Actually, it is Eurydice that I am considering on the shores of the Bassin d'Arcachon. And the burning question is "what's in a gaze?"... Because gazes sear in the Song of Songs. Remember how her gaze cast him down, made him beg "Look Away" (S7:2). What happened in that moment? Was it her gaze that dragged him down into mortality? ... or further - into the Elysian Fields to wander amongst lotus.
There is another Eurydice, Eurydice of Thebes. She also goes down. But it was not the result of the gaze. Her's was the mourning of the dead son. It was the words "he is dead" that brought her down. She could not live with the words. It was not a matter of sight, but a matter of words, semiology.
And two old ladies taking their evening tipple at the local tabac on the Allée de la Chapelle with their lap dogs in tow. Two grandes dames 'in bloom' in the twilight. There is no fraught gaze here. There is peace, to cede without conceding. No loss or deficit.
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