50. Waking feeling empty. Then tedium vitae. Providing axis Benjamin saying. On which turning old wheels of melancholy. Falling back asleep. Dreaming Holmes by the fire. 19th-century subject. Cosy. Contained. Yes. This is what �one� missing. Earlier looking out at little house on straw. In left vitrine across street. Seeing it for a divine small silver rabbit. At store closing they letting out to run around display space. His shit small and tight. Like mine. The shit turns black from soot.

����������� Pulling on jeans. Black sweater. Jacket. Outside cool and windy. Half-running out. Towards La Coupole. Nose running copiously. To appropriate one of those menus with checkerboard logo. Conjuring stage sets. Of Russian expatriate Diaghilev. Who among first to bring time into 20th. i.e. rendering it disjunctive. By lengthening dancer profiles. Into giant shadows. While choreography (gestures). Hachured. Kinetic machines. Like cube-faced landscape. Flowing in fake line of continuity. Past window. Of Gertrude Stein�s automobile.� But just as I slipping. Menu into bag. Waiter grabbing it. As if all foreigners. Behaving the same.

����������� Maybe mistake to come. Air conditioning so strong it taking two coffees. First. Express. Second. Au lait. To stay warm. Watching dowagers in dyed hair and shoulder pads. Bantering with waiters. Walking home to studio. Thinking growing old in Paris. Maybe nice. City being circular. Contained. M�tro. Every half-kilometer. Provided �one� having money for apartment. Even great Baudelaire. Fort �prouv� par la maladie, sick. Shuffling from pension to pension. At end of days. Miming--with sarcasm of despair--post-revolutionary hailings. Between citizens. Who en principe on equal footing. Therefore each saying bonjour Monsieur. Bonjour Madame. To other. Though worker-bourgeois entente having ended. When� latter squeezing former. Economically. Toward periphery.

����������� In absence of fire--turning on TV. Fourteen families from �south.�� Expelled from Montparnasse squat. Sent to hotel. For two weeks only. After which--------------------------------------------------------������������� Then extreme right leader Le Pen. Plus gaggle of followers. Singing nationalist song. Hands on hearts. Somewhere en provence. Turning off again. Opening B to see again how he conjuncting dream-time (nostalgia). With contemporaneous. Volume falling open at section on dream houses. In which he juxtaposing Le Corbusier's light airy abode. Minimalist interior. Looking out on highway. Next small-windowed turned-in-on-self over-stuffed Victorian home.

����������� B adding:

����������� Que les choses continuent comme avant: voil� la catastrophe.

����������� I taping it to TV screen.

59. Yes ennui covering a tear in the surface. The word t____ hard to write here. Because for true ennui--t____ must be of collective origin. Not ennui if only mirroring one's private stageset of afflictions. P in hospital. Or gallery of rogues arriving from chez nous. Spreading gossip. Re writer. In leisure lottery studio. Doing absolutely nothing.�����������

����������� Squirting on drop of Poison by Dior. Primping hair almost 60s bouffant. Descending into m�tro. On platform guy selling yo-yos. Lighting up when thrown. Sitting with knapsack against vandalized map of Paris. So not getting stolen. Unfortunately nothing major to report. Except lemony smell. On neck of expensive blonde. Having wasted yet another morning. In expectation of large French publisher. Calling re Bk of Md�d Wm�n. Albeit knowing in Paris a promise. Primarily intended to flatter interlocutor.

����������� Waiting. I opening B. To passage explaining. How �one.� If melancholic 19th-style persona. (As opposed to wily contemporaneous version--perpetually narrating paradox into fake line of continuity.) �One� needing ruse to achieve constant state of dreaming (nostalgia). The trick being staying out of light. Which is why famous loiterers. Perpetually at post before dawn. Imitating port clampins and goliards. Full of maxims to protect themselves from sun.

Phone in fact ringing once. R calling to report he and friend set up in lovenest. Then having lovely lunch yesterday in Luxembourg. Followed by th� dansante. On right bank. Some high glassed-in terrasse. With palm trees. Near Pigalle. R praising the Tintin look of the boys. Little cowlicks or crewcuts. Very sweet faces. Others too muscled. Like they'd be afraid to take their shorts off. In case pricks had shrivelled. From steroids.

