DECADES

Anne de Gandt

English Edition

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Published by:

Anne de Gandt at Smashwords

DECADES

Copyright (c) 2011-2012 by Anne de Gandt

Cover design and photography by Anne de Gandt

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Translated from French by Anne de Gandt

Original French title: DÉCADES

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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NOTE TO THE READER

Please forgive the spelling/grammar errors you may find in the text, since this translation has been made by myself. Thank you for your patience.

Decade: fn (gr. dekas, dekados, a group of ten).

1. Part of a book consisting of ten chapters or books. 2. Period of ten days, esp. in the Republican calendar. 3. (Criticized use). Decade.

Time is much more subtle than a simple calendar: it stretches, shrinks or spreads like a living thing, always in motion. Similar to the traveler, it carries deep the voices of past and future. They bounce here and there, spread and come to us from time to time, influencing the course of History and who we are.

March 17 - The sun rises, it’s almost noon. It sets, it’s almost midnight. It lights me in the dead of night. I open the window, listen to the slow beat of the world, its medley of thumps, mixed and raised voices. Its continuous rythm goes through me; sounds are crossing, intersecting, draw their way into my veins. I’m getting drunk by their melody. I’m shivering. The pallid dawn fills the room feebly. Silence. It’s a gray morning. A day like any other. With its share of habits, loneliness, boredom. Things to be done, calls to be made, files to be closed. And then what? Things will run their course, files will be classified by others. What will remain of this day, but the further emptiness of a meaningless life? I’m cold and go back to bed, in search of a misleading sleep.

It’s a virgin land, unchanged despite the whims of time. A new-born stone. A burning calvary. Freed from the ephemeral drifts of time. A place, a moving sanctuary. I woke up with a start, my skin sweaty, in a bed riddled with tragic folds. A fleeting and enveloping air slips through the room disheveled by my mingled dreams. Darkness spreads its shadows in the courtyard. The tree trembles. The ground shakes. The moon rises in the sky, the stars are veiled. A heady, earth-born sound is approaching. Regularly, with a three time beat. One, two, three. The phone rings. One, two, three. The computer goes crazy. One, two, three. The screen fluckers, dust flies, the television turns on. One, two, three. Pause. Silence. One. A door opens in the distance. Two. Voices pass by. Three. A horde of wild horses appears, brutalizes the silence in a clang against the stone, wrecks the closed doors, breaks the windows. The court gets wider, the paving stones come off, stone flies away. The horseshoes cling to the stars, the horses turn around in incantatory circles, in a fascinating but fatal movement. The spiral of time unfolds its memories, I stretch out my hand and jump, and dive blindly. The phone stops ringing, the television turns off, the room becomes untidy once again. The tree lies, as petrified, on the ravaged ground, in front of the thick windows of the pyramid that has suddenly taken me away.

A few notes played on a piano. Ave Maria, Schubert. One two three four, one two three two three four, one two three, a voice. A prayer meant to Heaven. A simple but poignant melody. A woman, seen from behind. A black piano. I come closer. The piano keys suddenly twist, twin around my legs, make me topple. I fall and wake up. It’s almost night. A bell rings in the distance. Old memory of a dream that belongs to another life, an ancient story, a bygone past, a parallel time. [1]

One by one, minutes are adding up in a monotonous way. Prisoner of the dull sound of my loneliness, I look outside at the desolate court, the dead tree, the leaves stirred up by the gloomy wind, the bed unmade by my nightmarish nights. The clapper strikes the window’s frame in a sound too dull. The curtain lifts up. The ground shakes again. The sky darkens, blackens, is scratched with random lightnings, thunder rumbles, the ceiling opens wide on a circle of mindless raging waves. The pyramid breaks, smashed into pieces in a high pitched sound, sharp as a razor’s edge. I walk, a scar on my face. Blood flows. I close my eyes.

Sand. Sand as far as the eye can see. Shadows are outlined against the heat in geometric figures. The dunes, bent by the desert wind. A silhouette in the distance. An image, someone. I cry. The rustling of the wind replies. Blurred curls of dust are forming. Multicoloured love is only a shadow I seek through the crowd, ordinary gestures or attentiveness. I imagine the features of your face, your rich and mellow tones, the clear shapes of your skin. I can hear the intimate melody of your heart beat, the sound of your smile, the clearness of your laugh, as a yet so distant unchanged land.

The desert stretches out inordinately. Light fades. I walk from dune to dune, beneath a still sky. The golden sand mingles with the wind waves. I’m thirsty. Your smile lights me, slakes my solitary tyrants. To escape from the desert. From the silveringless lines of a bad started life. I tell myself to believe, keep moving forward in the vertical and frank sun. There, somewhere, your voice undulates, parallel to mine. I can hear it in my sleep, buried deep in my nightmares. It whispers secret words in my ear, softens the sharp edges of my loneliness. It will spring up in my life and become the center of my sphere. There, somewhere, your shadow stands out.

The blue lines of the horizon blur the last glows of dusk. Night falls, short, cold. The stars appear one by one, like tiny diamonds sparkling in the black sky. The wind has stopped blowing. An eternal and solemn silence is filling the space. Your figure disappears into the new darkness. I seek you in the indistinct world of immensity, on the rock of hope or in the deep blue of oceans glory. I invoke your name, without knowing it.

It’s almost noon. I stare at the window remained open. The curtain no longer moves. Guided by the emanations of a sudden well-being, I get lost in the maze of uncertain streets, wait for you along the Seine quays, become intoxicated by the colorful sounds of the inflamed city. Paris is so beautiful today! Bridges overfly the river with their magical curves, barges sing their romantic tunes, seagulls turn in the bright sky. Water sparkles as the boats pass by, smiling to the still banks. Impassive, the Hôtel de Ville place shines, unreal, like an unattached and sailless port. I dive into the immaculate white of its tremendous brightness, pitch to the helter-skelter rythm of its courseless pedestrians. Their fragmented wandering brings me the pleasure of enjoying aimless or shapeless things, guided only by chance. Chance. Immemorial dictator that switches us from darkness to light, from reason to madness, from murder to despair. Its rot proof fruits regulate the backwash of our pointless lives, submitted to its faithless chaos. I follow its outlines to better see you, listen to the sound of its enigmatic mazes, put my faith inside its chancy rules. Like a wobbling ship whose course escapes me, it leads me to you, along the movements of a life only played once. This is an ultimate wish, but it is linked to my deep desire of a shared harmony.

The bitter taste of coffee stirs up my numbed senses. The crowd suddenly passes by under my eyes. Alone in front of this round bistrot-style table, I imagine your hand put in mine. Your eyes wandering under my skin. Your lips brushing against my mouth. Your curves entangled in my shapes. On the other side of the quay, the rebellious horses caracole in a thunderous noise. Trees spring up, unfold their leaves in the original world, birds start singing their springlike song. I enjoy life like crunching the apple to the fullest, Adam looks at me, coiled in the red tree of the early shames, the snake smiles at me. “– What will you have ?” The gardens vanish, your voice gets lost in the high confusion of a city excited by lunchtime.

