la grande roue

Imagine looking at the world through a pop-up book. Looking down at an aerial view of something a little surreal and fictional, an image of something else – soft and vividly colored, stretching farther and farther and farther. Her day ended looking at that picture. Swaying and terrified atop la grande roue – the great wheel – the centre of the cheap gaudy fair that had juxtaposed itself on the lawn of the old chateau - she took in a panorama of her city. There were the rows of cottages inhabited by duddy old men and very young couples and some of the teachers she had met earlier-the young ones especially sweet and kind and eager to speak English or Spanish or Italian or anything but French. The chateau and cathedral of course directly below, lit up just enough that their outlines glowed against the sky. The restaurants, bars, cafes, shops, cobblestoned streets – those same streets, she learned while precariously hanging above the world, that were dismantled by students during the revolution to provide trajectories to counter police attacks– the man on the corner breathing fire and asking for money, the man on the corner playing the guitar in a top hat asking for money, and the man on the corner without arms asking for money. And she saw the school and her room (a mess of clothes and books and a baguette she had for dinner) where she had accidentally locked herself in for twenty or so minutes until she was rescued by her roommate, and the night guard watching his news, reading his paper, and preparing himself to draw her into another long and delightful conversation about poverty in China, and his stamp collection, and the problems of today’s generation, and the oncoming world war three, and a rare five euro coin he found which is worth a lot but which doesn’t make him rich, and the beautiful chateaus of France and how France had castles long before England and much more that she didn’t fully understand. And even though she is now in her bed, off the wheel down on earth it still feels like she is looking at an image, something mysterious and a bit unreal and dreamy.