RO ON SPACE & CITIES – 2

THE SPACE OF ROMANCE

Last weekend, I met my clandestine lover for a tryst in Paris.

So was it the forbidden nature of this assignation that made Paris that much more romantique?

Was it the morose blue-grey eyes of skies that wept the tears of a longing lover? Was it the winged horses, holding back their passion with the reined-in restraint of sculpture frozen into centuries?

Or was it the fact that even the architecture in the city wears the sexiest lingerie? Mmmm… little crochet wraps of metallic white lace wrought upon Juliette balconies, teasingly half-concealing every stroke of stone, every dimpled shadow, every enigmatic hollow?

Look – everywhere you look, cherubs in faded gilt have drawn their bows to pierce their arrows of love into your eyes. So you must shut them tight, until your eyelids quiver with the effort.

As if all this were not enough; the mouths of the French are puckered, each word articulated about to become a kiss.

Paris is a pleasure that spills over the brim into an acute Poetic Pain of the Senses… Paris is love made quite unbearable.

If Paris were to have a face, it would be the grimacing face of a Petite Mort, the objective of which, ironically, is to create life.

One moment, the day is awash with vertical stripes of icy rain; the next, with soft, diagonal skeins of golden sunshine.

A puddle winks at me and the air flirts with my hair, brushing the locks back with so gentle a touch that they fall back to where they were.

It's quite the perfect example of how physical space can translate into that space in one's thoracic region called "The Heart".