Underbelly, some birds and a quotation

Dear Sarah - Day 267 of our daily drawing exchange

Hi Sarah -

Collage: After visiting the Mémorial des martyrs de la Déportation on Îsle-de-France (a dark place between bridges)

The layers of history here can make for complicated sightseeing. I was busily dropping zines, making my way from bridge to bridge in the vicinity of Notre Dame when I stepped into what I thought was a small park.

There I discovered the deeply disturbing Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation, a museum/installation/architectural/sculptural experience designed by Georges-Henri Pingusson and opened in 1962. What a powerful piece of work. Talk about a complete shift in mood/emotion as I passed by the jagged spear-like triangles (razor wire/weapons/no escape/feelings of dread - do not go past this point) of the forecourt and then squeezed between the two massive pillars that mark the entrance to the dark spaces below. I kept wanting to turn around and leave, but then felt guilty that I could walk away when so many couldn’t.

Emerging after that experience, it took some time to regain my equilibrium and continue with my task of placing Found Zine at the next series of bridges. I’ve done 20 now (plus an A/P in a pretty empty free library box and the one I dropped at the top of the escalator) and have 17 more to go, most of which I’ll try to get to tomorrow. (You might have to zoom in and look past all those French men to catch a glimpse of the last one).

The coolest underbelly of a bridge so far was this one:

where I left a zine tucked away:

I mentioned I was going to do a 37-minute observation project inspired by An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, by Georges Perec. Originally published in 1975, this slim book is essentially a series of lists, notes, comments, and observations made quickly (many are fragments, point form) over the course of three days during which the author returned to sit in the same square (Place Saint Sulpice).

I didn’t want to stray too far from the bridges, so I plunked my folding chair by the Seine and watched.

Photo was snapped in a quiet moment, but enough people (and dachshunds), boats, and birds passed by to keep my pen moving.

Snippets of various languages provided me with dialogue like this line in English (spoken by a tall young man): “I went to Amsterdam a year ago and felt like a dwarf.”

Much of what I noted was inane, which was the point of Perec’s experiment.

“My intention in the pages that follow,” he writes in his introduction, “was to describe the rest…: that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.”

So, for what it’s worth, Man with excellent posture, felt hat, hands folded behind his back, walks beside a woman in a cardigan, blue-green, with a single large button done up.

I’ll spare you the rest.

Until tomorrow -
Nikki

p.s. The route taken today for the bridge project:

You can see I missed a couple - will do those on the way to the next batch tomorrow.

Hi Nikki,

I looked up the Memorial des Martyrs online—what a profound thing to stumble upon and experience in the middle of your zine placement day. It reminds me of being in Chicago at the university, where I was looking for the hospital I was born in, and doing some research for a book. I came across the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center and spent the afternoon there trying to comprehend something that was entirely outside my experience. Sometimes the things we aren’t looking for turn out to be what we need to see.

I have a question about how you placed a zine on the underbelly of the bridge. Did you climb down? Float by? Levitate?

I drew some more of the Deck Denizens today. Two blind contour birds and one pencil sketch. I also made an Italian prune plum torte, from a famous recipe by Marian Burros, the great cookbook author and food writer, who died a few days ago.

I think it’s time have a slice.

Oh, and I came across a quote today that I really needed: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the pont is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” —R.M. RIlke