The eye of Paris

“Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.”

– Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

It was cold and a bit windy when he arrived. Nicolas and I decided to have a quick smoke before entering Orsay’s museum. We headed for the Seine, just beside the museum and found a quiet spot where we could deliberately damage our lungs and enjoy a peaceful moment. After a few puffs I recognized the eye from afar. The eye I saw a day earlier in the “marché de nœl” at the Champs Elysée. It stood in the Concorde plaza and gazed along the historical axis. The whole thing reminded me a bit of the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg that loomed over the valley of ashes in Fitzgerald’s book the great Gatsby.

I used aquarelle to paint this picture because everything top-down was drenched. From the heavy clouds to the unabating Seine passing by the watery eye. I believed the eye was watery because it was still grieving what happened to Paris the night of the shootings. But the Ferris wheel rotates, marking the passage of time. And time heals all wounds. At least, that’s what we’re told.