The desert fades away into the deep night. The wind carries its lament through its mysterious curves. Are you a mirage, the key to my burden? I see you veiled with flowers, crowned with the seal of joy, walking in the light. But I belong to shadow. “I can’t say I love you, I can’t” sighed Barbara [2]. Horses disappear into a sigh. The paving stones fall on the ground. The dunes rise up, gigantic worms crawl across them, open their mouths riddled with teeth. They swallow me up, take my hope, erode my belief. Paris becomes less beautiful. The smell of asphalt mixes with those of garbage. Gray pigeons turn in absurd circles around the crooked chairs of the lost gardens. I pick up a few chestnuts on the ground, smooth as seaside pebbles. They shine in my fingers. Round, perfect, sweet in contact with my skin. I will learn to say I love you. Your skin under my hand will teach me its language. Your woman body will invite me to journey. Your caresses are my promises. You are my oath, to live in the new world I want to build.

Hours are punctuated by the regular and muffled noise of the elevator going up and down. A blackbird sings, perched on rooftops undulating in front of the skylight. I want a shared life. Someone at my side. To walk in a renewed world. To feel deep inside that I’m not alone. To look at you, and exist. To sleep pressed against you, protected from monsters that fill my nights. I seek a woman, the woman of my desires. Who won’t be scared by loyalty and truth, nor turn away from the darkness of a soiled past.

The ocean throws its waves violently against the shore. The backwash leaves on the sand white marks filled with bubbles that burst in a light noise. No sooner have appeared my footprints on the ground than they are erased. I walk along impassive shores. The shells buried deep in the sand draw thin and delicately crafted curls. The smell of salt soaks my senses. The phone no longer rings. Horses are gone. Lost in the soulless crowd, I remain alone, but looking for you. Days are linked together, unchanged. I wander from bar to bar, madly hoping to find you there. Exchange a few words here, two or three glances there. Mere illusions of a love impossible to find. I don’t want to stay shakled to my story, prisoner of a loneliness that eats away my life through misheard silences. Magic of the word does exist. I believe in miracles, for they saved my skin. I trust your voice, the sound of your existence, the tone of your laught. I will recognize you when I meet you.

Loneliness sometimes sets its traps of bad company. From bars, I resign myself to passing to watered-down parties. The old speech on the same themes barely hide the misery of people in search of themselves. Wanting something... but what. Love? Love is outdated, obsolete, old-fashioned. Only the sex and its rage worths loving. The other has this unpleasant scent of being only useful or passing, when not just confortable, like a well-ordered habit. The other sometimes bothers, but how to admit it? I listen silently to the collision of people lost in their loneliness, in search of absent or badly-fitting partners, which are often just the stooges of a party. I observe the glances no longer exchanged, the hands got lost, the tired smiles. The worries or the little settlings of personal scores take precedence over the conversations, habits stiffen impulses. The other becomes the culprit of a life that one wanted different. That’s the way it is. Simple as that. But I don’t want it to be this way. I don’t want to get lost in the unsound triviality of a badly played relationship. I seek, desperately, another woman but me.

The wind sweeps away the pale horizon. Evenings are prolonging. Couples are looking for each other, tear themselves apart or find themselves. Hearts bleed, open or die. The cafes get full or empty. Alcohol loosens tongues, takes off the polite face of appearances. Confessions are made. Cries burst out. Traitorous or true, light or grave, independent or intense, multifaceted love turns away from me. It is not meant for people like me, dirty, soiled, unclean, irrevocably committed to the decline of their destiny. From love, I only know the cruelty. From sex, the murderous folly. My isolation has the bitter taste of the missed and unfinished things, as a bad started story. Alone with myself, I realize suddenly the hellish boredom of my surpriseless life. Like a flat drug, I vary between the euphoria of an absolute hope and its dizzy fall.

I have faith in you. In the magic of voices getting together, in the hearts quivering to the rhythm of their beats – invisible sonars scanning the world with their frantic waves. Wherever I look, I see them chasing one another along slow, fast, nervous or languid melodies. Everywhere, love is seeking an echo of its deliverance. Impatient to appear and give back to the tired hearts the three hundred and sixty degrees they need. I bow before the desire of a genuine sharing, ward off the curse of a dull existence; and leave, once again, to meet you in the world multitude.

I whirl in immortal waves. Thousand horses of foam rise from the navy blue ocean, mingle with the clouds, plunge beyond the seas, bounce over the waves. The clattering cups make them vanish suddenly. The ocean recedes, the coffee is poured, “– the bill please”. A cigarette, a rough and hot sip. The cream remains stuck on the edge of the cup, smoke flies away, gets lost in the melted crowd. Volcanoes spring up, Venus is worldwide, love, totalitarian. I scan the faces one after another, both anxious and eager to be elsewhere, travelers in transit lost in an anonymous daily life. A few smiles sometimes. One two three four. One two three – four. Four. Four sides of a pyramid badly built, impossible, three is the geometric rule. Geometry is suddenly blown away with dust, dust sticks to stretching time, stars fall from their immortal dome. Time axis, heart space. To rise and lie eagerly into the area of a bleeding heart. To listen to the three time melody of a prayer waltzing along a stave disrupted by its strayed notes. Seek. Go back further. The melody of love is simple. Elementary wave, romantic and global pulse, it goes through the years, centuries or seconds. Its music is so beautiful. But the rude din of envy recovers it, breaks my desire and pulls me apart from you.

The cafe closes its doors. The noisy room gets empty, gradually reconstructs its fragmented peace. The day fades, dusk approaches. The city darkens and then lights up brightly. Orange, red, yellow, white: the light paths of drifting vehicles draw their slender traces in the dark. The Seine river thickens, turns to a pathetic and forgotten shadow. I walk along the banks, listening to her silent lament, drowned in the continuous stream of rushed engine sounds. In search of some fresh air, the plane trees stretch their branches above the battered asphalt. The moon is approaching and receding, falls softly in the black velvet of water reflections. Your image does not leave me. The ephemeral seconds turn to indocile hours. Your voice is engraved inside me, like a forgotten picture, an erased memory, a distant music. The sound of your laugh and your eagerness to live walk along my desire. The bridges lift up in silence over their structures of stone and metal. The cold swepts the empty streets, dispels the lingering shadows. The horns slice through the air with their loud and brief anger. Tonight is another night. I seek you, madly. I speak to the Seine, so she takes my distant prayer under her wing. May my voice follow her meanders and curve in the course of your life. May the disordered arrow fired from the clouds by a playful Cupid turn away its trajectory and bring our two hearts together. May I be the drawn arc of our impatient desire.

