"Paris, as everyone knows, is pre-eminently a gray city. I mention it because, in the realm of watercolor, American painters use this made-to-order gray excessively and obsessively. In France the range of grays is seemingly infinite; here the very effect of gray is lost." Henry Miller - Quiet Days In Clichy.
Counting only ten shades of gray in this purgatorial hallway, I recalled walking through the Marais on a drizzling November afternoon in 1985. Buses spewing diesel fumes to create filthy clouds hanging head high over Rue Francois Bourgeois. The facades along Rue Francis Bourgeois coated a somber Verdun gray . Even the rain was gray. Henry Miller's words crossed my mind.
"I have not counted how many. But I have seen the grays of Paris. They are without number. But when there's light, there will always be the Eternal City of Light, although richard Dailey wrote, "Paris is really clean right now - even when it was built it wasn't this clean, not all at once - today we saw a dirty church and I thought, "How nouvelle vague"
Paris, le Ville-Lumiere.
Sauf quand il ya le pluie.
ps I wish I still had that coat and hat, but even more so those years. Comme on etais jeune.
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