Until I am her (at 9 rue de Beaujolais)

As an aspiring female writer, when I found out that the famous Colette lived in the same building into which I have recently moved, my brain screamed at me in a high pitched voice – “It surely must be a sign.”

Everyday I wake up and instinctively pull apart my white curtains and imagine her doing the same. I see her in every corner of this house. I can hear the sweet sounds of a scribbling pen on paper, hushed and anxious voices of lovers during the war. I can feel her tired body trapping her youth. In short, I know she is here because her spirit resides inside the frail bones of this sleepy building, of a place that has been both victim and witness to the passing of time.

I look out the window to see a city submerged in clouds, and I open the tall glass fenêtre where I instinctively stick out my hand where small drops of water from the drizzling skies gather and accumulate inside the palm of my hand flowing to the sides and ultimately, falling. The stone railing is cold and at this moment I’m thankful it is not metal. The Palais Royal garden stretches out in front of me in long sandy streets that always stain my black boots with their chalky powder. The quadrilateral square becomes my own personal garden which day after day greets me with green leaves that have since turned yellow and orange until finally they abandon their home on the branches to find new lodging on the floor and become the soundtrack of heavy footsteps. I stand leaned back observing the people who either run, walk or pause. Lovers sit on the reclined green chairs with their feet comfortably rested on the foundations of the fountain where their knees continuously brush making one or both smile in satisfaction, workers rush by ignoring the presence of the exploding body of water and simply focus on their finish line, fathers play with their toddlers who once in a while stop in their tracks to tower over a fallen leaf and suddenly, without warning, scream in ecstasy of the unknown. Sighing, I look back at the wooden table next to me and spot what is supposed to be my last box of cigarettes. I am tempted to grab one and I almost do but decide against it; I quickly close the window before I change my mind. There is something about being in silence while holding that small stick of fire and ash that lures me in every once in a while. Old customs die hard but my life has always been smoke and embers.

My feet scramble around and I look around my neat room in search of my shoes. I easily find them behind the white door and so my bare feet scurry towards them. After what seems like an eternity of struggling to fit my cold feet inside the even colder shoes, I walk down the stairs and push open my baby blue – almost gray – door. I breathe in the delicious smell of green tea leaves, of mint and of cinnamon coming from who knows where and decide that today will be a good day. Today, I will finally write, I will commit myself to it and break the spell of my writer’s block. Or at least that is the routine I have forced upon myself. I once read somewhere that the very first thought you have defines how your day will transpire. Do I believe this? I honestly do not know but I have decided not to risk it.

Briefly, I glance at the two lamp posts that decorate the entrance of my building watching over indifferent onlookers like two goalkeepers in front of a net that awaits a goal.

I walk up the stairs, carefully brushing my thin fingers against the railing, and get ready to cross the almost empty street.

Walking down Rue de Vivienne, I pass in front of small fancy bistros where I can relish in an innocent voyeuristic experience of watching people toast and clink their champagne glasses. Women with red lips that left stains on the crystalware laughed and I thought they were perfect. I have never been able to pull off a red lip – I always felt like an impostor. Men with blue suits and serious expressions twiddled their thumbs as they yearned for more time inside of this restaurant instead of being pulled back to their nine to five deskjob. I looked at them carefully and almost jealously. Here I was wandering around with no purpose – they had one, but what was mine?

Suddenly, to my left I saw a secret passage, like the ones you can find around Ópera, where a mosaic floor called me and convinced me to tread upon it. The stomping of the soles of my boots made the most beautiful sound; they advanced, hesitantly. The halls were filled with art galleries, small cafés and furniture stores; then, I saw the reason why today would be a good day, why I had to leave the comfort of my window in search for something else, something more.

The reason why I moved here, presumably, was so that I could follow in the footsteps of the great writers and artists of the past who like me moved to this inspiring city, so that I could finally write my book and forget the shame that constantly hunts me down until I am trapped; pursued by an unsubstantial prey that perhaps only exists inside of my head. I left my hometown about five months ago, escaping – but some things can’t be escaped.

A distant memory persistently plagues me: I remember being about seven years old, laying down on a colorful nylon carpet planted right in front of my television. My eyes were bright and wide with curiosity as I watched this one foreign film called Cinema Paradiso. There is this one scene I can remember as clear as day where an old man, who had become a kind of mentor to the young protagonist, says “When you come back, everything has changed. The thread’s broken. What you come to find, isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time, many years, before you can come back and find your people...I do not want to hear you talk anymore, I want to hear others talking about you. ” The reason why this impacted me so much when I was this young and impressionable child was unknown to me then but has been revealed through the passing of years. My small hands wiped away tears because I knew that what he was saying was true; that it applied to me. I have always known I had to leave behind whatever life I had come to know. After this scene, the protagonist decides to leave his small town in search of himself, of his true meaning. The old man goes on to say "Don't come back. Don't think about us. Don't look back. Don't write. Don't give in to nostalgia. Forget us all.” I haven’t. I have. I have. I haven’t – even though they usually appear in most of my writing. I almost have. I haven’t.

At the end of the corridor, shelves of books caught my attention. I quickly approached, almost ran; my footsteps were not hesitant anymore, they were confident, trusting and optimistic. I looked at the collections of small red books gilded with golden lace, of brown manuscripts and of deep blue covers. Hemingway, Wilde, Rimbaud and of course, Colette, my great teacher, were some of the people perched upon wooden racks behind the see-through glass. I imagined my name among them, imagined being next to them able to participate in the glory of proximity. Usually uncertainty prevails and attacks me with millions of questions: What makes my life so different to the dozens of lives that have been lived? How do I justify my proclivity to identify myself with great writers and artists, as if I have something of substance to add to the worn narratives that walk around chasing us like shadows? I constantly compare and put others on a pedestal; I try to replicate lives. I have loved without being loved in hopes of feeling pain, in hopes that I could use agony and make it rise up like a phoenix from the ashes. In hopes that I could immortalize myself. I have let others step over me, have let myself fade away to the background as vices assailed me transforming me into a blank face that simply felt the dented punches. I have pretended to be so many people that accomplished greatness – but for what? If all I do is recreate and copy, then who am I?

After years of trying to be someone I am not, of polluting my mind with falsities and self-inflicted pain, I recognized the absurdity of this. Inspired, I leaned my head back and tears streamed down my face in a purging and releasing nature. My chest heaved up and down, my lungs burned and my shoulders dropped. I closed my eyes and my forehead inched closer to the glass until the cool surface made contact. I wiped away my hot tears and turned my head sideways, noticing I wasn't alone in the corridor. I gathered my newly found strength and walked towards the beautiful Bistrot Vivienne. Plopped on their burgundy armchairs, I took out my new pure and caste notebook. As I began scribbling away, unleashing the power of my words and feeling, I felt finally complete.

“It all began with an ending.” – the rest will come.