Friday 13 July 2012

SUGAR BREAD


A white woman in a black swimsuit gazes from a Paris (48 degrees North, 2 degrees East) kiosk display. The same image is on a billboard. A text above the woman's head reads Pain du Sucre, which translates to English as Sugar Bread.

Her lightly bronzed limps, her curvaceous buttocks, her delicately prominent mons veneris, the sweeping arabesque of her spine, her generously pert breasts, the half-turn of her head, all render her alluring.

On a barge, berthed by the Pont St. Michel, three white men, one with a camera, run a photo-shoot. Three women – all black – work the photo shoot. The two models dress, apply make-up and preen. One wears black underwear covered by a diaphanous black body slip. She laughs and covers her mouth with her hand. The production assistant blows bubbles that the light breeze wafts away. The men remain louche, seemingly above it all.

A bateau parisien, crowded with tourists, who take photographs and wave, cruises through the central channel of the Seine. An open-topped tour bus passes along the road above the river. Young travellers on board holler and gesture, jeer and laugh.

The evening sun dabs gold on the river, as Monet might.

A point will come, therefore, when the effort to expand or to maintain the volume of the industrial circulation will drive the effective bank rate to a level, which is, in all circumstances, deterrent to new investment relative to saving. At this point the slump sets in.

The woman on the kiosk gazes on the scene and on us.

Sucre? Pain?

What is she selling? What are we buying?

We are such  stuff as dreams are made on


The Collected Writings:A Treatise on Money: book; J.M. Keynes; Macmillan;1971
Tempest: stageplay; William Shakepeare; 1611

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