getting an erection looking at the dumb statues.” Oh, sigh. It’s Miller, after all!

The Jolly Green Giant Henri IV

4. Square du Vert-Galant
Tip of the Île de la Cité, Ist Arrondissement
(Métro Pont Neuf)

Let’s now stroll on over to another favorite centuries-old romantic hotspot, le Square du Vert-Galant at the tip of the Île de la Cité. Created by King Henri IV, its spectacular view of la Seine and currents crashing into its banks still move the rendezvous-ers, so hold on tight while I straighten your trench coat collar.

Along the way, we’ll pick up a compact but oh so filling crêpe fromage! I’m not the first to propose the tip of the Île de la Cité as the perfect spot for a little pic-a-necking, and I certainly won’t be the last.

Meet Henri: For the love of vitality, admiration, and gossip, Parisians gave the little tear-drop-shaped park the flamboyant King Henri IV’s nickname, “Vert-Galant,” or “Gay Blade,” since he was larger than life, compassionate, wildly loved, and quite the looker back in the day.

Mad about music, wine and women, Henri would horse around here in the park after dark with his friends, entertainers, and favorite mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrée. Love was in the air. Love is still in the air.

As Henri IV liked to say, “Great cooking and great wines make a paradise on earth!”