The horizon vanishes behind the beach. The gulls draw their aleatory circles, shadows lengthen. The pyramid rises. The light goes through its walls, bounces brightly, then goes out almost surprised along an iridescent ray. A cloud goes by. Rain falls, silver droplets are sliding along the window. The clock is counting its impassive hours. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. One, two. One, two. Remember. Remember. The sea was beautiful, beautiful is the Seine sparkling in the sun, bridges shimmer in the light, love turns its face, forget the mask of despair. The ocean starts singing its melody, possible are happy days. The figure moves forward, comes down slowly across the dunes asleep. I cry, get lost again in the silence of the desert. I run, madly, through the indifferent sand, the thousand-year-old wind, the ancient stars. The wind gets stronger, icy, brutal. Sand raises, lashing my face, blinding me. The raging storm makes me bend beneath its anger. The merciless horizon disappears behind the wall of my distress. Fantastic, unreal, the pyramid of time reveals itself in the axis of my memory. It’s now flickering and falling down silently on the still ocean of my desires. To leave, at the whim of the waves. To follow the wind. No longer attached to anything or anyone. Getting lost in the lightness of indifference, free myself from the shackles of expectation. To travel, secretly, in the silence of dawning. Get off from earth, spring from the seas, sail freely, only carried by the inconsistent movement of the absurd.

The sun isn’t risen yet. Treacherously, sleep slips out of the bed, weaves through the window, then disappears in darkness. It’s cold. The empty streets struggle to exist without their noisy hordes of tireless passengers. The line of closed panels seems to say it is too early to be here. The river grows languid in the pale light of dawn. Birds step aside, anxious not to break the silence of a day that has just begun. The benches cooled by night get warmer in the first rays of sun. The water flows, indifferent, along its immutable course. The mark of my dreams still envelops the landscape with confused images. Distant voices arise, get lost or fade. The mixture of their tones creates a lazy sound veil, where dreams are going their way. Some cars appear; pedestrians move around, pressed for a time too short. The chairs assembled on tables are taken down and replaced in a harsh and metallic sound. Effluvia of tobacco fly through the air. Some ducks squabble in the water of desert gardens, under the unfatuated eye of thousand-year-old statues. Newspapers forgotten here and there lift their pages in a neglected gesture. The first coffee is rough, but its heat brings a well-being feeling. I try to read, but the faces passing by irresistibly catch my attention. I watch the fragments of unknown lives through trifling details, traits, rhythm, gait, colors. Listen to the voices loudly speaking on the phone, then hung up as if pleased, reassured of not being alone. Follow with my eye the bodies who withdraw from conversations, moving back to protect themselves from hurtful or offensive words. Note the predictable silence of people unable to find their words, overwhelmed by unilateral conversations. Scan the glances escaping from the private space, quietly projecting and searching for another possible partner. Friends who get together and show they still are, through too loudly strong laughters. Lovers tired of an untruthful night, caught by the reality of the day after. Indifferent colleagues, lost in a life they know surpriseless. Couples who no longer exchange a word. The beauty of a true meeting or of a sensual night draws sometimes a fatigue almost serene on two faces looking at themselves. But how many hardened traits for one genuine smile? Hands sometimes jostle each other, but this is nearly a disconcerting gesture in the rigid space of the feelings representation. The shamelessness of tenderness surprises, arouses mocking or envy. The provocation of a kiss stirs and revolts together. The soundness of emotions goes over to the reduced and comfortable side of permitted habits and limits. It’s better than being alone or lost in the eyes of others, on the dark and feared side of the forsaken, dropouts, outcasts, strangers. I watch, amused, the demonstrative circles of cooing and courting pigeons. People sitted at tables, side by side. The displayed phones are grabbed nervously, turned in impatient hands, checked several times. To call and say something, make sure that one exists through the comforting tone of any ordinary voice. Fill time openly with events one knows meaningless, but who cares. The endlessly mobile expandable applications spread fragmented feelings with no decency, creating the illusion of a conversation, the appearance of a meeting, the outline of an exchange. Extensions of a solitude enlarging invariably its tyranny; the embarrassment of a look or a voice eager to complete is all what is left. The space of the heart is shrinking gradually, prisoner of these ephemeral messages. The sound of love gets lost in the intangible flow of short and furtive exchanges, of people in search of sharing. Faces look for faith, cafes have their rules. Love, after all, can have many faces.

The pyramid falls from the tetrahedron. The light is diffusing through it, looking for a way in the maze of its transparencies. The heady gallop of horses resounds both strong and eternal. I try to fall into the miracle of love. Take refuge in the attention that is turned to me sometimes. In a face that I see. In this look that seems to discover me for a few seconds. But these are only illusions of a solitude that keeps on expanding its wings, both loyal and nourishing. The music of the words that ring true, shake the arteries or make the heart beat gets lost in the tangle of improbable meetings. The hope to hear the true sound of a shared feeling merges gradually into meaningless dialogues, lost looks, differentiated gestures. Your image grows more distant, the picture fades away, turns to gray, its corners are folded down, covered with dust. Maybe you’re just a fantasy in my ear, an illusion of a distant dream, a light when I’m only a shadow. The burden weighing down my shoulders makes me fall into the suffering of those who get lost faced to themselves. Unable to cross the border that separates me from others, I see my powerlessness digging its way through indifference and disinterest. Guilty of a frantic silence, architect inspired by her own defeat, I build the foundations of my solitude, stands the walls of the citadel, raise the absolute sides of my pyramid. Lost in a parallel time, surrounded by glass walls of an absolute and hopeless quest, I disappear gradually into the set of a world of which I am both the tragic author and the fallen actress, lost in the heart of an absurd and wordless drama. Disjointed, I listen to the round of major words and minor sounds which create their hazardous and illogical farandole, like a nonsense rosary unable to work its way towards others. This is my pain and my burden, to keep silent when words are rushing behind my lips, closed by the darkness of a rough life.

