Paris Forest

Sunday in the forest of Vincennes...

I plan to blog every day and every day something else pops up, or my mind wanders (yes it's age related), even at 50 I sometimes forget my own name. Deliberately! Please don't remind me either. I'm doing my damnedest to forget. So it's Sunday evening, I've just come back from discovering another part of the Parc de Vincennes. I ventured further than normal. This old boy gets around you know! I managed to find the jardin Tropicale with the help of my girlfriend Hélène I must admit I'd never have found it otherwise. Even she had a job to find it, and we did take some wrong turns. But that reminds me of something else. You see my mind wanders, and wonders. Are there any wrong turns? Looking back as far as I can without wanting to kill myself again, or at least to the age of five what has passed thru my life has always been "right", and I've never really been lost, I'd say just suspended in a learning bubble of nothingness sometimes, and that can be a dark and worrisome endroit, but now I know it was all meant to be. Like the mouse holding up the bar of the mouse trap, if it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger. Now when you're in the midst of a black period and someone says something like that to you you suddenly go from suicidal to homicidal. I didn't.

Anyway back to my cycle around the bois de Vincennes. It took two hours, the hours of 7 and 8pm to be exact to set out, get lost and found and find the tropical garden. We passed the hippodrome of Vincennes which is huge and impressive by it's enormity. I do love racehorse tracks. If you want to make a small fortune on the racetrack, start out with a huge fortune.

Again I'll try and get back to what I set out to write about. What was it? Now I can't friggin remember?

It was photography as always on my narrow mind. It was the light that struck me.  The cyclists spokes were glistening in the golden light. Kids and parents with buggies and push chairs were annoyingly there too! In my way.  This is my path now piss off!  The sun was sloping behind the trees, and caressing them with a gorgeous light as it slid down behind the lake between the trees.

So I attempted to stay in the moment and zen. It didn't last, I just can't stand the unpredictable nature of kids on forest paths, and I hate using my brakes when I've used up all my energy to work up to this speed and then to have it wasted to avoid cutting a child in half. 

I'd better stop before you get the wrong impression. I love kids but I wouldn't eat a whole one.

Where was I? 

Oh yes ff..ing photography.

I love it really!

I saw many photographs to take, but again couldn't bring myself to touch the brakes, I'm flying now!

I was with my girlfriend but so alone it was bliss! The smell of Spring fresh air(well as fresh as you'll get in Paris), birds singing gleefully, and strangely a flock of swans that were flying around very agitated as if they had wasps up their arses or something. They are loud bastards swans. I was struck by gratitude that they didn't crap as they passed over me for the umpteenth time, swan crap is huge in case you didn't know. There is no luck attached to it I can assure you. I pissed my trousers having seen it happen to another unfortunate in Buckinghamshire years ago. He's probably still cleaning himself poor man.

That reminds me of a point and shoot camera for some reason. An old Canon G9. That's what I had in my pocket on my bike as I breathed in the less polluted air of a wooded Paris suburb. Nogent is lovely quand meme!

We then passed the French olympic athletes training centre. Forgettable.

The lakes, streams and waterfalls make the forest of Vincennes a must visit.

In all earnestness my/our cycle was inspiring. I will go back with my medium format camera and tripod and hope for light half as good as I saw today. It won't ever happen, it never does. But that's what makes photography such great therapy, a little like fishing you have to wait for everything to be right before you strike. And it's an inside job. It's known to some as the zen of creativity. To be still, centred and quiet and to wait for the photo to come to you. To wait until you are touched or until you can no longer feel your arse, and then take that Tate gallery worthy picture.

Don't give up!

I may, so take my advice I'm not using it anymore.

Don't let the sunset stop you.