Frozen Wanderer: Week 4

Hunting Eggs and worries

DAY 24

My heart has ran into my tears. Since I heard the nurse’s voice on the radio this morning. Since that weekly minute when, on my way to vineyards, I connect to the real world through radio waves. My breath has been taken away. Since I heard the nurse saying her life will get a before and after coronavirus.

They are giving numbers of new infected people every day. As if those nightmared numbers meant anything when none is your blood. They are saying we will be quarantined longer than we thought, they will explain in a couple of days. As if they weren’t not about to treat us like idiots once more. Quarantine, not in its immediate repercussions but in its longer meaning, starts to feel heavy on my heart. I know they are manipulating us and it drives me crazy. I know they are going to keep me in one place and I don’t like it. They are talking about recession, the biggest since WWII. As if they hoped, with those big words, to feed a bit more the fears monster.

And they keep us quiet, and they keep us alone.

Today, we are shut down, we are locked down; we fulfill our citizen duty. But tomorrow? I hope people will rise tomorrow. I hope we will refuse to go back to normal. What is normal anyway? State of emergency, tear gas and police? Suspicion, contempt and absolutism? Thanks, but no thanks. Please, stop patching walls when the house has already collapsed! You need to tear it down now! Stop treating me like a fool! Be aware, we are about to rise! First, we will, of course get the best hang over in History, we’ll all be friends, we’ll all be brothers, we’ll celebrate as if we had already won, and strong from this new fraternity, we’ll change the world, I promise! I hope?

It is quite utopist, isn’t it? Dreaming of singing tomorrows. It is quite naive to thing everybody will get along to change the world. Some don’t really mind about the ancient world. Most won’t dream the same new world.

Then, since this morning, my heart has ran into my tears even if those written words smoke and mirrors my soul. I would like us to be able to afford a better world in order to give some meaning to our heart. I would like us to be able to heal one another in order to massively get free. But the closer it flees, the more I doubt.

And with my heart running into my tears or my eyes crying blood, I kept dropping wires in order to let vines grow free. And dropping wires, I dropped my own mask, I revealed a new truth. I understand this tiny and obvious thing, this simple answer to that to often asked question: why do you want to leave Toulouse when you love it so much? I din’t have any real explanations anymore. My reasons were inherent and therefore intangible. For a while, still grieving a wounded past, I felt like I – the new me – couldn’t start again in the same place – ancient home. I was fleeing away in some aspects. That truth then faded away, I didn’t know what to think. The answer is actually quite simple and doesn’t belong to the word “leave” but to that other, “live”. Today, my new dream is to live abroad. As soon as one says he lives there when I am here, I envy that person, my soul is ready to fly. There. I do love Toulouse, it is my home and no other place will replace that, but I dream to live – put some roots down, meet, breathe, look, get bored – somewhere else. My truth doesn’t belong to the word “leave” but to that other, “dream”. I feel silly to be so moved by such an obvious revelation. Everything appears so much clearer though.

I have changed my desk. I always work remotely from home and, quarantined, I give myself the liberty to have two different spaces: one for work and one for leisure. I move, I give the illusion not to be locked down.

I recreate my ideal writing space.

I feel transcended. I feel connected beyond present.

DAY 27

I didn’t write down this foreign land missing my melancholia. This lack is not really about traveling, I am full of wonderful memories of my wanderings. I miss to stand on that piece of Earth where my heart belongs. I miss this foreign energy, yet familiar because matching my being. I don’t miss fleeting worlds and movement, I miss daily life on a chosen land.
I am French and enjoy to reconnect with my familial roots by this quarantine. But my home is elsewhere now and I need to dig deeper and deeper to maintain my state of grace. I am like a dead battery, I need to plug to the land I belong. And it is not here anymore. Then I got the blues; my heart is in jail like pandas in zoos.
Fleeting feeling this lace of words won’t contain.

Locked down, I choose to get moved by nothing. This bird singing as I am writing. This snail taking shelter under a vine leaf as I drop its wires. Sun never setting the same on the Black Mountain. My cat purring as it is raining on Easter.
I cherish all those precious moments with my family. Pocahontas moving me during my Easter morning. Creative moments to decorate houses for our chocolate eggs. This Easter weekend traveling me to my best childhood memories, even those I never lived. Daily reunion around a meal with my mum, around a movie with my sisters. I am so grateful to be quarantined with them. My mysterious mum. My cheerful sisters. Glad to have been back before being quarantined too far away.
I cling to this unbreakable and caring love. Despite slaps and harsh words. This invincible love. You can blow your anger, apologize or not, and know there is always somebody to love you back later.

I am mesmerized, enchanted, even if I melancolize.

This is it, I stopped, I don’t have any distractions to think about the entire world. I am grateful even when I am sad. I understand something else is bothering me. Untouchable. It is not real life but what I make out of it. My imagination. The impossible now. My immobile life when I was so ready to go.

And there is time, time that rocked my world when absence became my life. I could have been quarantined since yesterday. I could have been quarantined for hundreds of years. I don’t know what I did last week. I don’t even know when was last week. I followed my isolated time rules without a word, I knew it would last and I din’t care. The meanwhile was a necessity, but the aftermath?

Please, tell me the day after won’t be the same, tell me we are ready to build something else together. Please, tell the day after will be a singing heart.