A Romantic Sunday Thinking of You

The Pont Neuf and the Île de la Cité, 1951. A statue of the bridge’s builder, Henri IV, stands in the square at the island’s tip. Henri Cartier-Bresson

I once kissed a girl at midnight on this bridge.  I can't remember which one.  Is that terrible or what?  I think it was my ex-wife, but it might have been an ex-girlfriend.  I was there with each.  Either way, it was quite something.  I remember the feeling if not the exact details.  It is the oldest bridge in Paris, if that means anything.  It means, more than anything, that I am an incurable romantic.  Hell, it could have been you I was kissing then.  Indeed, now I am sure it was.  We were drunk.  Remember?  I do so well.  Wasn't it fun?  Let's do it again.  Maybe this summer.  

Paris was magic that trip.  I am looking right now at the silk sunflowers we bought in the little shop in Montmartre.  I think it was that trip.  It might have been another.  They are all conflated for me now.  We stayed in the Hotel d'Estrangers on the left bank near the Seine.  No, no, that was another trip.  We stayed across from Hemingway's home with Hadley that backed up to the Rue de Notre Dame.  Is that right?  My paper on Tender Is the Night was well-recieved.  You taught me to shop in the houses of haute couture without embarrassment.  Wasn't that you?  We walked, it seemed, forever.  I ran in the mornings in the Luxembourg Gardens.  We watched them sail boats in the fountain.  When we got home, we bought those dark green cafe tables and chairs that were there.  Remember?  Life was grand.  

Here are my first pictures with the Fuji Instax camera.  The pictures are tiny, maybe an inch and a half by an inch.  A lamp shade in the house.  My birdbath.  My possessed by demons cat.  I think I love the camera for now.  When I realize how much I am spending on teeny-tiny little pictures, I may change my mind.  But I have grand ideas of what I want to do with them.  Still, just as they are, they make a sweet picture of the life we want to believe we are living.  I will take this camera to Europe with me.  I will reduce the grand palaces to 1.5"x 1".  I think you should get one, too.  There is even a printer that works with an app from your phone, so you can print them out for a thousand times the cost of using an inkjet or laser printer.  Get it.  You will feel wealthy.  Until you go broke.  

It is Sunday which means two or three or four things.  Brunch.  I will be going back to the Arthritic Cafe where I had my most recent "incident."  I think it should be O.K. but I may be in a mood.  A lovely young woman, a model I have worked with several times, will be joining us today, so there is at least that.  We won't look like two old queens eating at the bar.  We'll look more like two old guys with a hooker.  It also means cooking dinner for mother. . . I think.  She has been on a tour.  She carries a cheap cell phone, a burner, that she turns on only to make a call.  I can never call her back because she turns it off right away.  All I have had for the last ten days are voicemail messages.  She is coming home today and should be here by ten.  A.M. or P.M.?  She didn't say.  And, of course, there is the gym.  I think I like my new routine.  I go spinning every other day.  I went three days last week.  My legs are perpetually sore.  I think I push too hard, but it is all impressionistic and I have no idea what the instructors are saying when they call out numbers and hold up fingers. 

"Give a big turn to the right a full crank.  We'll be in three for two, then back off and we're back in one.  This song is six and a half minutes, so. . . . "

I know the words.  They are in English.  I just don't have a fucking clue what they mean in context.  The ellipses is what scares me most.  

Oh, and some guys came to the last spinning class.  They weren't wearing tights.  I may have to rethink that.