Impressions from Journeys

More than the landscapes, cities hold my attention, immediately and forever moved in my mind. Each one has its odor - hot wind and grasses in Provence, the stagnating water in Venice, odor of Coal in Cracow, heady perfumes in Tashkent -, each one its din or its murmurs, palavers, each one its sky - so short sky of Manhattan, truncated by human buildings -, each one the taste of its food, the women, profiles, the dream of its foundation.

I love the North Sea. I wish I were born over there, in this country under the sea, scratched by the wind and the channels, hidden between dunes and paths of rain.

Venice, with its astounding light-obscure, its architecture of laces and its channels - faint or sometimes dead- remains the privileged destination of artists, writers and photographers avid to lose themselves over there in search of inspiration.

Andalusia, eternal witness of Reconquista: insane battles of Cid, Isabelle and Carlos Quinto. Now still, like each year, fighting against these German and Belgian tourists who take it by storm.

I like ruins. They very often look to me hanged on in the sky like these walls of Cnossos, more linked to my memory than to our ancestors' life. I enjoy contemplating phantoms circulating in these destroyed palaces, to see them building day after day, through their insipid daily life, the brilliant civilisations we speak about in our universities.

Samarkand, as a silk wire that one unrolls under the blazing sun of History, spreads out its mausoleums, medersis and mosques. It is a station hall for History and people from Asia: Moslems, Russians and Mongolians await a train called Marco Polo or Tamerlan that will never come.

Crossroads for the people, as hidden from the world but containing it all, Picadilly Circus raises up its crowd like a museum its treasures. A moment is enough -without rainstorm - to make the whole planet having an appointment here.

Following Franz Kafka's steps, Prague is a stage where sometimes are played Middle Ages farces, baroque tragedies or some dark revolt during the famous Spring against the gray Stalinist era.

Beachhead for the magic East, imperial Istanbul, placid witness of so many civilisations, shines like too many fireworks in my memory: the song of the muezzin in the morning, the souks and the mosques queuing like a tale without end... the blows of canon when comes the Ramadan evening and the noisy nights like wedding's suppers... Istanbul is immortal, so is life.

Riviera, ground of rest. Actually, I do believe that Mediterranean sea itself, this Mediterranean sea, root of our civilization, lies there on holiday.