Paris, France, Europe. Painting

Low-profile canvas. Does not take up space, or project, or jut-out. Painted on sides. High-Gloss and deeply varnished. Ready to hang. Last metaphor of Émile Zola's "Germinal". Ascending from darkness to light. (Des hommes poussaient, une armée noire, vengeresse, qui germait lentement. An army of blackened men, poised, vengeful, slowly germinating (underground). My translation.). Université Paris-Sorbonne 1974. Walked right in. No problem. Welcome. We've been expecting you. N.E. corner of old Sorbonne. Rue Saint-Jaques and Boulevard Saint-Germain. Standing there, gauche but never stupid. Scènes de la vie de bohème. Kilometre Zero. Absolutely it. Educated but working-class. Seeing the 20 somethings (etc.) rolling around in gleaming German cars. Having coffee at sidewalk cafe in their designer clothes. Me standing in darkness, starving. I had already moved from Sorbonne dormitories into the most dismal garret in Paris. Me? one they deign, if lucky, to be a footballer or guitar hero. To entertain them. Then and now. Keeping it all for themselves really. Offer of a Ph.D. scholarship (working-class so couldn't buy it) from a Harvard Professor! Integrity precludes being their political tool. Thanks, but no thanks. Never went to Musée du Louvre. Never. Too obvious, tourists too. Went to Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Stunning. Modern and now. Best I've ever seen and I've seen a lot all over world. We've been preparing for you. C'est Pierrot! C'est Pierrot gamin. Le mignon drôle, n'est pas? Sensed "Old Gaurd" of Paris, worried. 45 years ago. As if Houellebecq came out of nothing. Paris catacombs beneath. Millions of dead. We too passing through, same old, same old, etc.? But this time it was bite-your-lip different. And if I am also allowed a metaphor: the French and or European Oak. Attacked by a parasitical fungus. Branches already fallen. Whole tree set to collapse. Should I care? Then and now those 20 somethings, and their families, never cared for me. Whilst I starved. Whilst I had not. It looks like they might not survive as a totality. Survival of fittest you see. Not that what comes after is any better. They never helped me. Far from it. Helped/help themselves only. And thus proven not fit to survive. Ipso facto. For I am, absolutely it. Ipso facto. A view from catacombs beneath. Ascending to light and hope? Pas du tout, it's a horror, unfortunately. Left Paris, hungry, to go all the way to Aix. Paris made an Artist of me. Me not knowing it. A woman in Aix; joyeusement autosuffisante. Hauteur of great beauty and grande classe. Un balcon naturel souhaitable, also. Didn't know it at time but given the brush-off by Paul Cézanne's. Bien sûr. But I was not listening to another scold by then. As well as not being vulnerable, really. Females over-estimating their allure always amusing. However I was enthralled by environment. Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow in dappled sunlight of a morning. Breeze carrying scent of dew on lemons, evaporating in morning sunlight. Where Zola visited. Same old, same old. Citron Pressé, Monsieur? Non, j'ai besoin de passion comme Anaïs. Pas de décorum. A not-me clown-puppet in a snide puppeteer's theatre. Le mignon, drôle? Went from Aix to nearby Italy, hungry for a meal. Stayed for three months. Then someone asks me to play for an Italian professional football (soccer) club. But it wasn't football they were playing. It was diversity for hungry working-class. My safeguarding parents had taught and trained me to be both literate and prescient (includes deduction and induction) from a very early age. I was prescient then of what experience latter revealed. That diversity would benefit me not at all. In fact less than zero. Football? Thanks, but no thanks. Nevertheless my world was much more considerate, selfless, to me then. Before all the nasties. After Paris. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast Yes, that was me, but I am truly not convinced it was in any way lucky. ( Eloquent story?).