"Paris Out of Hand" [.]

[fiefoe]

French lessons:
    'la poudre aux yeux', powder in the eyes = pulling wool over someone's eyes
    'gueule de bois', face of wood = hang-over
    'le but' - the aim
    'A folie a deux' is a madness for two, the kind you wish would last
    'Quelle trouvaille!' What a find!
    'nada': Serbo-Croatian 'hope' and the Spanish nothing

<Graffiti found in Cafe Nada>:
    __ Discreet, married publisher of a certain age seeks chilling, thrilling novella, 70 to 85 pages, which trifles with the reader's feelings, then gives him what he wants.
    __ Call 43 20 79 86 for a lissome, startled sphinx with green eyes and a smart answer for every stupid question plus a truculent, monosyllabic gauhco shiviering in a fat hotel -- two characters who've disrupted the symmetry of my novel-in-progress.

<Arse Poetica>: Spreads poetry by the seat of one's pants... Americans, with their overall larger buttocks, can handle grosser mots, vulgar, but with adipose, words and meatier swatches of verse.

Names in arts invoked (along with Gustave Dore, Rabelais, Queneau, Georges Perec ...):

• Julio Cortazar, so often cited by Argentine Parisians as the author of each coincidence that makes their lives worth witnessing.
• Following the ruination of his pineapple farms and printing enterprises, Balzac hid from his creditors at a charming pavilion...
  
• Erik Satie wrote, addressed, and mailed letters to himself to mark every significant event in his life.
  
• (The cafe) keeps a few tables reserved for this purpose, in honor of one of Stravinsky's vices and his ballet score Jeu de Cartes.
  
• Gone are the days when Romantic poet Gerard de Nerval paraded his lobster on a leash. 
  

One last quote: 'There are days when everything about us is lucent and ethereal ... and everything suggestive of spaciousness: the river, the bridges, the long streets, and the lavish squares - has put that spaciousness behind itself, is painted on it as on a tissue of silk.' [Rainer Maria Rilke]

In parting: 'Windows want your eyes, faces await your reflections'.