but somehow not exciting compared to mine. Would I exchange thirty years of life for any life on earth, just to live ? It's crasy, that question doesn't mean anything.
Now that I can't drink or eat, I've got memories of beautiful meals. The menu in Kyoto and the ritual in the onzen. The snake in a tiny shop in Hong Kong, I wanted to show I was able to eat that. I think I even ate a dog somewhere… A stupid bet with friends. They don't call me, it's weird. Not even a texto. May be they forgot me. Three thousand people in contact list. Three assistants, and just mails or courrier, showing people are with me. "Courtois". Polite letters. None of them is passionated. Did I loose myself somewhere after the begining.
I remember one night in the camping in the Sequoia Park. We had no money. We were students. Her name was Marly, and there was a boy called Snowy, that was a surname as he came from Toronto. We did sausages on the fire. We looked at the stars. We said we would be fantastic people. Ready to help others. We came to prisons at that time to read economics and literature. My prefered author was Hemingway as I could read it in english, and I like the full intensity of life in his novels. I was laughing when Snowy said to me Hemingway was mad at Dostoievski, as for him a real writer, a master. Marly said the woman she admired most was Camille Claudel, the painter, erased as an artist by Rodin. Nobody is ashamed for Rodin stealing her talent and master pieces. Nobody. She was excited, passionated about that woman as it was a model for her, courageous and independant. The day after we had sex in a lake. The water was very cold. It was beautiful and peaceful. Snowy understood we had a relationships and we came back to San José quite quickly after.
I was a beautiful night and day. The landscapes. The food. The smell of Marly, her hair in my eyes with the wind on the car while driving. I don't know why I left Marly. Perhaps she was different, american and healthy, I was scared. Or I was ambitious, and I wanted a beautiful woman, a woman if could go out with when invited by older people than me, people that would be already successfull.
I have thirty shirts at home, ten suits, three black tie. My house has a piano, nobody plays with it. A swimming pool I never used. Designer furnitures. It so white and clean people ask if they need to get rid of their shoes when entering my salon.
My boat waits for me in la Trinité. A beautiful boat. Big, but not to much, fast and the best in regates. I miss my team. Jacques and Paul. The drinks after being alone on the sea.
My best friend is the sea. Whatever the day, calm or "déchainée" she's in my heart.
Like the old man and the sea. Perhaps I fought for something that doesn't exist, the big fish, eaten by sharks when he arrives at the port. He's exhausted. Who will remember of me, whose the one to know me ?
Perhaps it's Marly. I was happy during this few days. Just in the present, not burdened by the past and by mistakes, or anticipating a future that would never happened as expected. Memories are the fruit of our mind. What is reality after all.
I see the sea. I'm on my boat. Marly is here with her beautiful smile and her cute little nose. I've got the taste of the salt on my lips, and I feel the sun of the morning on my skin.
"Monsieur c'est l'heure de la piqure, je vais vous demander de vous tourner sur le côté." says the nurse in a strong voice. I hate the needles. I hate to turn on my back.
He looks as not listening. She goes out of the room and says to the other nurse to make them call the family, he won't survive the week end. There is no family to call says the older woman. Only his sister. But she's in Singapour, she'll come when the funerals are to be scheduled did she confirm.
His wife doesn't want the children to see him like that. They won't come from London. At least he's got the drawings.
One is with a silhoutette looking like him and a small boy with crasy brown hair and wide hazelnut eyes on the big sailing boat. Another shows a Princess with long blond hair, he's got them just in front of him, in nice silver frames from Tiffanys.
Paris Mars 2015
Gone
It's a sunny day. Blue sky. Fresh and crispy while opening the windows. I take a big breath. A day just for me. I have plenty of time now. Too much time to think indeed. Great moment to empty the house, drawers and rooms full of old things.
I'm still upset by Marc leaving me. I didn't see it coming. So many conferences and seminaires. It should have ring a bell. We see what we want to see. I was in love, spending my life, already fulled with my big job, to plan week-ends and vacations. We were always busy. Three children. I was twenty seven when I had the first one which made their friends say to Oscar that they were lucky to have young parents.
