up there

i live in an oven on the sixth floor.

i pay a lot of money to live in an oven on the sixth floor with sloped ceilings.

you could have cooked an egg on my windowsill yesterday.

and my neighbor doesn't like it when i climb on the roof.

well, screw him... he has a balcony. and a bigger apartment.

(okay, so he doesn't like it when me and twenty of my closest friends climb on the roof...)

okay, i get it. but i can't just climb up there alone, can i? somebody has to stand on the pink chair and hold the window up enough so that the other person can climb up the ladder that i found in the street one night in front of the hotel de ville. it's a bit dangerous but that's part of the charm. and then once you're up there it's just...wow.

from here you can see most of paris. it looks like you could almost touch the back of notre dame though she's a moody cathedral. her mood really depends on the time of day and on the season, the weather, my mood, whether or not it's a holiday, what kind of beverage i'm sipping, who the company is, what we're talking about, if i remembered to bring a sweater/sunglasses/teaspoon/put the right music on in the background...

the tower is a little less variable, but moody just the same. if you're lucky to be up there when she sparkles it's really a treat.

if you tiptoe to the other end and turn your head to left and incline just a tiny bit, you can see the pantheon. it's my favorite thing to look at from up there. the pantheon is not at all moody (insert gender joke here).

he retains the same balance of light and shadow, mystery, poise, seriousness... all year long, at any time of day on the top of his big hill. i imagine men in long robes speaking latin and wearing sandals, flowing from in and out of his big columns. they're kind of ghosty but if i focus they become more real.

from either diagonal you can see the big clocks at the gare de lyon and the gare d'austerlitz. i love those clocks. (though i half expected them to melt yesterday). here i imagine ladies and gentlemen in forties suits and shiny shoes boarding trains and kissing goodbye and sipping coffee and carrying suitcases without wheels and hatboxes too...all looking at the enormous clocks. when the sun sets behind them you can even hear trains whistling.

once i met an adventurous neighbor from three roofs over. he heard us and decided to come and say hello. we gave him a goblet of wine from a box and sent him on his way. i think his name was bruno.

there is an apartment full of american students across the street (i think it's across the street though i find the whole thing very disorienting). the side of the apartment opens up (i swear) and if they don't pay attention and drink too much i just know one of them will fall out one of these days. they talk very loudly. i wonder if they would figure out that i saw the whole thing and ask me to be a witness. i don't like courts so i'm pretty sure i'd say no.

the best best best part of all of this though is when the saxophone player sits on the bridge between the two islands. the sound floats right up between the buildings and matches the boat shadows and it's then that i wonder if baudelaire and his mistress jeanne ever hung out up here. he kept a little apartment for her in my building and i am partial to the idea that it was mine...

so i think that's where i will be this evening. if i can find someone to help me with the window...