Paris,

J’aimerais être seule, not because I have no friends to share the painfully joyful seconds of your night with, I just don’t think they deserve seeing me take a break from smiling.

J’aimerais être seule, I cancelled the party even before I fell ill and chose to spend my birthday shaving my head in my bathless bathroom and gulping ibuprofen before deliberately braving the cold wind and walking a long walk through the unfamiliar streets of the 5^th only to collapse when it was time to go to La Sorbonne for my course. I could have, at least, bought half a dozen of sugary doughnuts from Monoprix on the way back home! Alas, I’m not that smart. I was too busy strutting.

J’aimerais être seule, though I’m missing the light, almost plain, homemade Indonesian poor man’s vegetable soup that my maid used to cook me in Java just because she can’t really cook but I love her anyway. But I never succeed at making something light, let alone plain. Instead, I made serious, sophisticated soup with various spices and ingredients, just like my mother did. It does let me down a bit.

Mais j’aimerais être seule, I’m not even inviting my handsome neighbour Lady Eglise Saint-Séverin over for an espresso straight from my petit moka pot. I just don’t feel like confessing, that’s all. Ah look! She’s just turned the light over her grand Gothic face off. It’s past midnight, but the full moon won’t leave her alone. The moon is in Aries, by the way. Fire. May it ignite something passionate inside of us; it doesn’t matter if it’s wrong or right, because if it makes your heart jump up and down it must be worth experiencing.

J’aimerais être seule, not a single blues or jazz or funk, which I know nothing of, is coming out of my speaker – I know, my musician friends at Caveau won’t be proud. Maybe I’ll put on Michael Jackson’s One Day in Your Life and recall the night I left home with money worth 5 frugal lunches in my backpack – it seems to have lasted a life time. I was 16 and it was not a hard decision. It was living the decision that sometimes I found difficult, but I never looked back; I knew I wasn’t born to stay. I had an Aiwa walkman, and this song was playing on the radio when the bus started moving. Can we now have a few minutes of silence to listen to the sacred song in my head? Maybe don’t, I don’t want to listen to it, I don’t want to go back on that dark bus. I’m in Paris living the dream, for Chanel’s sake! Or am I? Ah, it depends whose dream we’re talking about.

J’aimerais être seule, maybe I’ll read Les Fleurs du Mal or Bescherelle: Grammaire Pour Tous, or maybe I’ll practice sketching again since I’ve found my favourite black Conté at my local Rougier & Plé. Actually, no – that sounds like hard work and my feverish mind can only do so much at the moment. Perhaps I’ll have another bowl of my gourmet soup so I can be blue again, but then I’d have to run ten circles around Jardin de Luxembourg tomorrow or else I wouldn’t fit into my skinny jeans anymore. Actually, I’ll take that risk.

J’aimerais être seule, and it is an act of love and grace.

J’aimerais être seule, for I haven’t really been for a long time.

je t’embrasse fort!

d.o., le 16 octobre 2016

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