They were so much laughing at us with all the sport material at home, making the same friends think, we were with amazing bodies like Sharon Stone in our forties and Sean Penn when he was sexy. We used them once in a while in front of a serie to maintain our bodies.
Look at that dust. In ten years it's incredible the amount of it on the walls in an old house. I need to throw away all that sleeves and bed sheets from so many years. Let's begin by Théodore's room.
It looks empty compared to when he was here, with all ranges of dirty clothes on the floor, and empty dishes with pasta, rice or cereals.
Oscar's was taking care of his belongings, except his messy office with plenty of kleenex he used to put an anti-spot product he purchased on the web. Emilie was the one to make sure no one was entering her room, like full of secrets, and always cleaned, although full of stuff she kept : small boxes with her small child teeth, cheap jewels with butterfly and flowers, old books she read as a teen-ager.
I'm fifty five now. I've got the feeling that I'm too old to begin a new life and meet anyone, at the same time aware that the best moments with my children are gone.
Oscar said to me one day : "Hey, you had a life before we came on earth, like thirty years before we arrived, so you've got a life, you don't need us to be happy be yourself."
They have their life on their own now. With the time, I understand that having them back home from time to time in the big house was fantastic. They still had their room and Emilie for instance was glad to come spontaneously with her boyfriend. I didn't know what they did, but it was like the place where she was connecting to who she was and the young adult she became.
I need a new bag to throw away the old papers. Where did Vilma put them ? There they are.
What are the best memories. If I close my eyes, I see the pristin blue of the sea, it must be in the Maldives, we spent days in the water looking at the fishes, and one day I saw a shark, nobody believed me. The red rocks, Uluru, magic moment, it was freezing in the morning, then suddenly the sun rose and everything in the nature ws shining. We looked at the stars in the night, like the night in Namibia. The color of the sand all day. Infinite nuances of yellow. The sweet green, like the promenade in bikes in the middle of the rice landscape, we were sweating and I was yelling at them to wait for me. Green, like rafting with them during hours in Costa Rica, I fall in the water that day, I was scared, I thought I could die, and Oscar's helped me to come back on the boat, smiling at me.
Look at that, Emilie's books of memories. "I'm fed up of my brothers, Théodor is only obsessed by his muscles and the way he eats disgust me. He eats to much. And by the way, nobody has noticed but he's got a flue, he puts his fingers under the table and also on the red sofa, can you believe it ?" Hahaha, shes' right, I shouted at him for that, bad habit. "May be one day I will be an astronaut, I love other planets, my prefered is Jupiter, we came and see the milky way with my school, grand mother was with us. I was embarrassed as she said to other girls that I was sleeping with my dolls. " I remember of that. That's cute. Should I keep the books of memories of Emilie ? I have no place where I go. She must have forgotten. Let's throw them away.
No regret, no sorrow, live in the present my dear, past puts you back to your dreams that didn't come true, and future is a concept built by our brain, it doesn't exist. Only present matters.
Let's take a coffee. I should leave the machine here.
I'm sure the new renter would appreciate it. Hmmm, a hot arabica coffee, looking at the green garden. No noise. I forgot how it was to have an empty house.
Oscar's was frightened to come back after school, as I was, I explained to him when I was young, afraid of a thief to kill me, and running to close my door, hurt beating so fast.
Why did we purchase this house. It's so big. I remember. It's when mother lost father.
She felt embarrassed coming at the flat. I decided to move to a bigger place to have her have a bedroom. She visited it with me and was happy that day, talking a lot about her friends, the old woman of ninety six that looked like her own mother(dead at ninety three) but was a less interesting person according to me, selfish and narrow minded but who cares now…My mother never came back as she died a few weeks after. Marc never repaired anything because overburdened, and it was not the paradise I had in mind. The best part of this house was when we purchased it. It was fun as a bet. We were so excited to learn nobody did a better offer, and the house was ours.
Théodor's room. Drawers are full of little objects, stones, old calculettes, cards to play. What's that ? A carnet with pictures. Writting is a female one.