On my balcony
I bought myself a deckchair. That and the purchase of my ironing board two weeks ago seems to be the signal that I’m really starting to settle in my house, after four and a half years...
Although I live near the metropolitan highway and my neighborhood is not the most rustic, I am still fortunate to have co-owners in the garden, and I enjoy the shade of a giant ash tree. Birds are overflowing (my neighbors have set up a fountain in their yard where birds swim and drink). I thus hear and see a nature that is well established in urban areas.
My renovation work is going slowly, but surely. It is still hot, I have a few dollars in front of me, just enough to allow me a little more comfort, some madness and hope to be able to finish, precisely, this third phase of DIY.
This chaise longue comes at the moment when Les Années-rebours comes online. An electronic renaissance since this novel, and the two previous ones are out of print. I am rereading L’Effet Casimir, which I promise to offer also in an electronic format very soon. I correct the typos, remove a few sentences here and there, but don’t add any more. The beginning of this text moves me, I find these sympathetic characters who are, come to think of it, the multiple facets of my life: the skinned lover, the bon vivant, the fearful, the writer struggling against his lack of inspiration, the unfaithful artist, and also the man who found his nest, who has surrounded himself with people who calm him, feed him. I feel loved, and more than you might think. I dream of a place like the one inhabited by this old Marthe, at the edge of a river that is already lost in the sea.
Ten years separate L’Effet Casimir from Les Mailles sanguines. When I reread the first one, I saw the same tics, the same themes. We are like those trees that take root and are content with this life to which they seek to give all their amplitude.
I like this deckchair. I spent two or three hours a day there this weekend. I am finally taking the time, I am enjoying the luxury of the work done. I cannot sleep on this thin layer of laurels, but at the moment I watch the ash tree dancing, motionless like a happy drug addict, birds without colors on its branches, while, through the antennas of my laptop, nervous letters try to enter my dream.
I’m dreaming, aren’t I?
