NEEDLING

NOTES FROM MY SPIRAL
SATURDAY AFTERNOON LAYING ALONG THE CANAL DE L'OURCQ BASSIN DE LA VILLETTE

The rowers in their little rowing boats with sliding seats up and down the lengths of the little boats
They look good with their numbers painted on their sides
Sliding along in the water splashing some of them gliding some others with the ducks and the bateaux mouches
# 4 keeps rowing by me where I’m lying down on the cement with my sandals off drinking a tall boy
She’s wearing a red t-shirt
I’m wearing a red sweat-shirt and I’m reading Jeffers
Every time she rows by my few inches of cement under the sun, she gets a little closer
Almost splashing me from her paddling the water, rowing that green slime they call a canal
She’s not very good at rowing
There’s an old man and his wife fishing up the quai with several fishing poles stuck out into the water
I don’t think I’d eat a fish if that fish came out of that water
And then again, maybe I would… it depends, I guess…
I don’t think I’d willingly eat a fish that came out of that water if I could help it and if I had a better option.

Oh… I mistook # 4 for # 37… # 37 for # 4…
They’re both blonds wearing red t-shirts
They both have large breasts
They both are wearing blue-geans
They’re both rowing up and down the canal from the Rotound to not far from where that circus used to be
And I thought it was one girl who kept getting closer and closer to me
There was two girls in two different boats in two separate red t-shirts
Four breasts
I must be a sexist pig because I didn’t notice till now that one has short hair and the other long hair
Goes to prove where I was looking.

I want to go rowing with the ducks and the bateaux mouches too
And I especially want to go ridding on a bateau mouche like the one that just slid by
One of the ex-freighter kind closed up to be made into a floating home
Several people on deck barefoot around a table with loads of empty wine bottles
One guy was on the phone away from the other folks
The others were sitting in a semi circle having what seemed like an after lunch smoke
And the captain was stirring from his little cabin
He also wore a red shirt.

# 37 is coming by again
I can tell them apart now, I’m so proud of myself

Sometimes I love Paris
Where else can I sit on the edge of the canal barefoot, having a couple of tall boys reading Jeffers?
With all the bourgeois and the young people and the old couple strolling up and down the quai
And the people rowing up and down the canal
How can I move back to Texas in July with Paris right here, at my feet, underneath my ass?
On days such as this I tell myself I don’t need a job
I don’t need money
I don’t need a schedule
I definitely don’t need to earn a living
I just need to lay my ass down about the city staring at the beautiful people
Even the ugly ones
In the sun…

There’s two fellows in one boat, their boat is a longer boat than the others
It’s designed for two people and it’s numbered # 1
They’re pros going about their business faster than the birds barely making any waves
Or splashes
They’re lean wearing white wife-beaters or Marcelle’s as we say in these parts
They take themselves very seriously
They mean business
I wonder if they’ll be able to slow down enough to make the turn when they get to end of the bassin
Nothing like # 4 who really struggles
She was just ten feet away from me and I was ducking her paddles thinking I was gonna get paddled…

Saturday afternoon waiting for the movies…