Pick-me-up

Princess

Look closely at her.
She crosses a city street, teetering on her stilettos, tossing her saddle bag on her right hip, trying nervously to stretch her short dress pulling up on her tights. It's daylight. The place is crowded.
Everywhere, she meets Argos's eyes: regards qui se détournent, fuient, jugent, scrutent, déshabillent, examinent. Invisibility is not hers anymore, she can not blend in with the usual confortable undifferenciated look. She is visible, too visible.
She knows that she must not look around. Elle esquisse un sourire gêné, et jette des coups d'œil furtifs au blanc de la robe dépassant de sous le manteau, de crainte qu'il ne remonte trop.
Quickening her pace in time to the quickening of her pulse, yet she begans to become bolder, et son mouvement se fait peu à peu balancier. She catches sight of the reflect of her legs in a mirror, and she smiles. She is young, and for a moment, she feels radiant, and radiant she is.
She knows that it will not last. She knows that for many years now.
Youth is her crown.






Sinon, j'ai eu une nouvelle idée. Ce qui nous amène à quatre (la précédente idée n°3 ayant été supprimée et remplacée). Reste à les réaliser.

Passante

"Look closely at her. 

She crosses a city street, juggling her briefcase and her sack of groceries. Or she walks down a dirty road, balancing a basket on her head. Or she hurries toward her locked car, pulling a small child along with her. Or she trugdes home from the fields, the baby strapped to her back.

Suddenly there are footsteps behind her. Heavy, rapid. A man's footeps.

She knows this immediately, just as she knows that she must no look around. She quickens her pace in time to the quickening of her pulse. 

She is afraid. He could be a rapist. He could be a soldier, a harasser, a robber, a killer. 

He could be non of these. He could be a man in a hurry. He could be a man merely walking at his normal pace. 

But she fears him. She fears him because he is a man. She has reason to fear."

The Demon Lover, Robin Morgan

Parfois, il y a cet instant fugitif, a feeling of completeness, touché furtif, frôlement de l'âme d'un mot, d'un geste, d'une image, d'un son, d'un lieu, d'un être. And for a while, the puzzle is complete, everything is in place. Something, unknown before, is recognised. And our mind and our heart broaden and blossom. 

I live for these moments.

Pénélope

"The late John Gardner once said that there are only two plots in all literature.
You go on a journey or a stranger comes to town.
Since women, for so many years, were denied the journey, they were left with only one plot in their lives-to await the stranger. [...] While the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a change of tendency, women's literature form Austen to Wolf is by and large a literature about waiting, usually for love."

The Virago Book of Women Travellers, ed.by Mary Morris