1. Déambulations: Summer

The front door opens, my hair instantaneously frizzles and the humidity embraces me. I have no one to see today, nothing to do. That is, if I keep pretending that there is no resume to edit, no cover letters to be written. I can’t find anything to watch on Netflix, and I can’t concentrate on reading Doctor Zhivago any more. The same four phrases are stuck on a loop in my mind, the rest of the words are stuck to the page. My mind - unable to focus on the present, deciding instead to replay unwelcome memories, over and over, or insistently daydreaming about all the things I could be doing, the life I could be living instead of this one, this sweaty one I’m in right now. I can’t afford the movies, the museum or even a beer and so it’s decided, I will walk.

Her upper lip gets sweaty.

I take my first steps.

Heel toes, heel toes, heel toes. My brain is cotton, my feet propel me forward. Past a family of trash bags sitting on a broken couch. Past the scaffolding wrapping around the block. Past leaking AC units. Across large squares of concrete, peopled with shadows of gum, used floss, and metal basement doors. Through yellow cabs, green cabs, rushing bicycles,large trucks. Amidst the sounds of sirens, honks, construction,helicopters, sighs, curses. In short, the streets of New York City.

The nape of her neck becomes sweaty.

I don’t know where I am going. Is the sticky air better than the fifth floor sauna I just escaped, it’s too soon to tell. Maybe I will catch a hint of breeze further down the street. So I keep moving, hoping the motion will stir something in me. Shed the inertia and make me feel alive again, real again even. Sharpen my senses. It’s a difficult task.

Sweat trickles down her chest, she discreetly wipes it.

Lately my sense of self is dissolving, melting away through my sweat. I recognize my surroundings but they have no meaning to me anymore, I don’t recognize myself, I can’t remember how I fit in here. Who am I, here, already? Who knows. All I know right now is irritability and discomfort. My tongue aches for a sip of cold, dry white wine to wash over it. My feet long for the grass and my ears for the rustle of tree leaves. The pleasure of summer is a distant memory.

Heel toes, heel toes, heel toes. I try to focus on my surroundings. The name of the barber shops, models smiling on faded awnings. Pockets of cold air blasting from grocery stores. The reflection of a subway car in a window. Windows within windows, glimmering in the light. Bodies brushing past me, words of English and Spanish floating mid-air, of French floating in me. Faut vraiment que j'achète ce billet d’avion avant qu’il soit trop cher. Putain mais qu'est-ce qu'il fait chaud!

The heat is hugging me too tightly, pressing into my skin, but with each quick step my brain slowly sets into motion. Calculating, strategizing, planning how I will pay rent, my loans, my metrocard, my phone bill, new shoes, a new toothbrush, a new book, a plane ticket home to France, drinks with the girls next week. Wait! I still have a check in my purse to deposit!

She looks up to the street sign.

120th street. 80 blocks left to the bank. Maybe this will tire me out I will finally get some sleep tonight.

I make my way through Morningside Heights. Broadway split down the middle by luscious trees. Glass buildings have been sprouting from the earth between brick buildings steadily, year after year. Oblivious and unconcerned.

Layers of memories slowly unfold, seven years of life. These streets have witnessed so many different versions of me.

She starts seeing her past selves in different parts of the neighborhood.

Running across 117th street from Barnard to Columbia to make it on time to Russian class. ‘Prostite, ia opazdala’.

At the library, reading, underlining, highlighting, annotating, digesting and reinterpreting thousands of words into papers. The illusion of original thought?

Speed walking, muttering lines under my breath in the bitter cold during graduate school. Practically flying to rehearsal, ideas materializing all around me.

And here I am crying silently and uncontrollably, in the unparalleled privacy of these city streets. Missing a boy or two I left behind in France. Struggling with disorientation, loneliness, uncertainty. More or less stuck in between my two countries, desperately trying to mold an identity, a sense of self, a home. Torn. In between.

In college, I used to spend my time in New York feeling French, looking forward to summers in Lyon, a life rooted in the past and full of meaning. And then my time in Lyon feeling American and looking forward to New York, a future full of promise. Waiting for some sort of realisation or epiphany that might be jolted by the change in scenery, a sign I was going in the right direction, made the right choices. Wanting the opportunity to try over, reinvent myself in different streets- with different people, different stakes, a different otherness to carry.

It was like having two sets of self. Two distinct languages, two voices, two types of facial expressions and hand gestures. Two personalities. Two lives lived in parallel,unfolding side by side but rarely intersecting.

Doctor Zhivago’s four phrases, stuck in my mind:

“Lara's left shoulder had been opened. As a key put into the secret door of an iron safe, her shoulder blade had been unlocked by the turn of a sword. In the depths of the revealed inner cavity, the secrets kept by her soul appeared. Strange towns she had visited, strange streets, strange houses, strange expanses drew out in ribbons, in unwinding skeins of ribbons, ribbons spilling out in bundles”.

Places as ribbons hidden in your soul...

