Architecture of Cities: Mapping Beauty XXI

Truthful Fiction

Louis Aragon’s Le Passage de l‘ Opéra: A cul de sac of French arcades: The home to history’s stories- – not Aragons’. The “…Passage…” belonged to Paris, France. I imagined arriving at dusk: I imagined stories not mine revealed: I imagined whimsically tapping about as if in a fictional Playpen. The Playpen where memories resided as destinations- -Where destinations became memories:

There and other retreats, realized as tales told in photo novels:

Vanishing worlds revealed: A shadow of time  appears: The remains are ours: Aragon desperately wanted the future to remember the past: Aragon’s forsaken, forgotten passage is a lamentable loss: elixir of life crushed by time on earth and ultimately vanished: The moment of memory frozen in “tenses”. Imaginations transport our lives: We all pose and dance nakedly: We all suspect we are somehow enjoined: If we may imagine- – Henri Matisse’s Dance(1).Paris, Boulevard des Invalides: If my camera can step out of my reality; If the day after is imagined- -is beyond our imagination.

   The film director Billy Wilder’s  beloved art collection was not about something collective: It was about cities and continents: Passions crisscrossing the planet for the pleasurable spectacle that is art: To trace “Billy“ might be akin to galloping strides. He stood where oxygen breathed: He was an enlightened filmmaker and art collector: He was in Paris with Kirk Douglas: I know “Billy” was in New York with a friend: I know Billy was in Los Angeles with an art dealer: I know he was in many cities for the sake of art: If to trace his steps I might  imagine his conversations: I might see his cities and cityscapes through the eyes of Sabrina’s and Ray Millands’. I  might witness “Billy’s” flashflooding  of visual curiosities: Elevated passions, canvases while traversing Sunset Boulevards: The Wilder urban landscapes might dance like Matisses’ “Dance(1)”. His pleasures are dangerously so near the sun: A dash of life’s pleasures- -seen in the eyes my Nikon’s world captured across from the forever “Billy”.

I have an undying admiration for Humphrey Bogart: The actor hustled chess games from New York City’s Central Park to Coney Island: He stepped often into the sixth avenue arcades: He scurried between games and parts of the city that can seem like rounding the Indianapolis “Brickyard” 500 numerous times: The Bogart urban chess lore was never about chess alone: He was hustling for a course in survival with a wry amusement:

Bogart hustled New York’s three-hundred square miles of elevated rails and underground subways at horse racing speed for the joy of the hustle, the joy of a experience: Certainly the exuberance captured my camera’s imagination: My imaginary eyes saw across my city grit and pleasure: My single reflex in dream considered millions of photographs in Bogart’s eyes:

There, is always me: Fleet and wired my city could imaginatively be seen as in rooks, knights, bishops, and a few queens and kings: To see the city as if a Casablanca “Rick”, a “Maltese…’ like Sam Spade: To measure the game of chess the streets of the city’s boroughs and Hollywood’s eyes all in a single frame: I may as well had been a pawn in Bogart’s urban lore.

My life began at eight years old: I sat watching the Super Panavision widescreen version of Lawrence of Arabia: In one hand I held my grandmother’s hand: In the other I balanced my Coke and chocolates: I never heard David Lean the director yell “cut”. That evening of Oscar proportions was my initiation: Film, fantasy and life.

Years later I learned that  Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif escaped the arduous film schedule of the  desert asylum for the nearest and bestest cosmopolitan life style to be had: Another education of sorts: Carousing defined: Drinking, gambling and essentially dissolution of your known self was on full display in the Paris of the Middle-East: Beirut.

My camera imaginatively navigated the naked winds and vanishing perspectives: Jordanian deserts and Andalusian country sides appeared: The world awaited  the arrival of Kings and hungry Hollywood kings: The  ballad sounds of Middle-Eastern Fairuz and the toreador enchanting Bolero sounded the welcome to O’Toole and Sharif: They came to relax and play: My camera if, if was my reality saw only the shadows of histories before my time: Cities and landscapes awaited my captures: Everything is frozen in time as my dreams are seen on screens and realities captured in 20mm.