bart plantenga
not quite poems, not quite journal entries, meta-factual snapshots of everyday Paris life
I spent years wandering the haunted streets of NYC & Paris both bulging with ghosts & memory, rich in phenomenological detail, encounters & coincidence & the enticing scent of decay, where the old ignites the new. This sensory wealth tends to overpower the individual residents & in order to survive you eventually end up ignoring it all. One day you wake up & wonder why you’re even living here; you must either put up or shut up; either reinvent your relation to your surroundings or get a divorce. & rather than do the easy thing—taking snapshots—I decided to record what my 5 senses registered by scribbling down a “snapshot” per day for a year while wandering, engaging in dérives—the walking & writing producing countless notepads with barely legible scribbles.
- L’Étude de L’Économie dans un Verre
The Pik Clops remains our HQ as long as they serve 12-F vin rouge ordinaire & continue to play art-punk-funk-anarcho-folk-post-hillbilly tapes … We—DS, HD, ND, BK, BS, MEB & CP—are here until our last centime, discussing the dictatorial imperative of speed, of shine, of order over beauty & poetic purpose—does commitment matter or is enthusiasm just co-opted by commercial forces? An American at the bar overhears us; he’s impressed, buys us a round using bombastic hand gestures. But generous is generous & free even better. & DH, in her American twang yells: “Vive L’Americains!” “Mais pas l ’Amerique de Bush et le CIA,” there’s always a refining disclaimer. We’re living it up as we plot to change the sentence structure of literature from Lost to Gone Generation. Until LE notices—she notices everything except her own talent—that the American has vanished—“Il est disparu!”—skipping out on the bill. & we’re left taking Economics 101: the Big Lie, PR, Real Politik in a wine glass &, at 2:30 AM, we’re still fumbling for fuzzy, sticky centimes in corners of shoulder bags. Instead of a free round, we suddenly owed major money: 35 beers & glasses of wine as well as what the American & entourage had scooted out on, totaling some 750 francs ($125)… DH proposed calling her lawyer dad in California to bail us out. But, in the end, we came up with a heavy & painful pile of 500 francs & the bartender, valuing intent over result, let the rest slide.
- Fools des Feuilles
The leaves still clinging to black bark branches cast shadows that appear to slap the thighs of the kneeling woman. Was she washing a wound in the puddle? Praying? Or just looking for something she has lost? Could I help? Among the fallen leaves, painted in glorious hues, she whispers “non,” as if the whisper has come from some other body part. I kick on through the autumnal carpet. Leaves leap up over my shoes like flames as the fat arboreal aromas draw me into a past I covet as my own, where faith is kept in KL’s hair which, I remember sometimes smelled of the sea & sometimes a damp forest, in 7th grade geography class.
- Il Pleut des Pigeons
The pigeon simply falls from the grey sky. Well, not quite, it hit a window that looked like sky—the fatal attraction of tromp l ’œil. In Paris, they have special brooms for the streets & special vacuums for the dog truffles but no special shovel—or should it be some kind of stainless steel spatula?— for the many dead pigeons. Pigeon fatalities may be in part the result of their lackadaisical arrogance, a kind of macho derring-do, smugly, defiantly developing an entire new sense that allows them to leap out of the path of near-certain death at the very last micro-second. Until something goes wrong. The girl with grey mer eyes—picture the North Sea in January—stood very still to stare at the last twitches of the pigeon before going back to play in the leaves.
- Long-Distance Identité
In the November-February period you try to stave off loneliness with stiff drink, supple words leading a sentence down a sans issue to utter cinematic onanism & warm cafés drenched in yellow light like a Van Gogh painting or something. & I call GP again from my favorite obscure phone booth on Rue des Blancs Manteaux, the one that keeps weather out, like 1 of those old recording booths they had on the boardwalk where you could record a message to your lover & it would issue a vinyl record in a few minutes. We imagine elaborate maps & describe how I will find my way to her Venice. “I dream of me on my knees kissing you.” She says some streets in Venice are so quiet & off the beaten track that we could do it at high noon under a balcony. There would be no way not to. “If you ever find your COURAGE to come visit me.” & here I stand—debating whether to save or jeter the phone card as souvenir—in the middle of the Rue Rambuteau-Rue du Temple intersection, staring at a huge graffiti: WHO AM I POLE VAULT HAHA.
- A Côte de Reverie
The old man gnawed on the juicy pear that came from a country that did not exist when he was young. His mouth holds few teeth. (Did he store them somewhere? & remember when each 1 had let go?) The sweet poire droplets hold sunlight as they drip into the lap of his coat. Suddenly it occurs to me I have not been writing in my journal. This arouses the anxiety that always lies dormant in my midst. It is as if I’m defined by how well I’m able to write about things that conspire to swirl about me without meaning, sense or direction. As if rendering meaning could be like making a bed. Or drawing a circle with 1’s pen around the droplet absorbed by his manteau.
- Psychiatrique-Geographique Balade is Best
I can measure my level of frustration with myself, my writing, my relations, my finances by the length of the walks I take. I take the #2 Metro out to Bois de Bologne. You live somewhere desirable like Paris or NY & you’re always conniving ways to escape: via Walkman, vacation, workaholism, shopping or simply ignoring everything about the city that can 1 day fascinate & the following annoy to the point of exasperation just short of suicide, buoyed only by the thought of Orwell & others like him living in poverty & somehow triumphing. I do not like who I am, so I kick through red-heading-into-brown autumn leaves with the hormonally tagged scent of decay beckoning me to lay down upon this Earth. Morbid thoughts you don’t share because there’s nothing worse for relationships than wallowing in depression. Nobody wants to risk going down with you. But then you discover others who thrive on listening to your problems, like tourists who visit disaster sites. I walk all the way back to the Marais, worth at least 3 sessions at any shrink. I am tired & sleep well.
- Paris Scratch, Sensitive Skin Books, 2016
https://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/books/paris-scratch-bart-plantenga/
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