Maybe the last one:
******
Better the devil you know, people say. But they don't take your route home from school.
The other side of the street torments you on an evening like this, taunts your memories. Has that headstone always tilted like that, or is the fog pushing it slowly over? Shouldn't the lights be stationary? They're just faraway kitchen windows, after all. Not bobbing, nor slowly winking. Not.
You cling, instead, to the featureless wall on your other side whose uneven mortar scratches your searching hand. You've never seen past the twisted metal decorations to see what's behind it. Tonight ignorance is bliss.
Excellent all around.
I love this whole commnity. And Teppy is brilliant.
Don't say last, ita, please.
Maybe I'll move this to my LJ later.
connie, I loved that post. Gave me the sense of all sorts of images and familiar-emotions (which are the only things I know how to read "through", if I'm making any sense).
I'm so glad I've subscribed to this thread for lurking - I love reading it.
One more for places.
You come out of the palais, along an endless hall lined with enormous mirrors, through a gallery where great painters commemorated French victories, never defeats. The steps at the back are broad, a gracious sweep of white marble. Odd to think that Marie Antoinette once came this way, tittupping on diamond-studded heels.
Across the gardens, you settle on a bench. Before you is a pool. Suddenly the surface breaks into gaping black holes: the mouths of fish, knowing it's tourist season, greedy for madeleines.
You throw them crumbs. Behind you, the sun drops low, touching avenues of chestnut and lime.
I got into minor trouble in the Salle du Guerre - the historian in me was outraged at the chronological line of victories, because the there wasn't a single defeat in there. Where the hell was Waterloo? Agincourt? I asked that question rather spontaneously and horrified the multilingual tour guide.
It's a stange place, Versailles. The palace put me off; so damned white, tiny little beds, everything much too heavy. But the gardens, and the avenues lined with chestnut trees, and all those extremely friendly sheep, and the pampered fish, those amazed me. I have pictures somewhere, of all those holes in the water, the fish-mouths gaping up for butter pastry.
I want to see the Orangery. The terraces fascinate me.
Actually, the Trianon is bizarre. I'm trying to remember if that's the one, actually - it looks to constructed mostly out of very stale salami. I recall we were wandering the grounds and came across it unexpectedly, and thought, gah, she made a house out of lunchmeat.
edit: Actually the Grand Trianon, and it was the columns that did it. We turned the corner and there they were: pillars of coppa salami.
I thought Napoleon had the Grand Trianon redone.
