posted by Charles H. Russo on Oct 16
A sea of faces and a plane suspended from the ceiling at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The plane is created with thousands of strands of tiny lights. Photos by Jordana Shalhoub.
For the Writers Island prompt, “message in a bottle:”
Living in San Francisco, I was involved in a romance with a poet who lived in New York. He wrote beautiful deep poems for me; in those days the only poem I’d written in many years was political. Searching for a romantic gesture, I remembered the fictional images of pirate ships, sailing the high seas; shipwrecked people stranded on deserted islands, rolling messages in bottles and tossing them into the ocean, in the fleeting hope that someone would find them; fair maidens being rescued by handsome soldiers; the stuff of swashbuckling adventures starring Errol Flynn.
So I created my own message in a bottle. After finding an unusual cork-topped bottle, I wrote a pertinent message on parchment, rolled it up and stuffed it inside the bottle. I lined the inside of a large box with wrapping paper depicting nautical maps and ancient ships sailing the Atlantic. I filled the box with shredded paper in oceanic colours of aqua, blue and green to cushion the bottle. Next I tossed seashells, seahorses and soaps shaped like shells and sprinkled Ocean potpourri (from Pier 1) into the box. Then I sent the package off to New York, where it apparently created quite the kerfuffle at building security. Eventually it reached its intended recipient, who greatly appreciated the gesture and the message.
After a long and circuitous voyage…
The message reached you
and touched your heart
for a moment
until you remembered
the obligations and routine
that governed your life
so you set the bottle
on a shelf for all to admire
and tucked the message
safely away in a drawer
for those mad moments
when dreams of possibility
tempted you to consider
joy might be within your grasp
if you had the courage to reach.
parisparfait.typepad.com
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