Pour la science. Pour
la postérité.
No. Truly, because it
helped me go through it all.
31.07.08
So I was supposed to keep you posted, knew I
wouldn’t be able to, but thought I would address my Transsiberian travel diary entries to
you, then my grandmother fell, and I started writing to her instead.
Haven’t been writing since one week, except on the funeral.
Still don’t think I’ve understood everything, and
it may be for the best.
Haven’t seen you in three months.
Your voice is what I want to hear the most.
Your voice and your words.
That guy’s legs are completely blocking me and
I’m already feeling the blood in my ankles.
Wish he’d just move the fuck out.
I wanted to go to Mexico, to speak Spanish, talk to my tree, my desert companion, and through
him, to my grandmother.
I’m sure the Mayas knew it all, and that the
trees do link us to different worlds. El arbol de la vida.
Pretty easy, my way of thinking: what’s good,
beautiful, what’s easy to enjoy, what fills one with happiness, love, or any
emotions of that range is directly shared with my grandmother.
It’s as though something opened inside me, and
directly linked all my feelings to the earth, passing them inside it, and out
into the wild, as if they were but an electrical strength, something like
thunder, that would pass through and get into all elements, including me, the
fifth - the grand-daughter -, and reach my grandmother through nature’s strength
and beauty.
But anyway. Always the same. Got many other
thoughts in mind, but don’t know if I’d better write them down or let them
peacefully escape. Pleasing my flesh with young Juliettes. She’s been around,
she’s been around.
Yeah I should walk on. The other day we had a
meditation cession with my cousin, the one who spent 17 years between France
and India. During the fifteen minutes where you're supposed to dance, I began rubbing my bare feet
against the carpet, following the music, and couldn’t stop doing it for almost the entire dance.
I was walking, feeling the carpet relaxing my
skin, teasing my nerves, and my tears stopped. I turned to the window, eyes
closed, and the sunshine was leading me to open spaces, mountains, vivid, fresh
air. Walk on.
I knew I’d need to. And told my grandmother at
the hospital.
I also told her about the fairy tale experience
I’d had the day before coming to see her.
In Normandy, our house is five minutes away from my grandmother’s, if you cut trough the fields.
I’d gone down the hill to help my family pack the clothes they were bringing back to
Paris, to the hospital, in case my grandmother would be needing them there.
At that point, we thought she’d be okay, we'd received good news and were thinking she’d go to a re-education centre.
I went down, and started packing her stuff, but
couldn’t prevent certain thoughts from hammering inside my head:
If she dies,
who will choose the clothes she’ll wear? If I had to, I would choose the blue
dress, she looks so young and pretty in that dress.
(Less than a week later, in was in Moscow, and my grand mother was dead, and my mother went through these same clothes and chose this particular dress.)
When I finished packing, I insisted on walking
back home, refused to let them give me a lift. They were extremely concerned,
and in a hurry to get back to Paris.
So I waved at them, and crossed the road,
remembering for the first time in ages the night that young girl - or was it a
boy? - had been killed right in front of my grandmother’s house, driven over by
a tractor.
I was ten, they’d drawn the body’s shape with
chalk, on the road.
So I crossed, and reached the hidden path,
between the fields.
The light changed, as if the sun had just
appeared from behind a cloud, and it all looked shiny and stunningly beautiful.
It looked so amazing I somehow felt confident,
and amazed by life - how it can all come tumbling down in a second, how it still
remains so incredibly touching and beautiful, even when storms roar inside you.
As I climbed up, I remembered a tale from La
Comtesse de Ségur - the one about this young princess who was gifted with all
qualities, except for a nasty curiosity, that had her end up dealing with
forces of evil, in a prohibited forest she should never have entered.
I was back up on the solid, concrete road leading to our house,
when a boy, aged something around 6, came running towards me.
He’d appeared from nowhere, had black skin, and
curly hair, the exact kind of kid I’ve always loved and wanted to have, one day.
I was walking past him, staring at his pretty
figure smiling at me. I smiled back and said: "Bonjour!"
My voice was firm, yet different than usual, maybe
slightly weak, or still holding emotions.
He waited a second, then happily replied: - Ça
fait du bien d’marcher, hein?
- Ouais!,
I answered, still amazed by this vision, and by his words.
They were the exact words I’d told my grandmother's sister in law to assure her I’d rather walk back up alone than have them drive me up the
hill.
- Et
après ça fait mal aux jambes, he said.
I smiled again. I was further up on the road, and
looking as if I’d be gone soon.
He looked at me for some more time, then asked
at the top of his voice, feeling I was walking away:
- T’as
un enfant?
I hadn’t stopped looking at him.
I thought of
my grandmother, of how she would love to one day see me with children.
I also thought of how
she had always been grateful to life for having given me such freedom, how
she’d always encouraged me to enjoy my youth and liberty.
- Pas
encore. Un jour.
The light was still extremely shiny, nature
sublimée.
The houses seemed whiter, the grass and trees
greener, the atmosphere quieter and more peaceful than ever, with singing,
hidden birds.
The boy then spread his arms wide open in my
direction, looking at me with that moving smile, looking both innocent and
wise, somehow omniscient.
He seemed to be giving himself to me, laughing and determined.
As if he was offering me his entire soul and
trust already, desiring the path under my feet, yet at the same time, looking
strong and filled up with the life he wanted, his self insurance and the fact that he must have had a very loving family.
I smiled again, and something unspeakable was in that smile. I waved my hand to
say goodbye, and felt he had understood it all.
He smiled one last time, and went back running,
in an excited, happy, confident way, back to his home.
