Up and down and eventually we come to the waning moment, just beyond tired, yet so far from rest.
The world is coloured a stranger shade of blue at this hour, when the old grandfather clock from Tom's Midnight Garden strikes one tone too many.
My garden is nearing.
In the meantime, every once in a while there is a shimmer to my bubble and in the heat and fatigue of lightning quick picnic preparations, a tiny faultline might appear in the perfect veneer of a monstre.
When we're off at a picnic, at Parc de la Villette, watching a delirious Orson Welles film, and even dirty old man Daniel who cops a feel every time he offers a hug is pairing off with some lady, and Seb, who just moments before was telling me how he's decided to not cheat on his girlfriend anymore, is cuddling the girl I'd only just met and discovered knows how to hug...
Suddenly my seat in the very center of the blanket becomes so terribly far from everyone.
But only for a moment, and then the armour of independence that I've always worn, the lone crazy girl wandering about the universe, observing and touching, laughing and echoing against the sky, changing and learning and maybe even sharing a lesson or two, and often as not wreaking glorious havoc, never alone. Not really. Not usually..
Obviously my veneer hasn't dried yet. The grass was damp.
Disk-burning this afternoon took place at Seb's mother's appartment, with his sister and in-laws.
Three words into our first ever greeting, his sister announces "You're that singing girl!"
I put on my best deer caught in headlights look, and blinked, waiting for her to explain.
Turns out she's seen us a few times, Cristal and I, Mapie and I, and mostly Maja and I, and later on when she caught me humming while I carefully cut and folded CD covers for Sophie, she said "yeah, that's the one I like best when you sing!"
Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche
Voil� le portrait sans retouche
De l'homme auquel j'appartiens...
Quand il me prend dans ses bras,
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose,
Il me dit des mots d'amour
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et �a me fait quelque chose
Il est entr� dans mon c�ur,
Il me parle de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause,
C'est lui pour moi,
Moi pour lui dans la vie
Il me l'a dit, l'a jur�
Pour la vie-euh...
Et d�s que je l'aper�ois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon c�ur qui bat, la lala lala la la...
Des nuits d'amour � plus finir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Des ennuis, des chagrins s'effacent
Heureux, heureux � en mourir
Edith Piaf, a name I'd barely even heard before I pounced into Paris last year.
After the movie, and more hugs with Katherine, who turns out is from Toronto and broke my heart when she said "You're going WHERE? WHY TORONTO?!?" and I know she meant no harm but the timing was just slightly too skewed.
She hugs well, though, despite her five years in Paris. I told her that said something about the city she claims to not be from.
Turning around, deciding to look where I was walking, I walked RIGHT into a juggler, hurling peachskin balls.
I caught the one that flew out of his grasp, and twenty minutes later was still explaining arm contact techniques.
Seb was shaking his head while the charming boy tried awkwardly to ask when I could explain these to him again...
And I have to admit I laughed a little, at the image of a slightly drunken blonde bounding out of nowhere for a twenty minute juggling lesson, and then disappearing out of his life again.
How... poetic. How much the image of a monstre.
shrug
During the picnic, Magalie and Mireille announced that they DEFINITELY CAN'T SING and admire anyone who does and how we should continue our ecclectic mix of drinking songs and easy-to-remember-lyrics-oldies.
Trying to explain to them that I really can't sing either, and that six months ago I was deafer than a doorbell wot's been listening to its own toneless ring all its life...
When they didn't believe me, I was half disappointed that they wouldn't even try, and later on flattered when I realized that I'd been exactly in their place not half a year ago... and what that meant.
On the drive home we sang everything from Fitzgerald to Sinatra to Soft Cell.
My goodnight hugs were tainted with the knowledge that Seb is taking my new singing/hugging partner back to his girlfriend's place, since Sophie's out of town in the Pyrhenees.
Tomorrow, at the laundromat, the world once again rife with discoveries, none of this will matter.
Right now, I'm just a little tired, my appartment just a little more empty, there are a hundred things left to do but Gita's husband kindly offered to help with the heaviest stuff...
The world is slightly blue and mauve about the edges
but that just means that sleep will be swifter in coming, that the thousand little crawling things named "left to get done" and "I'm sure I've forgotten to worry about something" won't dig their barbed claws into my cerebellum quite as fiercely.
There is warmth on the other end of a tiny chat window, painting lightning bolts against the foreground of my visions.
The other tangles of this evening fall to ashes with every breath of his words.