All the friends are back in town, and my days are so busy, that I can’t sleep at night… or I have nightmares about my thesis. I should be happy though, as the articles I publish are read and appreciated, our firm and my brother’s name appear in today’s “Madame Figaro”, I managed to gather a team for our website, and I get to devour again current french culture to review it day after day. Also I had some heartwarming encounters, last week : a long and deep lunch with the doctor who saved my grandpa, 15 years ago, nighttalks with my brothers, a great “poulet aux écrevisses” cooked by a friend, a long conversation place des Vosges, and I even played the guide yesterday for the people who welcomed me so well in Buenos Aires, long ago.
Paris will always be Paris, drinks at the Flore, Catherine Deneuve as my neighbour in a movie theater, the urge to whisper the names we quote in restaurants, real talks and complicated explanations about the simplest facts, real optimism behind the appearance of being blasé, and days booked until they explode, from breakfast with a friend to the club with a merry crowd.
I feel like a princess, overprotected, with sometimes unexpected phonecalls. I read two books a day : in the subway, waiting for late friends at the café, and during my sleepless nights. My readings range from wonderful Franz Werfel to the empty contemporary French writers. And the movies I get to see are as differents as 1950’s japanese rare works and funny comedies. Musically too it is a messy melting pot : Between Arctic Monkeys, Captain Beefheart, Lady gaga at the gym, Beethoven and Tchaïkovsky while writing, jazz at the Trois maillets with musicians and composers, and new french songs to review, the choice is broad.
Why does perfection give me the drive to be even more perfect than my life?
Le poète
Il a beau plonger sa main dans les ténèbres
sa main ne noircit jamais. Sa main
est imperméable à la nuit. Quand il s’en ira
(car tous s’en vont un jour), j’imagine qu’il restera
un très doux sourire en ce bas-monde,
un sourire qui n’arrêtera pas de dire “oui” et encore “oui”
à tous les espoirs séculaires et démentis.
Yannis Ritsos(1909-1990), Tard bien tard dans la nuit, traduit du grec par Gérard Pierrat