106th street. Morningside heights turns into the Upper West Side. The heat is unrelenting. Groups of friends are gathered at bars and restaurants. She looks over enviously. Their togetherness against my aloneness, my practically aimless roaming. I remember the days back home, when I could just text someone, make a plan, walk ten minutes, sit outside, drink cheap wine and just be. Summer in Lyon has an entirely different flavor to it, delicate and specific, accentuated by nostalgia.

Suddenly the sirens, the frantic honks, and the bike rider yelling a ‘Fuck you!’ to the cab driver tune out. Instead, neighborly sounds floating up to our kitchen window on a summer afternoon in Lyon, plates knocking, children playing, a violin crying, people laughing. I am still walking towards the bank at Port Authority to deposit that precious check, but in my mind’s eye my surroundings dissolve and I slowly slip into a different reality.

A change in lights and physicality brings to life the world inside her mind, Lyon.

Here I am on my street, Rue Bouteille, looking at the fresh graffiti on our front door, walking up to the Place Fernand Rey, a tiny cobblestoned plaza surrounded by restaurants, wine bars, and string lights hanging in the trees. Then la place Sathonay. Pink gravel flying under the weight of petanque balls. People sleeping on the benches guarded by their tall dogs, while the hipsters meet at the new bar on the corner.

Voila L'Opéra, the meeting spot for the last 15 years. All that time spent sitting on the steps, looking at people walking by while waiting for my friends. Groups of young boys with a spring in their step and a backwards cap. Girls in skinny jeans, flats and a Longchamp hanging at their elbow. Old ladies with their groceries from the market. The kids dancing hip hop playing music from their boombox.. The Jazz concerts in the summer. The Starbucks on the corner. All ages, races, classes, intertwining at this junction.

A change of light and sounds bring us back to New York.

Someone asks me to smile and makes a kissing noise. I wait to cross 96th street. I can smell garbage, and fresh tar drying in the sun.

Back to Lyon.

Rue de la République: The long, grey pedestrian street. Monoprix,H&M, Eram, Go Sport, Claire’s, Levi’s or Lévis (in French) , Lush, Mango ,le café de la République Etam, la Fnac, the newest McDonalds on the street.The grand old hospital recently turned into a mall. Shopping, walking. We did a lot of walking growing up, that’s what we’d do. 5 euros in your pocket, your feet, and a friend.

The man who sells his drawings in front of the Fnac. He must have been there twenty years now. I remember him precisely, but he could never remember me. Every time: Excusez moi Mademoiselle, vous êtes de Lyon?

The steps we sat on underneath the bridge, hiding from the rest of the city to kiss before running home to finish my homework.

I forgot some of the names of the side streets, but I could navigate them with my eyes closed, I know them like the back of my hand, or like my pocket.

La place Bellecour: The biggest plaza in Europe, I think. Is that really true or did I make that up? You can see the Basilica on the hill, which is in turn watching over us. The statue of Louis the XIVth on his horse. Can you see there are no stirrups? Apparently the sculptor forgot them and realized it only once the statue was already shown to the King, and then he killed himself. Another myth, maybe.

New York

From Columbus Circle to 8th avenue. Suddenly crushed, constricted by a cacophony of sounds and smells, an onrush of bodies of all shapes, sizes and...speeds. NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO LOOK AT YOUR PHONE, LADY - MOVE. Ah damn it! Red neon hand. Don’t walk.

Lyon

Oh and that one summer, on our last day together before I went back to New York, I told him: I can’t believe all these people who are walking around us now, tomorrow they will still be walking here and this will all be real to them, and I’ll be back there and all this will be a dream to me. And he said: you know I am one of those people, right?

New York

Five seconds left to cross, I avoid a dead pigeon and barely make it to the other side. Starbucks, Duane Reade, Dunkin Donuts, a puddle of vomit, a flying plastic bag, mascara running down cheeks, a barely contained smile. I strategically weave my way through a crowd and make it to the bank, my movement ergonomical, bend knees to pull the heavy door, blast of cold air, card pin check card wallet push hip into the door and back to the humidity. Almost bumps into someone who evidently curses at her. No you watch where you’re going !

The streets of Lyon mean ease, simplicity, depth, roots, familiarity, beauty, so much beauty, love, family, friends, clarity, people left behind, heartbreak, insecurity, alienation, stagnation, boredom, yearning, confusion, identity crisis, A space against which I measure my growth, every time I return.

Sound of thunder starts rolling in.

What if these memories just stay there, somewhere deep inside me and gradually get erased, buried forever under skyscrapers, concrete and feet rushing around the grid. And for a while I lose a whole part of who I am.

There’s a loneliness in that, in this place, this city I can’t seem to get away from. All these people walking alongside each other with secret ribbons of their own locked inside their shoulder blades. A community of people resiliently existing in between spaces. To just think of all the places around the world New Yorkers have been through. If released, our collective ribbons would flow down avenues in unending rivers.

The sky is covering up, a dark brilliant grey, and all the buildings become fiercely bright. The air is heavy with anticipation.