The shame of living extends its tentacles around my dreams. Invisible to others, transparent to myself, I vary inside a desire impossible to satisfy. I shift, slowly, from the purest beliefs to the forever denial of my deepest ardour. I hide myself to avoid others; but the lust for life reasserts itself, through the boredom or in the inflection of distress. It’s an escape, a tuneless melody, a painless lament. Broken line of a poem missing its author, writing of a deconstructed life, scar of a wound still open, the pain of living without love or being loved tarnishes desire, dulls the look, weakens the heart. Distress increases the space, both vulnerable and pathetic, of a barely veiled sadness. I look at the round of those who meet, without understanding why I remain outside. My loneliness brands the passing days, reopens my helpless wounds. Couples follow each other, sure of themselves and bold, in the starchy set of the easy ways. The concessions gap is growing. Dominant models who want to be the rule, like a distorted norm of bad company. Sheltered with certainties, they look at me mockingly, while I struggle in a lost erroneous and obsolete myth; they tell me where to go, how to live. The easy compromise, whatever emotional or material, shrinks your smile. It’s easier to live side by side, than truly love. I know it. It’s easier to hide from love, than take the forever path of its desire. To fall, at any cost, into the unpunished beam of a broken solitude. Source of shame, failure without remission, worsened symptom of an endless quest survivors, the quarantine of lone people left to themselves increases the exponent of its power. The ancient art of love comes silently off the invisible wall of my increased desire. The edges of the pyramid cut out my faith along the falsely reassuring chains of the easy things. To give up? Forget desire and its purity, let the body follow its primary needs, get round the top, and slip. Find again the boredom tacit rules of a consummate love. Fit the well-defined and reassuring framework of settled feelings, lined up along a predictable life, with no coming back. Quiet square where is spread, day after day, a freely dull routine. The boldness of the wine reddening in my veins is rebelling, tightens my temples, consumed by the barely ripe grapes of a wild exhilaration. The pale dawn comes to light, clouds separate, the ray finds its way through the dark sky. The faces of the pyramid sparkle in the frantic light of hope. The unfaithful socle of chaotic love stories or solitary despair leads me to you. The melody displays its rules, harmony finds its rebellious way through it. The pyramid sways in a tinkle, I come closer to you. The poetry of your skin whispers its return in every drop of my blood.

The waves roll over the fragile shore’s unaccomplished horizon. The first leaves appear on trees weakened by winter; the comings and goings of cars continues its wild ride, light goes along the calm and quiet river, bridges get relaxed, banks lengthen. The pavements along the Seine get rounder. The beauty of a momentary serenity makes my disordered thoughts relaxed. I’m sitting on a stone ruined by time; birds let out their hirsute and happy calls, the city sparkles. Here and there, pedestrians give themselves to the lazy and warm rays of the new sun. The terraces are buzzing in the crackling of lively dialogues, the doors are reopened, the cafes shake themselves up. Springtime is back. Rivoli [3] lets itself go, the Archives [4] spread out their lines, the Britons go down on St.Croix [5], the Verrerie [6] shines. I look at the sky, listening to the first trills of swallows. I spin round, get lost again in the serene streets, on the rocking sidewalks, though the doorways. The squares display their smiling seats. Their peace goes through my veins, up to my heart, sings its warm and distant notes, softens the face, loosens the lips. To breathe, nestled in the light shade of hundred-year old trees. Enjoy, coiled in the disordered chairs of the won back Gardens. Sitting, serene, above the looks and enjoy intensely the luck to be here. Neither lost, neither elsewhere. Right here, right now, in the comfortable present of a time stiffened by pleasure. Listen to the sun course, feel the rhythm of unfulfilled distant seconds. To hope. You’re not a lie, you are my truth. The arc of my dream, the curve of my desires, the hand on my wound. You move forward, shifting and fragile, in the sinuous possible interlacings. The regular and intangible arrow come from heaven guides me through it. It bends, curves, swells. Bounces, stops, restarts to the rhythm of my sighs. I follow it with my eyes as I follow your heart.

During a party, strangely, I hear your name. Tiny and yet distinct, it tinkles in my ear, hits the tangle of my dreams. This is just a word, but it sounds right. It resounds, wakes my senses numbed by the ordinary discussions waltzing around the table. It stops just for a moment the dull round of words, the act of feelings, the boring farce of the hearts. It goes through my skin, climbs the stairs of my citadel, hits the heavy catch of my universe. The pyramid shivers in the sun. You appear in my light.

You face me against the sudden back light of the desert. I can’t see you, but I walk peacefully towards you. The wind blows in my ear improbable words, distant prayers, impossible hopes. I walk, through the disheveled promises of my early desire. The dunes accomplish their mystery, the stars, their spring melody. I start hoping again, wildly. That you’re not another error of an unshared desire, a trap for my impatience, the reflection of my lies. I look at the distant waves breaking in white and silky rollers, in the secret litany of perpetual motion.

I cling to your name as I cling to the stars. Playful angels are smiling at the tip of my heart. A vague and impetuous hope wavers over the invisible line sealing my beliefs. I step forward. The projected shadow enlarges my hint, you’re shying away. The silence of shame unfolds its wings again, both inflexible and outrageous. One more step. I see your face in a flash. The sun changes its course, defers the truncated circle of passing meetings. I come closer. My heart beats a new rhythm, the desert is adorned with purple and ocher tons. Here we are, facing one another, in this world’s end land. I rock in front of you, uncertain, so scared to believe in our meeting. Temperature switches, nervously, from blue to red, hot to cold, certainties to dreadful doubt. The arteries open and close in a random motion, the hands try to be useful. The eyes scan the space in a large and graceful movement. The legs no longer know how to walk. The waltz of hearts is about to begin.

Music, in three-time.

One. The restaurant opens its doors to the confused hum of multicolored conversations of the guests seated at tables. The cutleries tinkle against the full or empty plates, glasses are filled and emptied. Seated in front of you, I chew, negligently, a round and white bread. Focused, with a falsely distracted look, on the next table conversation. To feel the movement of your body leaning, take advantage of this moment, look at the traits of your face. Listen, all innocent like, to the rhythm of your heartbeat in the fluffy hubbub of a room filled with words, whose frequency almost always bounces between desire and envy. To try to say unsound words, whose platitude clumsily build a bulwark against the shameless ecstasy that is leaning against it. To assume an appropriate expression, silence the terrible round of feelings running through the face. Look to the right, look to the left, evade, attack, move aside. The movements of tangled looks create a maze of saturated and unstable lines, whose mixture gradually outlines our desire. The conversations fade away, strangely pushed back by the silence of a wild face-to-face. The glasses become buoys where cling, alternatively, distance and reserve. Legs are crossed and uncrossed. The warm wind of the desert opens the door, blows through the room, blurs the sounds, carries the words away, numbs the senses. We’re in the middle of nowhere, lost in the endless dunes of our meeting. Our eyes meet, imperceptibly. The molten room slips along the sides of the pyramid. I don’t know who you are, you don’t even know my name. We look at each other, together curious and attentive, astonished at this unlikely meeting of our memories. I heard your name, asked to see you. You said yes, without knowing why. Here we are, ultimate and terrible, in this inconsistent room, overtaken by the heart of a story. The wave of the discussions surrounding us suddenly reappears in the center of this wordless dialogue.

