Creating In The Dark

Is this what you call the dead of summer?

That’s what it feels like. Paris is quiet and empty, restaurants and stores are closed. There is no one in my building.

I feel like I’m the only person left.

Yesterday I saw a child at a window. For a second her face emerged from the shadows. She peeked down at the streets, then disappeared in the dark as she closed the shutters. It reminded me of warm days in Corsica, Italy and Spain.

People love the shadow where I come from. They stay in it for whole afternoons there, emerging later in the day, rested, fresh, and ready to engage with the world.

I’ll be leaving Paris tomorrow, but a part of me wishes I’d stayed through stretches of these long, beautiful, empty days. I feel like this would be the perfect time to write a book. To breathe. To close the shutters.

Letting myself feel.

This summer marked twenty years since I started my life online.