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Champs de Mars
Life is in the contrasts.
Emerging from the ordered stone streets of Paris one is greeted by a sea of leaves and blades of grass. Though the flora bustles and grows around you, the symmetry of the blocked buildings and straight streets bathes this place as well; it remains somehow solid. Fixed in time.
Small forests of freedom and topiary set against a measured sky. It creates a play between two worlds where one can bounce freely between the ordered and the natural, ascension and grounding.
As you walk on the gravel avenues towards a mowed clearing, the head of something hovering begins to enter your view. There is a steel head on graceful legs that seems to be moving upward from the bedrock. It pulls from the ground effortlessly and continuously; frozen in steel that emanates its transcendent aspirations.
An upwardly tapering ruler that taunts us to think higher, see more while also giving a coaxing impression of our insignificance. An impression that relaxes. It calms the soul from its daily tugs and tears. Conversely, it also taunts us to reach higher, to look farther, and in many ways to see past what is normally placed before us. Look up! Don’t simply look ahead on your fixed path. Dream. Explore. Invent.
Your awe, though bouncing continuously in the caverns between your ears, seems to subside and the murmur of friendly faces and laughs pulls you back to the quotidian. The voices trail with you towards a soft patch of grass. Everyone plops down and descends into the careless.
Sipping on (or gulping) a glistening bottle, stumbling over the pliable green hurdles of cut grass. The watchtower gazes from above with a benevolent and insightful eye. Letting you know that your frolic is only a frolic, your sip only a sip, and letting you bathe in the green light of your youth.
The friendly blue sky and cheerful clouds have left, with an abyss of black trailing behind them. You barely notice the change, as it has been lazy and gradual. As the time passes the paternal tower fades into the darkness. But in the night it morphs into an elegant friend that stands on the corner, drenched in an ethereal glow. She is calm and composed, but in the darkness is excited. Her long legs, slender neck, and poised face shudder with glittering excitement. Lights pulsate all around her.
She excites you for the night ahead.
Glittering EiffelSteel but Gazing
Static but Growing
Tame but Free
The contrasts are what make places interesting. The way they evoke opposites but remain a cohesive whole. They draw out the differences in us. How do we stay one with thunderous thoughts always about to collide? In their example, their solidity, these spaces teach us internal peace.