Two. Let’s go out. The open relieves the density, become almost unbearable, of our feelings. Behind us resonates, in a ground shake, the ordeal of fiery horses. The magic trees of the Tuileries [7] align their inaccessible branches, in the blue of a brightly stormy summer. The clouds bank up, rush, heat rises, stifling, dusty. Rivoli apologizes for its languidness, the hot asphalt asks for some freshness. We walk, side by side, in the heavy and moist heat of a menacing July rain. At every step, the cars keep on driving straight, unsubdued to the traffic lights beseeching them to stop. The city is swaying, pedestrians fly away or bounce gently in a fantastic and distant round. The first drops fall, absent-mindedly, on our shoulders, in the mixed smell of bitumen and engines. We hardly breathe. The prints left by our feet slip along the wet sidewalks and are absorbed by the rain. The yellow gold dunes rise, silently, behind the façades burdened by the unreal atmosphere of these summer rains.

Three. We walk in silence across the devastated courtyard, around the lying tree. The doors clung to their hinges seem to hold tight, the broken windows still scream in a frozen movement. The room is small and dark. The nightmares congregated over the nights have disappeared, frightened by this burst of hope. The fig tree, come from an ancient memory, [8] extends its branches around us with its broad palmate leaves; a bird sings. The graceful face of bare Venus gets out of its frame, with flowers in hand. I move towards you. You step back. Get closer. I withdraw. You curve. I bend. Intangible, bewitching, irrepressible brushes. The exhilaration of the blood boiling in veins makes a disrespectful way to the beating heart. The walls disappear, wisely. The jerky rhythm of an absolute tango extends its sudden distant notes. The room shortens sail. Now it is heeling, leaned on an unpredictable wave, lengthening the curve of our bodies that are facing into a smile. Our so close skins are suddenly seized by passion. The shortness of our breaths no longer allows any word. The sweat increases through the tense pores of a desire impossible to hold back, our touching fleshes crack the glass walls of our desire isometry. Your lips against mine seal the truncated stream that was seeking its way, found its riverbed again, extending its slow and beautiful flow. The horses leave our lips, enjoying their exquisite harmony. Some waves rise up and hit the sky. The desert shines, sublime, eternal. Fit with our desire, we forget ourselves into furious, indecent, frivolous, languorous kisses. We fall into a vertiginous space. The relativity of our hugs comes close to the light years of space and time reconstructed to the rhythm of a fierce and ultimate love. You surrender to my strength, I bow to your courage. You clasp me with your gravity, I curve you in my desire. Dreams bypass the listless clouds flying over our languid surprise. Our lying bodies rebuild the bulwarks of a city defeated by artificial, unscrupulous, compromised or lost love stories. We recover the memory thread of those who thought they were defeated and discover they’re victorious. The passion of our tangled skins hits the silence of our solitude, undresses shamelessly our inner flesh, in an antique, wild, primary movement. Fire mingles with fresh water, burning heat penetrates the mysterious shadow of an ancient hole, lava merges throughout it. Our hands cling to exquisite, tight, light, rebel embraces. Rebellious but vulnerable, we burn freely this curious thread that links us to each other, in the center of a forever narrow way. The emptiness surrounding us becomes less heavy and incomprehensible. Covered with fertile and deep caresses, our bodies contract, unfold, stretch, stand, relax. The horde of wild horses shakes the room with its rebellious strength. I am yours, you are mine. Together, we belong to the world.

It’s almost night when we come back to earth. Our tired bodies sway in the cool evening, protected from time, freed from the so wide space that was separating them. The walls take back their place, so do the seconds with their space. The Pont des Arts [9] bows down in a light trance, our eyes meet, trees stretch out a bit more towards the sky, swallows brush our dreams. The night goes up, gradually, along the furtive water flow, spreads out its shadows, dispels the last rays. Some fresh fragrances bypass sometimes. Our laughters are superimposed by the happy sound rising from the carefree streets. A forgotten feeling lifts us off and carries us deep inside an exulted sky. We float, freely and lightly, above ourselves, in a middle land elation. The cafes round tables surround us with their promises, we talk, but no sound comes out of our joined and silent mouths. The desert surrounds us with its terrible and eternal weightlessness. There, behind the walls of the city still asleep, the dunes recede.

I come to you. You come to me. Together joined, we fit our dreams in every fold of our skins. Bound by the exactness of our ways, we move forward, like ephemeral tightrope walkers, along the imperceptible lines that weave each day to the next. The fragile balance of this journey without purpose or end enlightens us and worries us together, as a thin glow in too much darkness. The exalted desert of our meeting draws the outlines of our mingled breaths. The bright days of pleasure are extended by nights. The mixture of words, gestures, kisses or continual embraces light the relentless fire of our desire. The dangerous touches, the amplitude motions, the corrosive gaits overflow the incandescent crucible where we try to keep them. We walk, alternate and simultaneous, in the streets sucked by the insatiable desire to mingle. We speak in the evening, in the night, in the day, sometimes we keep silent. The will to live finds its way back in our lives. Our dreams clung to the stars find the path to earth. Finally united, we become inseparable.

Naked, in the desert forsaken by the dunes of expectation. Naked, on the incandescent stone of exile. Naked, in the green ocean of our multitude. Naked, against the 99.5 ° F of our nourishing skins. We walk, one against the other, towards the horizon of our desires. Outside of a world whose laws escape us, we leave the port, cast off the moorings, sail in the infinite sky and sea. The sails filled by the wind carry us into the ocean of our dreams. We leave behind us the mirages of individual success, ephemeral pleasures, foolish tricks, tasteless lives. We sail at high speed. But the improbable and fatal reefs await us and threaten us. Alone on this flagless ship, fragile but not weak, we soon reach the creeks of Hell. Where stand the respectable and sprawling reefs of envy and merit. To move forward without throwing against the emerging rocks that stand in our choices is impossible. The tiller slips in our hands, the sails deflate, the ship stops. The cove of our dreams comes up against the collective and inglorious tyrant of prejudices, good manners and virtue, its worst mother. Alone with ourselves, we become a prey for the others. Vulnerable, borderless, we look at the predatories turning around in the sky, looking for our weaknesses. The wind is over. We have to come to the terrible shores of the earth.

Hidden in dark and forgotten meanders, jealousy puts, meticulously, its traps at every step. Behind fake smiles, unjustified gifts, calculating services, it slips slyly through the naive lines of our life. Inquisitive curiosity of friends who are demanding answers about our meeting or details on our privacy; demonstration or abuse of authority from acquaintance or parents; voyeurism barely masked of bored people, stired up by greed. We are judged, weighed, condemned. We become outlaws, trapped in the terrible and hypocritical game of the envy faces. Inaccessible must remain the dodecahedron of love, as far as its apogee. The passionate feelings shock the hidden prudishness of those who would like to taste it, without admitting it. The corrosion of our bodies scares the chastity of what is allowed. The common law condemns, strangely, this freedom however so desired, liberated from the submission to the codes of love. We become a threat to what should remain hidden, masked, concealed. The shameless revealing of emotions is refuted, pushed behind the rigid and irrevocable doors of good manners. This does not happen nor show. Love, shameful lived from day to day, is proudly brandished in the rainbow streets of homosexual glory. Parents do not know, or pretend to, while families continue to terrorize with complete impunity the emotions of people in search of themselves, doubly prisoners of a shameful and hidden pain. It becomes a habit, a rule of life. We watch, frightened, the authors of our meeting mercilessly tearing up our feelings as the miracle of those moments. We are the unbelieving witnesses to the narrow and sententious blame game that make us switch on the despised side of masculine love stories. The endless talks about the multicolored rights finish off burdening our shoulders, already bowed under the weight of a cynical and false-protective sectarianism. Voyeurism takes all its false and outrageous amplitude, carefully hidden behind the laws of the common indiscretion. The shame of being a woman reappears, highlighted by those who are the main actresses of it. We look at the fragility of emotions getting lost in the sexual emancipation of multiplied partners, the intransigence taking over the feelings and dominating libertarians relationships in the assuaging of an equal and totalitarian desire. The dunes sadly withdraw from the desert.

