This story, one of my collection of seven mask pieces—which should be called just Masks, or Masque Suite, or such, but has probably become Fugitive Colors—colors (relationships, identities) that over time can change, lighten, darken, or almost disappear. "Colors" also refers to flags, which are a symbol of identity, and "true colors" has to do with one's identity. Also, three or four of the stories have a lot to do with an artist and the bright paint colors that were his trademark. So it all fits . . . in my meandering way. The Rilke quote I use as epigraph to the collection mentions colors and also explains the relationships between my repeating characters.
Everything, as I already wrote, has become
an affair that’s settled among the colors
themselves: a color will come into its own
in response to another, or assert itself, or
recollect itself.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne)
"L'Inconnue de la Seine," set in Paris, is a kind of prequel to "The Persian Warrior" (being set four years earlier), and has been published in the gorgeously artistic Wild Roof Journal, Issue #14. Another of the stories, "Day of the Dead," is due to be published in Woodcrest Magazine (Emotional Transitioning issue) sometime soon.
It made me happy to visit Paris again in this story, remembering a sunlit afternoon ramble along a genteel tree-lined canal, an evening concert at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. My nostalgia for the city influenced the story's mood:
"It was late September, with days waning and the light mellowing richly before finally leaching away, reminding anyone with literary leanings of Prufrock or Strether (Eliot and James, respectively), who life had wistfully passed by. Reid, at merely 37, couldn't claim that for himself, but felt it threatening nonetheless. He drifted for long, elegiac hours along the river, across bridges, at the alluring mouths of alleyways, past warm-lighted cafés, feeling that sense of not belonging anywhere, with anyone."
Come journey back with me . . .
