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Bonjour Paris,

The temperature has woken me up every morning just as it had when I was sleeping in a tent in Lugano. Sometimes it’s before six, sometimes it’s just after six, but my body seems to know exactly when my mind needs to start thinking regardless of what time I stopped thinking. 

Each morning, I resist not my thoughts for it is futile. I sit, or lie down, with them, and observe. Who is this I who observes my thoughts? Something I call my heart? Or is my heart merely what I call my impulses? Surely I am more than my impulses – the mechanism that makes me do things, including nothing, seemingly without thinking, as we all do? Or am I? 

Sometimes I think and overthink and when it’s time I make a snap decision anyway, and then I would think afterward that my decision must have been based on my thinking, my premeditation, but since I can never predict my next thought, something else must have been behind it. And I’m okay with it. I trust it: in the context of the present, it has always made the right decision, whether I think first or just do things, including nothing, though we rarely associate doing nothing with being impulsive or spontaneous. 

Alright, let’s lighten up! Let’s talk about how I dressed up hours after my arrival back in London to see the new casts of Cabaret and the gala party afterward at the London’s Kit Kat Club last Thursday night, this time without a date as it was an impulsive decision – I meant there was no time for my impulses to make me think and overthink before I decided to accept the invitation, the night before. The show was great, even after seeing it a dozen times, and I was surrounded by my artist friends at the party. 

At some point of the party, as usual, something kicked in. I say ‘as usual’ simply because it was familiar: I wanted to be alone, or alone with someone eh? But since I didn’t go with a date, I only snuck out of it with my impulses, Cinderella style just before midnight. But why? Fuck knows! Perhaps my heart, or my impulses, felt that there was something more urgent than endless champagne and hospitality? 

Anyway, I walked out of the theatre, having thanked every staff member I bumped into with the biggest smile, hit the street and was immediately mugged by melancholy. Impulse after impulse, the flood gates of tears were open one after another. But why? Fuck knows! As it turns out being in the present includes the past – it is inevitable. The fun thing about it is that there is nothing you can do about it and I was aware the only way out was through. We are all on our way out, just as everything is, so I went through it.

I was going to order an Uber but something didn’t work so I decided to walk to the nearest bus stop and wait for a night bus home. And I waited, and I waited, and I waited, happily allowing whatever it was that presented everything I was damned to remember. Wow! 500 words in and no single mention of love? Don’t be silly! Love is part of me, if not all of me, and when you’re part of me you are always in my words and my actions, or inactions; you are part of my impulses. 

Back to crying, quietly, comfortably and, dare I say, happily at the bus stop, on the night bus, all the way home on the barge in Chelsea. It felt liberating, actually, to allow myself to be in a natural state without having to mask for fear of being judged. I was aware enough of my surroundings to smile wholeheartedly at the sight of a drunk man dancing in the street and thank my bus driver before sitting on the steps outside the barge door because my key wasn’t working the first time around. 

I stared at the glorious Albert Bridge in my mini black dress and my vintage white marabou stole, knowing I was water and questioning why I was wet, knowing I was love and wondering if I would be saved. Is there salvation? Well, the temperature made me try the key one more time and rushed me into bed and eventually falling asleep in my party dress.

sherborne, le 18 octobre 2026

je t’embrasse !

d.o.