The creek closes. The bony edges of the rocks all around are like cutting blades, ready to split, cut, wound. The bridges strengthen their structures, streets become narrow, then crack. Discussions decline, curiosity falls. We walk in the deserted paths of lost gardens, full cafes, identical streets. Paris empties slowly of its story miracle. Laid on the eternal benches of the Cour Carrée [10], in this beautiful muti-faced Louvre now getting lost in the shadows of old buildings, we enjoy a summer evening. The day fades to night, both true and alternate. The car rumbling gets to us in more and more distant snatches. Pedestrians pass by, silent as shadows, then merge into the mysterious blue and opaque darkness. Your hand in mine, we watch the passing time of infinite stars suspended in universe. Secretly lost between an intangible past and present magic, we float, undecided, between two ages, two spaces, two lives. The shockwave of our collision fades away, gradually. We cannot sail forever and we know it.

We join in the heart of a life freed from our pasts. The magic bridges, the languid facades, the royal river, the restless streets of Paris make way to the new land of our desires, where stands, filled with promises, a house with its orchard and gardens. Still beneath the clouds, its telluric strength waves along our numb legs, bursts in our astonished hearts, fills with fresh air our tired thoughts. Its earth, generous and welcoming, full of sweet, salty, mild, bitter, spicy or surprising savours surrounds and protects us, feeding and quenching our thirst for truth. Its powerful and authentic song resounds in our veins, flows noisily in our blood, displays its euphoria in our trembling bodies. Final place of our decline, mother of our desires, it brings us back to our smallness and greatness. We think we shape it, but it is what we are made of. Each step seems to get us closer to its strength. An old movement emerges from our footprints, a hidden sound, muted, born from the forgotten depths of a past time. The vigour of what lives, grows, flourishes, emerges from darkness and awakens our asleep skins. A primary energy, a renewed wonderment together shape the look again, sculpt the body, restore the smile. We learn to walk again along the vertical axe of our history. The leaves, fruits, trees pass through us in a secret burst, roses spread their wide and magical calices, earth sticks to our surprised hands. Languid laid in the blue grass lazy sun, we watch the passing clouds, those beautiful clouds of zenith and dawn, pale pink, purple, turquoise, red, flame-coloured. We contemplate the peaceful dawning of earth paths, listen to the colorful mixture of early birds, relish the coolness of shared shadows. Thirsty for the new-found taste of simple pleasures, we rush forward, freely. A momentary beauty for eternity. Time regains its natural rhythm, swept away by seasons. The wood sings its earth planted roots. Dreams find rest in the heart of a blue night sleep. Nocturnal birds fly off bare walnut trees, over the moving shadows of the veiled moon or lurked foxes. The windows opened on darkness listen to the simple, serene melody of crickets, the rustle of locusts, the muffled twitterring of a lone nightingale. The year-end mists deaden the secret rustling of hidden things, leaves get lost on the dark ground, fruits get out of their burs, apples ripen.

But the whims of time make this life dangerous. Prisoners of uncertain and insecure choices, we observe the violent movements of our lives going up and down along more and more aggressive waves. Time present becomes rough, difficult, full of fear, confusion, anger, anxiety. Torn between heaven and earth, the absolute and the ordinary, a free life but cut of everything, we might lose everything. The waves of a painful past break on us. Are we not the lies of a story we have to start over again, victims of a promise impossible to keep? Doubt rots the architecture of our dreams, sweeps away in a sententious backhand the faith we had in ourselves. Soon we look at each other like enemies, guilty of the suffering we endure in the name of a link that seems to stretch day after day. I think you’re responsible for my pain, you make me the author of your anguish. I forget you in my pain, you loose me in your loneliness. The ultimate wave that separates us is close, the movements of its breaking slowly leaves its marks inside us. The birds of prey that were prowling around our doubts are released. Secreted under the pretext of reassuring words, their invisible poison tears us apart, cuts us off from our desires, eats shamelessly the link uniting us. The sharpness of virtuous and dogmatic jealousy burns what’s left of our strength. We must separate and obey the triumphant law of the disunited, damaged, wrecked couples. Having seen all and especially themselves, they take the tiller unceremoniously and set the course to their unfulfilled desires. Ready to anything to go out to sea again. The ship pitches dangerously, its body is cracked throughout. Glorious rescuers, overexcited and concerned to please us, married or single, they approach us with a devastating smile. Life is simple for those experienced sailors with deserted women. Stale remedy, big comforters, they push us a little farther from each other, force they way across our weakness. Betrayed, angry, humiliated, their wild wives set their dogs on our traces, considering us with the vengeful look of a perpetrated division. The ship is sinking, the veil falls down, helpless. They curse us and then go back pathetically to their deleterious union. I look at you, sad and helpless, from the other side of the quay. The horses have run away, the river no longer flows, the bridges have collapsed. Our story fades in the bitterness of a life too hard to satisfy. The pale sun spreads its uncertain light. The pyramid crushes on the floor in a painful sound. I cry, lost in the laws of a disappearing dream.

I don’t want to lose you. I want the disorder of happy horses to spread its euphoria through the infinite lips of joy, the bridges to keep swaying in the light, the sun to extend its rays of glory on our mingled skins. I look at you, but my fears see someone you’re not. You see me, but your doubts make me someone I’m not. Broken away, torn apart by our fears, we fail to reach the quays of our trust. Confused, alone with the intimate and invisible enemies superimposed on our lives, we struggle in the emptiness of a mutual solitude. We slip, ill-equiped, along the smooth walls of our dreams become inaccessible. The square of dead love stories and eternal mirages draws meticulously the outlines of our defeat. We watch from the quay the dark and lifeless river of lost illusions go past. Rough, cluttered with rubbish, it roars, covers our tired voices. I call you, you don’t hear me. You talk to me, I remain deaf to your words. The noise of anger, frustration, disappointment, injustice and anguish fills the space of our exchanges. The days pass, brutal, dark. We watch, deeply hurt, our attackers. The sectarian judgments, the rough assessments, the dominant models load us down with their false certainties. Horses are submitted, harnessed, tied to the rings of good manners. Bridges become rigid, twist in a singular trance. The acrid smell of engines congregates along the dirty walls of a lifeless city. Black and gray dunes appear, sneak round a tree, darken the green of a meadow, slip treacherously inside our nights. Our lost skins call for each other in furious and desperate embraces or sink into the silence of a polite contact. My lips slip against the rock of your fatigue, your mouth is crumbling on my solitude. The forests no longer rustle, birds forget to sing. The ship lies, alone and desolate, on the lifeless banks of an unfinished dream.

