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Yesterday, I did walk by in the late afternoon. It wasn’t raining, but there was a cruel, cold wind. Surrounding the enormous white tent were only ancient trees, bare cobblestones, empty benches and bistro tables, all blasted by the pitiless gale…
I began to have the fancy of the tent as a shifting distending entity, distorted by the shapes of elbows and heads pressing against its straining seams, like a thousand Alices had eaten their cakes and were sprouting ever-longer limbs. I waited for a giantess’ foot or a seven-foot nose to tear through one of the walls, but it never did. This flight of imagination should have been my first clue. The wicked west wind carried some feverish spore or beastie deep into my lungs, and today I have an unsettled cranium and a painful wheeze like a fourteen year-old model before her morning’s first cigar.