Montmartre et le Chat Noir

Montmartre doesn't belong to the metropolis, Montmartre stays on its hill and overlooks the city from above with that slight sense of superiority that, more or less, all the artists have.
Montmartre isolates itself because it already is out of time, as anyway art has to be, and it dresses up with streetlamps, cobble-stoned alleys and pastel colors houses.
Montmartre is a bohémien artist, he hangs around with an old coat and contemplates with melancholy the skyline with a cigarette sliding from his lips.
Montmartre makes your soul dance with the sound of an accordion, paints a scene on your heart, makes you feel a bit like a Poète Maudit, seeking for something you will never find, and a bit like Amelie Poulain, trying to grab with your wide eyes and your shy smile all the beauty surrounding you.

When I reach the top, a bit flushed for the uphill, beyond the slightly blinding white of the Sacre Coeur, Place du Tertre is still a bit sleepy: there are just a few painters at work at this time, already dedicated to ricreate on their canvas their own personal view of what's surrounding themselves, which kinda looks like a painting already.

Nobody asks me if I want to have a portrait, there is no more the old painter with a White beard that, 15 years ago, was telling me that I used to be too serious, while I was eating a baguette sitting on the ground in front of him.

I glance some canvas and I move behind the square, attracted by a panoramic corner, where a tree and a streetlamp shape the view over the Montparnasse skyscraper, as if to highlight even more the contrast between this place out of time and the rest of the city.

I start to go downhill, twisting myself in the alleys, letting myself being guided just by inspiration and following streetlamps, canopies, bistrots with wrought iron tables, walls covered with wysteria in blossom, graffitis and signs of restaurants with curious names.

I find a Vineyard, I find flowered corners, houses that disguise their facade behind a blanket of dry ivy, stuccoed walls which maybe hide some beautiful secret.

If I were Amélie I would probably do a treasure hunt for my secret love as well, in order that he might be able to find a little bit of myself in the middle of these corners of sweet d'antan beauty.

If I were a Poéte Maudit I'd be undoubtly inspired in my own seek for the impossible, and, maybe, I would be able, even if just for a second, to find a little bit of peace.

And it's peace what I find strolling around in this Sunday morning at the end of March, in a sleepy Montmartre kissed by the very first Spring sun.

There is peace but also poetry - and it's not that obvious that these two aspects can get along together.
And I also like to think that there is a little bit of myself...