Lost in the middle of nowhere, we listen, surpriseless, to the words filled with good intentions crushing what remains of hope or extend the indifference between us. In the eyes of our critics, our choices are inconsistent, impossible to achieve, pure utopian ideas of a past world. In the course of a conversation, our dreams run aground in the great fanciful book of primary false beliefs, the ones we forget with age, experience, mistakes. It would be wise to stop fighting. To accept, without resisting, to submit to the laws of a common and ordinary life. Unhappiness, suffering or regrets generated by this artificial yoke don’t matter. The frustrations created by daily usual sacrifices become the norm, break the individual spirits in a general and acquired contentment. The destruction of wishes, pleasures or desire is the rule. Our words become meaningless, the lines drawn by our bodies disappear, our smiles stiffen. Shipwrecks of a trip with no reprieve, we are the helpless witnesses of the growing extent of our isolation. The house is filled with anger, shaken with uncertainties. We sink slowly under the amazed, conquered, satisfied, often reassured eyes of an indifferent circle. Overtaken by a struggle escaping us, we fight against an enemy beyond our control. Invisible destroyer, hateful persecutor, its makes sink the undefeated hopes, the frantic beliefs, the wild dreams of absolute, or make resentment and regret go deep into the dark abyss of bitterness. We’re overcome by a sense of loss, impossible to contain. Uncertainty sneaky creeps between the stones, cracks the tissue of our faith, makes us fall into despair without warning. The threshold of our meeting makes room for doubt, questioning. Our strength abandons us, exhaustion is near. The horses rear up. We slide into the forever abyss of our defeat.

Taken down to the depths, we wander, lost in the desolate cemetery of dead dreams, where are dying wishes and desires. The reefs of lost, unspoken, undone dreams lay strewn on a barren ground. A heavy and oppressive streams erase their boundaries, deconstruct their delicate frames. Ageless skeletons fill the dustbins with dark and smelly waste, mixture of lost wishes or destroyed desires. A few empty bottles are floating, unreal. A suffocation feeling fills us, slow asphyxia of people condemned by the neglecting of their beliefs. An old lassitude surfaces, removes us from all desire to fight. Our folly leads us in the meandering, underground, invisible desert of renunciation. The trap of success stirs up the attention of people who only see in it the defeat of gloomy or dull lives. The fate of a misleading link, the terrible lies of an avenging Cupid eat away the thin thread that still binds us. How could we have hoped to get from love its eternal return? We end, tired of everything, on the disastrous edge of despair, chained to its fate. The gardens lose their aura, covered with a dull and uncertain veil. Flowers open less in the sun, trees wither, walls are getting closer. The unreal tectonics that carried us away leaves us unstable and lost in ourselves. Perhaps we should consider leaving, breaking away, stopping everything. Maybe we are, after all, the exalted architects of our own decline. Doubt follows difficulties, so does inability with disappointment. The wild exilharation of our story gets lost in the bitter taste of failure; the fatal disillusionment of our candor ends in the twilight of our distrust. We no longer believe in anything. Neither in ourselves, nor in the others, nor in the world. A sensation of distrust cuts us off all hope, a feeling of absurdity belittles any attempt to move. The injustice that spins our entrails drives us to bursts which fail almost immediately. We try again and again to face what breaks us, but each attempt multiplies the assaults. The aggressiveness of danger shows its teeth, the fear of living sets in, misunderstanding distorts the look. The house collapses, the garden empties, the horses disappear.

To come alongside or to get lost at sea. To live like strangers or to die to ourselves. To lose everything to meet once again. The ocean blood flows, angry, in our rebellious veins, the horizon extends its new line, waves are rising. We untie angrily the nodes that trapped us, secure our hopes to the swell of a sea we know endless and beautiful. Free, lost in the eyes of others, fragile, alone, but free, above all. We have only one life and it belongs to us. We have only one word, but it’s worthy keeping it. The horses rushed in the light, wild, ultimate, solemn. The buildings finds their colors again, the Seine, its dreamy walks, the bridges, their supreme geometry. The gardens seem to bloom again, the light is brighter. The house shines a little more in the sun. We leave, decided to conquer our limits, our fears, our weaknesses. The eyes fixed on future, we leave the crucible of our wanderings, stand up in a renewed oath, rebuild patiently the manhandled architecture of our dream. But the bad starts, the impasses or the wrong assessments prevent us from succeeding. Bound to a doomed story, burdened by a shrinking life, we come close to touching every day a new disaster. Our pointless efforts are disavowed by our boldness, breaks our energy, makes us fall down, inescapably, into the impasse. The path of disillusionment lies in front of us, straight, sterile, easy to take. The vanity of our struggle comes up, once again, against the laws of fate. To back down, come alongside. Forgotten are the crazy hours of drifting, free and carefree, happy and ultimate. We must come back on the tangible earth of an ordinary and predictable life. To keep a weather eye on the horizon and neglect it immediately, taken away by the memory of a past promise with no future. The mark of despair does not disappear from our wounded skins. The ship heaves dangerously along a higher wave, or seems to sink deep in an eerie fault, in a course impossible to steer. We have no choice but to lose each other a second time. To ourselves, to others, to the world. We retreat almost completely to identify the contours of this enemy who is playing with us, like a dangerous and dissonant life great orchestra tenor, setting the corrupted veil of discord between us, as in each of our dreams.

The link is undone. The house sways, unable to protect us. The bridges fade away, Paris disappears. We stand alone in the middle of a place with no limit, no bearings, no sense, no goal, in front of a tyrant which seems invincible. Despite our rage, the dissolving of the dream continues its dreadful alchemy. The blackness of dead things or in decay recovers everything. Our words bounce against the walls, get lost in the confusion of misunderstanding, become offensive, harsh, unjust. The cause of our pain varies constantly from ourselves to others, from others to the world, from the world to us. Hideous circle we cannot escape, it has the centrifugal and fascinating force of the unavoidable, of the guilty ones, of the anonymous executioners, of the bad luck evidences. Worsened symptom of an undefinable anxiety, secret projection of our most hidden fears, it leads us to the easy sectarianism excuses, poorly made choices, destructive hesitations. Freed from the social hidden vice that kept us in the falsely reassuring farce of a society resolutely turned towards itself, we are nothing but ourselves. The emptiness caused by this destitution makes us vulnerable and unceremoniously fall over the side of the homeless, marginalized, disadvantaged ones. We look for help, but only find ourselves. Our terrifying exposed journey draws loneliness like a hungry beast. Rebellious, misunderstood, horses flee in the endless space of this tyranny.

