Bleu

To endless night. This place.

Terence Davies' Of Time and the City was played in one of the old French cinemas. There were only me and you who would go at midnight.

To sweet delight. This place.

We found this chair on the street and tried to carry it all the way home, we sat on it in front of La Seine. We kissed, suddenly, the chair broke. 

Those fond memories. Those bitter tears. Too many unsent love letters, drafts in the Gmail mailbox. It has been almost half a decade since the last time I visited Paris. I was an apprentice for an architect/furniture designer there. I fell in love also, just like how we lost balance and fell down from a chair, it was shattered, smitten and would never be completed.

Memories include: Duras, Alain Resnais, Sophie Calle, Roman Signer, Beaubourg, Palais de Tokyo. View from le balcon, seems like a lifetime ago.

Yves Klein's blue. The hesitant moon shimmer over midnight blue. The entity of blue, cast on us, straight into oblivion.

It is ever so poetic in recitation - William H. Gass' book-length essay On Being Blue, he mentioned about the onomatopoeic manifestation of the word Blue in various languages. How romantic it is when one pronounced Blue as one 'Blew Blue' (in which it must be in notated in its past tense, because how it sounded.)

Say it. Go ahead, stand before the mirror, look at your mouth, and say it. Blue. See how you pucker up, your lips opening with the consonants into a kiss, and then that final exhalation of vowels? Blue. The word looks like what it is, a syllable blown out into the air, and with the sound and the sight of saying it as one. You blew blue, though let’s pause a while before getting on to that, and try it out in the other languages you might claim to know. Bleu. But it’s just not the same, your lips don’t purse as much, the eu cuts the syllable short where the ue prolongs it, sustaining it like a piano’s pedal. Blau—that doesn’t work either, and the ow makes the mouth open too far. It’s not quite a howl, it’s a touch too soft for that, and yet it’s a blowsy sound, and untidy. As for azzurro or azul, well, those suggest something else entirely. They might do for the pale milky sky outside my window on this almost cloudy October afternoon; they won’t capture the colour of morning glories or the flag.

Bleu: The only colour that I like and am loyal to since I was a child. #4f646f is one of my favourite hex colour code in web font colour. Although, I grew to like Dutch orange of late; the complementary colour of blue, which makes Blue blue.

Gare du Nord. Hopping onto the next train to the 5e arrondissement, the Latin Quarter, just a touch of a walk along the riverbank of La Seine, walk past the first Diptyque parfum store on Boulevard Saint-Germain, the swimming pool is just off the boulevard on a modest Rue de Pontoise.

Slightly apprehensive stepping in a registered historical monument since 1981, everything seemed foreign, I used my rusty French to ask for direction and the 'locker' system. Walking up the stairs to the individual changing cubicles installed on two walkways bordered by metal railings. Each blue cubicles' door has a peephole, a mild 'peeping tom' eroticism under the red light, through the peephole, I see a combination between El Buco di Roma and a slightly more wholesome universe of Gaspar Noé's nightclub.

Under an immense glass ceiling and mosaic frescoes. Here I am, as if stepping into one of the Alain Resnais' film set, an art deco style swimming pool with two mezzanine levels. With traces of the existence of Juliette Binoche swimming in Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Bleu. Here she declared a small dose of rebellion, slightly autonomous way of swimming towards the end of the pool paying the bottom dark blue tiles markings no mind. She then reached to the end of the pool, hands cling onto the edge, she was about to fall, she took a deep gaze to the sky, with her hair immerse to the entity of blue.

She was about to get out of the water. Oh, don't we all love watching people getting up of the water? Water become pearls sliding down, follow the pathway of toned muscle on the silky skin. The time has paused, a dash of orchestral music smite the water surface, it saddened her. She was attacked by this, this somewhat vast poignancy.

Tonight, the ripples reflected their cobalt blue. I held onto the same edge of the pool as firm as how lovers held each others' backs, I wanted to repeat, so I did, I fell back and let go of my head reaching the surface of water, I looked at the ceiling and my eye wandered further: The world was turned upside down. My world was once turned upside down, the thrill accelerated as the ascenseur drove me up, I used to count to myself, and I still do, Le premier étage, le deuxième étage, le troisième étage. The re-enacting of the same space, same scene, same split second of the film frame, except a different status, a different age. It was called persistence of memory:

As for Piscine Pontoise, I learned it was constructed in 1934 by the architect Lucien Pollet. He was also behind the famous, now disused Piscine Molitor, plus Jonquière and Pailleron.

Old-fashioned 33-metre style pool. 11.20€ after-eight evening entry. It's one of the very few pools which open until midnight during weekdays, especially in one of the hottest nights in the French capital.

Piscine Pontoise
17 rue de Pontoise
5e
Paris