Layers

Locations in Paris became thick with memories. Layer upon layer they would build at St. Michel to Belleville. For example there was one metro stop near my house on the purple line called Filles du Calvaire. It was their I was asked if I like Merde and if I thought it should be made legal, it was there I said goodbye to a dear friend, and it was there I had a long farewell with a lover. Close to the pop in and a point in which I discovered the proximity from Le Marais to my home. It looks like any old dingy stop but the meanings I attach to this simple endroit make it much more extraoridnary, much more representative of my life my journey my past my future......
Along those lines is a painting my parents bought a couple years ago at a coffee shop down the street. I had always loved this painting of a quintessential parisian street. It depicts a corner cafe with a yellow striped awning and a street that veers off in the back. It was so French and it reminded me of Paris. Well, the other dyay I got to looking at it as I reminisced about my time there and the more i looked at it the more it reminded me of a place I had been. I mean an actual place. In fact a cafe I had sipped coffee at with my friend from Michigan. I stared long and hard and made out the street sign on the corner it seemed to say the 3rd arrondissment which happens to be where Le Marais is and where the cafe I remembered was. So I googled earthed it with my father and as he zoomed in closer and closer I got more and more excited. Sure enough it was exactly what I thought it was and it was much more a fun coincidence than can be expected. I saw the painting on an entirely new level at that very moment. I saw myself sitting on the iron chairs of what was once an indistinct cafe scene, I remembered teh 2 parcs acorss the street, the one with the circular path where I had eaten kosher falafel with my friends and where a gang of young guys had asked if we wanted company while we ate. and I remembered the other parc where I had sat waiting fro class and watched a whole class of schoolchildren dine on the grass. The path no longer veered into uncertainty but rather I knew its course completely. I knew that if I followed it I would hit the beautiful Picasso Museum with its multi colored windows and mirrored scaffolding, a street I had walked many times before. Now this painting is no longer just a painting but a living memory of my time in Paris, it holds so much more than chairs and cobblestone, it comes alive as I conjure the true photographic image into my head as paintings usually do come alive when you know the history behind them.