Seasons pass by. Days follow one another, vague, irregular, unpredictable. A note of hope sometimes appears, fragile, then switches into the dreadful darkness of the ephemeral. Devoid of all, we observe, anxiously, the secret and irreversible change of our skins. Tormented the day, lost at night, we walk, in spite of us, along the secret line of a time where possible mixes with unreal, miracles with despair, courage with abandonment. Its density enlarges gradually the clarity of our dreams, the pleasure of our exchanges, the break of our tiredness. The distant and yet distinct sound of cafes, discussions, or eternal and light breeze of the ocean reappears, furtive, behind the luminescent green of a leaf, a gaze, the almost serene beauty of a rose wide open in the sun. Bird song becomes less futile, the sound of hooves on the road, silvered, almost peaceful. We learn, imperceptibly, to fit the contours of a life less disastrous, like the ship does with the wave lifting it. The fixity of absolute gets rounder, embraces the invisible law of a time we try to recreate day after day. Uncertain, happy, light or serious, true moments slowly come together in the traits of a face glimpsed during a terrible and daring month of July. Venus, radiant, turns to the desolation of our naivety and looks at the manhandled horizon of our fervor. Her forehead lined with flowers opens up inside the separated lines of our fears and surrounds us with her graceful melody. Her brightness liquefies the discord of the tenor, switch off the costly voice of disharmony. The subtle velvet of harmony unfolds again in our life.

The pyramid reappears, reversed. A fresh source, transparent and refreshing, rises from its foot. Unexpected but so hoped oasis, it feeds the disrupted earth of our lives. Some attempts are successful, wishes come true, smile is found again. The ocean of our promises reaches the reversed horizon of our desperate efforts. We learn to speak to each other, beyond the bulwark of our certainties, fears or anxieties. The pain of our mingled loneliness finds a path to recovery. I call for you, you hear me. You talk to me, I listen to you. The river clears up, debris desintegrate, trees turn green again. Our laughters sometimes echo along the quays. You come alive through me. I heal through you. The shadows that divided us move back, quietly, behind the dunes. We come back to life together, but different. The assessment mistakes, the secret sufferings, the unsuccessfull hopes subside in our renewed eyes. We learn to know each other in the absolute fire of our success as in the shreds of our defeat. We no longer fight against ourselves, but face together what makes us bend. You fall, I stand you up; I collapse, you hold me tight. The tyranny of a bottomless happiness scatters at our feet, our freed eyes see a world together new and unchanged. A tiny joy tinkles, shy and serene, in a whisper in our ears. Together, we recreate the desire of light.

The yellow gold brightness of our embraces makes the sky miraculous. Swallows caress the sea wave of our reunited nights, multiplying the pleasure of living. Seated on the warm stone of summer, we look at the round of the sun, the uncertain ballet of the breezes, the mad course of the clouds. The languid river, punctuated with the solemn alignment of its ageless bridges, sings the souvenir, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes superb, of an unforgettable time. The unbridled fire we burned in the exhilaration of our desires of a dreamy Bacchus turns to a calmer wisdom. The shadows that betrayed our thoughts lose their strength, get blurred in a new breath. The unfitted and shameless garment of our ideas, our wanderings as our doubts becomes cloudy in the simple and happy solution of a time and a space restarted. The absolute of our quest decays through the subtle balance of a new harmony. We thought we were vanquished, we stand up again, amazed.

The sun rises. It is almost noon. My eyes open on your sleeping face. The curtain rises, floats in the undecided air and hangs softly against the window. I listen to your regular breathing, clings to the warmth of your skin relaxed by sleep. The sun cuts the room up in regular mathematics, lights up the walls and the blossomed tree, now opened. The valleys open wide, both sublime and eternal, in front of the luxuriant green of a wild, mysterious and untamed nature. Clear water flows from steep rocks, bay horses are galloping in the meadow carpeted with dandelions. The spectacular exuberance of peonies, the ribbed arrow of weird lupins, the generous round of hydrangeas call for the return of a perpetual spring. The weigelia sighs its romance sprinkled with soft green bordered with a white, pink halo. The soft grass becomes shiny and rich. Thick and secret hedges get filled rare birds, a hoopoe, like an exotic and exalted vision, is launching its ternary but discreet song.

Nestled in the warm earth, we find the smile of our meeting, despite a difficult but chosen life. The contours of a timeless happiness gradually draw the inverted triangle of paradise. Eternal image of a reconquered peace, the simple pleasure of seeing you, like a smooth, sweet on the palate, robust and fruity wine, mingles with the continuous fragrances of a new scent and an ardent meaning quest. The uninterrupted song of Venus eases the burden of our struggle, desintegrates the torments, realigns the center of our existence. The untied link is tied again during hours spent together, blue or white nights, changing days, surprising walks. Hidden in the white and round clouds of the Seine banks, close to the solemn river, the cafes open on the carefree rumor of shared meals, clinking glasses, lively conversations. There, behind the windows, the ship continues its secret and serene course, fruitful and uncertain, on the dark blue ocean. Creeks follow each other, attractive or threatening. The sail hangs to the stars, the horizon trembles in the sun, the ship flies into the accomplished triangle of our dreams.

The window closes. The pyramid surrounds us and takes us to a new destination. Ten days as a life, ten days to love, ten seconds of eternity.

###

Notes:

[1] See V.I.T.R.I.O.L.

[2] Famous French poet singer

[3] Name of a famous street in Paris, spreading on 3km from the rue de Sévigné until the place de la Concorde. It goes notably through the place des Pyramides.

[4] Name of a street in Paris, located in an historic district called Le Marais.

[5] Ibidem

[6] Ibidem

[7] Public garden located between the Louvre, the Rivoli street, the place de la Concorde and the Seine, so named because of the tile factories that were in this place. One of the oldest formal gardens of Paris.

[8] See V.I.T.R.I.O.L.

[9] Pedestrian bridge in Paris which crosses the Seine river. It links to the Institut de France and the central square (cour Carrée) of the Palais du Louvre.

[10] The cour Carrée (“Square Courtyard”) is a part of the Palais du Louvre in Paris.

SEE ALSO

V.I.T.R.I.O.L.

(English Edition)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Writer-photographer, Anne de Gandt creates worlds which mingle past and present, dream and reality. She invites you to journey across time, space, memory, identity and hope.

Website: www.annedegandt.com

Table of Contents

Decades - English Edition

Midpoint