The Restaurant de la Sirène at Asnières is crumbling; you can see it clearly when you stand up close, the bricks are split with age, the boards are warped with weather like the damaged spine of an old man. The building is a decaying, moldy monument to the men who look upon it.
THE BRICK AND SHINGLE OF THE building, housing the restaurant, is silver. At a distance, the building looks like the balding head of an old man with scrubby patches of sparse hair fading to grey.So off-putting is the building that when male pedestrians come around the corner into the town square, they are often rendered immobile by that balding pate of grey brick and masonry.
You can see them if you sit at a table outside the front of the restaurant or if you sit at a table at the window inside; they stop and stare. And you can see the looks of incredulity ingrained into their faces as if the lines of worry and consternation had been carved there with a hammer and chisel by some sardonic sculptor.
Their hands go up to their heads, venture around the back where they pat the bald spots they know are there because most of them,each morning, mirrors in hand, stand in front of their big bathroom mirrors, screwed to the walls, and ponder their naked scalps. They look away from the mirror, most of them, and try to ignore the clearings of shocking pink flesh they see in the undergrowth of grey hair.
This story is from the Spring 2017 edition of Still Point Arts Quarterly.
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This story is from the Spring 2017 edition of Still Point Arts Quarterly.
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Already a subscriber? Sign In
Standing In The Stream
I had also become enamored with the beauty of a man — it was always a man — standing in a rushing stream about mid-thigh, sunlight winking off the whitewater, casting nearly in slow-motion, over and over again, the long thin line whipping back and forth, catching the light, before barely alighting atop the water.
The Old Barn
The photograph above, by Jeffrey Stoner, is part of Still Point Art Gallery’s current exhibition, Solitude (see more images from this show on the previous pages).
The Art Of Solitude
Solitude isn’t loneliness; it’s different. With solitude, you belong to yourself. With loneliness, you belong to no one.
Wendy's Room
If sleep, a noise could reach in. Drag you out. Not sleep. No noise. No silence even. All walls sealed. Unconsciousness — the word she couldn’t think of twelve years ago. Except here she was. The mind watching itself. And wasn’t that the definition of consciousness? An ultramarine impasto. As if she knew brushstrokes. Odd, because in this life, Wendy Kochman had been an amateur violist. A failed academic and a mother. Never a painter.
On Throwing Things Away
I will work until my mind finds peace, even if that means I will work for a very long time.
Sea Foam And Clyde
Behind the house he hears the rustling of grasses that shine when the wind blows. The blades lift and turn and catch the sun and glitter like tinsel. He stands and sees the house. If you squint maybe it does look like sea foam.
The Restaurant De La Sirène At Asnières
The Restaurant de la Sirène at Asnières is crumbling; you can see it clearly when you stand up close, the bricks are split with age, the boards are warped with weather like the damaged spine of an old man. The building is a decaying, moldy monument to the men who look upon it.