62 . . . Glad to say: it raining. Rain coming down straight between the 3-to-4-storey walls. Curved with age along pale curved street. Outside mirrors. Reflecting inner walls of boutiques. Carefully done in beige or white to catch light. Re-reflected on bent head of woman. Black hair cut with oriental precision. Writing on desk painted same beige as walls. Picking up beige of floor. Vase of the same shade of beige right beside her. Holding almost same colour flowers.

����������� For lunch beige osso buco.

63. Waking. Thinking relationship to Paris. Now one of vague familiarity. People complaining letters not describing streets. As they used to. Clothes. Fa�ades. Etc. �One� being increasingly caught up. In rhythm of trajectory. As if sentences. Like steps. Driven not by multifarious predicates (as in certain prewar republicans). Rather by some kind of back-and-forth-gesture. Befitting subject. With foreign queen on dollars. Walking down Saint-Germain. Thinking marvellous surely �to be had. Simultaneously fearing 19th-century buildings. Over shoulder. About to dissolve into dust.

����������� �But headache getting worse. Unusual acrid smell of diesel fumes in air. Cloud cover imprisoning pollution. To catastrophic proportions. Causing paleness of physiognomy. Getting up and looking in row of convex mirrors. Face white as museum pieces. As in "classical" Parisians. With their jet bangs. Violet eyes. Fente in chin. Possibly constipated. Or expressing some high of sadism. E.g. Proust's Albertine. Coming to his room. Black satin making her even paler, making her into the ardent pale Parisian languishing from lack of air, from the atmosphere of crowds and perhaps a propensity for vice. I.e. not wanting him. Word vice summoning regret. For not staying longer. At women�s bar last night.

����������� Raining in Bosnia.

�����������

64. Speaking of physiognomy. It is to the realm of memories that the familiar belongs. B again. E.g. tics. Expressions. Rendered familiar through unconscious repetition. Accompanying gestures. Getting up in dark. Anticipatory� face looking through cracks in the store. Checking� weather. People. Walking down below. Today woman in white imper� and white sneakers. White "Scottie" on leash. Baguette tight beneath arm. At this hour street still quite deserted. Little ritual. Repeated daily. Opening casement window. While store kept closed. Letting in air. Making coffee. Then closing window because traffic racket increasing. Back to bed. Store still down so concierge won't knock. Given her little trick of going out in street. And looking at window. To see if I up. Very pleasant since I giving her 100 francs.

����������� Her rituals signalled by position of her curtains. I was going to say routine.� Language being precise as mathematics. G Stein saying. Anyway lace curtains on concierge's glass door. Opening at 8a. Drawn at noon for lunch. Once I knocking then. She appearing pointedly chewing huge chunks of beef. Mouth half open. Beyond pink satin half-curtains. 10-by-10 room. Total absence of natural light. Curtained off place for sleeping. Plus kitchenette. From which food and laundry smells floating. Smells so stuffy I feeling nauseous. Particularly with my cold.

����������� �Or--one's ritual may be another's routine. Where class or privilege entering. The way she emerging late afternoon. Sitting on green leather sofa in lobby. Listening to radio. Having no one in little loge for talking. Therefore intercepting residents to chat. About certain people not attending daily properly to garbage. Concierges having to get it out wrapped. In green containers every working day but May 1--International Workers' Day. She sympathizing totally. Though disliking immigrants. Allegedly usurping conciergeries all over Paris. ��

66. Some evenings. Rather than adrift in Paris. I'm in a television in Paris. Watching bad American thrillers. Or good documentaries. French people remembering. Or drowning in little arty video. Fat woman sucking chocolate from profiterole. On her lips. While husband complaining: you don't understand me. This I passionately absorbing. Head turning as if for a kiss. Or in murmur of agreement. When I turn it off the screen is hot. Magnetic. Energy rising from it. Paper can cling.

I applying Il est plus tard que tu ne crois. To the surface.

The excerpt of My Paris was gratefully reprinted by HOW2 with the permission of the author. The text was originally published by: Mercury Press, Toronto, 1999. Copyright © Gail Scott.