Meeting Francoise.

I first saw her in silhouette.

One leading, the other living a life narrated by the voice of the other, it would not be long until they reached my table.

Sitting atop the café in L’Pompidou Centre, I spent hours watching the silhouettes walk by. In the late morning, a surging wash of visitors would paint the concrete floor, both in the sharpness of their line and in the blurred states of their shadows. The effect is renewing and steady. However today, I found something distinctly different. I reached for the camera to document the moment for the fear that no one would believe what would happen next.

There she was, blind.

I saw the two friends traverse the interior space arriving at the foot of the escalator beneath me. So all at once, I captured the moment. I wondered what her imagination had shown her at L’Pompidou Centre and as the thought left me, I returned to my writing.

Without reason, I looked up to search for a friend that would never come and it was then that I heard them, the blind woman and her friend.

“Francoise, we’re coming up to a glass topped table now. The seats are lined with some red crushed velvet fabric, and the frame is curved steel ok darling. There are two other tables beside this one, and they are empty. You can sit here love. I’m going to go get some food for us, what would you like to have?”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all Jenny. You choose.”

Francoise was listening intently but I could tell that her eyes, dormant underneath her skin, were somewhere else. She looked up as if she could see, emerging from below the level of the water into her first gasp of air. Jenny’s description lifted her through the liquid ceiling that comes with being blind, and she could breathe again.

With a rough sketch of her surroundings, Francoise moved to her hands aged with beauty and yet pregnant with the curiosity of a child. They were feeling, touching, seeing everything out of sight. The painting in her head was not yet finished and I had a chance to be a part of that image, imagination, she needed only to hear me.

To be continued…