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Bonjour Paris,

I’m further away from you than usual and the little birds are chirping away especially inside this particular sycamore tree when I’m writing this. They will leave their nest soon and come back again before it gets dark and make another festive noise before their bedtime. 

From my single tent (though it has built a situationship with me over the last couple of nights), the calm Lake Lugano looks stirred by a few swans and their signets coming into the scene before disappearing again. The peaks of the surrounding prealps are touched by the newly-risen sun.

I have been sleeping very well, once I’ve pitched my MSR Hubba 1-person in the dark after travelling for thirteen hours, two of which was spent queueing at the immigration in Milan, comfortably in my merino gear in my single Fjällräven sleeping bag on my SEATOSUMMIT ultralight inflatable sleeping pad and a basic inflatable pillow I picked up from Décathlon while passing Boulevard Saint-Germain recently – all packed neatly in my 35-litre Fjällräven backpack.

The last music I heard before I headed to Switzerland was Valse Sentimentale No. 2 in G Minor played by Eric Christian and it’s been playing in my head through my train journey from Malpensa where I flew to from London, through my exploration of Lugano’s old town’s narrow pedestrian lanes in the October sun, through my bus ride to the foot of Monte San Salvatore and especially through my short hike toward the top – short because my fear of height kicked in at some point. 

I packed my headphones away to allow my senses to pick up any sound, image or touch at their own free will but the music has stayed inside me, perhaps in the background. Don’t expect me to be able to translate it into a hum because it is deeper than remembering. Like everything I have experienced and continue experiencing, it keeps flowing, rippling or simply vibrating inside me like water. In the river of life, I am water; I guess it is the illusion I choose to flow gracefully. Dust may feel too rigid but the water contains it. The air may sound too flaky but the water contains it. Fire may seem too passionate but the water contains it. 

In the end, like the beginning, whichever starting point I choose, I am inevitably one with everything. I am one with everything I have encountered and will ever encounter; I am one with everyone I have met and will ever meet. I am one with you and you are as free as I am, though sometimes I forget, though sometimes you don’t remember, though there is nothing to forget or remember when we are one with everything and one another. We are supposed to be free but capitalism, colonialism and zionism get in the way sometimes, sometimes for too long, too deep.

A couple of grey herons landed by the lake with a bang, danced around each other, walked about with graceful confidence and flew away quietly. Half a dozen coots came after, beaking their food on the grassy ground and staying in a flock as a grey heron landed back, calmly lurking right by the water. My cold hands are longing to touch a hot cup of coffee and cook my breakfast to feel warm – or my brain is; they are not longing to touch another pair of cold hands – well, my heart isn’t. They’d enjoy a pair of warm ones, for sure – my brain and my heart would, or at least another pair of cold hands with a warm heart, which I already have inside. In any case, the sun is shining and my surroundings are heartwarming.

From River Seine in Paris to River Thames in London to Lake Lugano in Agno, I’ve been feeling one and free with you, no longer trying to escape the flow, like the coot frantically running away from something just now, but perhaps I still am but unsuccessfully so, as it seems to be what nature does naturally as part of the flow. From the river to the sea, are we free? Are we one? From water to water.

agno, pour mon 42e (quarante-deuxieme) anniversaire 

je t’embrasse !

d.o.