I walk through my blindness the way I saunter down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, ever delighted by the raw material of the senses. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. 
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September 7, 2023 at 9:52pm
by Mark Willis
Rue des Rosiers. [Photo by lodrorigdzin; all rights reserved]
I didn’t realize Friday night that when Alex said he dropped by Café Mouffe, he wasn’t simply humoring my imaginary conceit. He was there, in Paris, and the photos of Café Delmas were shot and posted on his Flickr site that afternoon. I am touched by this kindness. That two blind flaneurs can find such synchronicity on opposite sides of the planet is one of my greatest satisfactions in blogging.
Alex covered a lot of Paris in an afternoon, from Gare du Nord to the fifth, then from Rue Mouffetard to the Marais. He writes of loitering (flâner):
I waited around the corner … on Rue des Rosiers, opposite Chez Marianne. There was rain, and rain brings the gift of perception of space, just like that. I was listening for people passing by, which was easy too: their footsteps echoed against the facades. And I did my shooting like in the past. Randomly, for the joy of capturing, with a sense of complete abandon.
I stood on that corner(I think it’s the same one) last summer and snapped a photo of L’As du Fallafel.
2 Comments
#1. alex 09.08.2023
this is about 5 houses to the left of where you were
#2. Mark Willis 09.08.2023
I knew it had to be close, Rue des Rosiers is an intimate street.
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