Letter To A Friend - Paris

On a rainy day on Mryle Avenue in New York I see us all at that table at the Cafe de Flore on Rue St. Benoit. Candida, Gabrielle, Julie, Pierre, and Jacques. March 17, 2019. St. Patrick's Day. There was no traffic on the Boulevard St. Germain. The air pollution was so bad that the prefecture had closed the city to cars, trucks, and even buses. A quiet had seized the becalm. Occasionally to be disrupted by the occasional Metro's rumble.

Friends, wine, and the Cafe le Flore. Laughter sounds more human without the rumble of traffic. Back in the 19th Century horses and wagons on the cobblestones must ahve created a hellish din. That St. Patrick's Dayin 2019. Only us and the quiet of a city without cars

Back in the 1980s I loved climbing the stairs of the Cafe le Flore with a phone jeton in hand to drop the token and dial America. The call lasted about fifteen seconds. Hello good-bye.

Now I am stronger. I keep thinking of travel.

For the years of my illness and convalescence I feel like Sir Richard Burton, the British explorer in the 19th Century seeking the source of the Nile with John Spekes. Not then, but later in his life. I have been all over the world, but Burton found himself trapped as the British Consulate in Trieste at the end of his diplomatic career. I live in Brooklyn. The trees in the backyard whipped by the nor'easter. Heavy rain predicted to autumn. My only other destination. Montauk. Saturday

I stood on the shore of Ditch Plains. Sunny with a northerly wind forecasting the weather. This was my life. Montauk and Brooklyn. Stranded like Sir Richard Burton in the late 19th Century. Him marooned in the only seaport for the Hapsburg Empire. Standing on the quai with ships setting sail south on the Adriatic. Wanting nothing more than to be atasea. Thankfully I have been trapped in New York and Montauk and not Kansas, knowing I will wander again and soon.

Foto beneath Arthur Gordon - Oliver Brial and I 1983 on the boulevard