The Manicheans

I wake up, and my first reaction is to grab my Blackberry to check how many emails and tweet posts I received overnight. I’m a technology freak, a virtual junkie who quickly loved my phone is if it was my lifeline. What’s ironic about it is that I use it more like a computer, not like a phone. I rarely talk to people. I write to them instead.

These words, that I really learned how to trace and shape with a hesitant hand at the age of 5, have become my world. I read, relentlessly, absorbing them like a drug, feeling their rush into my blood, dancing before my eyes as if the high could not come fast enough.

Today, I received an email from an acquaintance I haven’t talked to in years. Like at least 7 years. We went to law school together, did not get especially friendly until we participated in a Moot Court work group and after that, well we did not really keep in touch so I didn’t bother wondering what had become of her.

Suddenly, I read her words. Very quick and simple, a hello from Paris where she works now, and then a how are you? speak soon. bye. I don’t even know why she emailed me. Does she know I permanently moved to the United States? Did she hear I got married? Is she aware I’m working in a law firm in Manhattan?

I have no clue. The rush immediately stops as I polluted my brain with questions, seeking an agenda that I’m sure exist, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Nobody emails me after 7 years of silence if they don’t want something. That’s a fact. And I guess it is legitimate for me to ask myself these questions because, let’s be honest, I wasn’t born yesterday.

So here we are. This short email standing on my computer screen, my finger hesitantly moving back and forth between the “delete” button and the “respond later” inbox folder. I don’t know what to make of it. Is this girl important enough for me to stay in touch? Not really. Have I ever thought I would hear from her ever again? No. Do I want her to know everything about my life? No. Long distance friendships cannot last if there’s no friendship to start with.

I believe that her email was nice, and well intentioned, but that she also had a motive to write to me. So… I’m not going to respond yet. I’m going to wait. I need to make up my mind when it comes to this. I never look back at my past, ever, and the people I left behind often become very far memories that I tend to disregard after many years have passed. I can’t even remember her face.

Again, I could always be polite and reply to her. But what would I tell her? Lots has happened in 7 years and unless I start writing a biography now, I don’t really want to dwell on this part of my life. I mean, let’s be honest, at the time we met, I was a mess, looking for every opportunity to leave France, wondering whether I should drop out of law school and become a hairdresser instead. I was having a virtual relationship with some crazy person in Texas and I was fighting demons I did not know how to defeat while trying to fit in a world that never wanted me in the first place. I felt awkward, with my first tattoos and my piercings, my head full of ideas and my rebellious side wanting to break free, while trying to really understand what my real purpose on this earth was. Not so long before we met, I was burning my arm with cigarette butts, attempting to overcome my emotional pain by subjecting myself to horrible physical pain. I am serious here. I was a mess. I probably still am one, but at least now, I got it under control and I know better what I want from life.

I did not think I would reminisce about this dark period of my past. My evil self wanted out, consuming my soul in a world of constant struggle, inviting me to a never ending celebration of pain. It took me a while to get hold of it, transform it into what it has become today, undoubtedly a great source of inspiration. I’m not done with it yet. I will never defeat it, and no matter how hard I try, I don’t even want to get rid of it. I love my pain, it grew with me and burned my heart so many times, we’ve become inseparable. Like any good friendship, however, it is now my greatest companion, my muse, the reflection of myself in the darkest and brightest moments.

I’ve grown so much, I don’t know if it will ever be worth getting back in touch with this girl. She never struck me as being a tortured spirit. So should I email her back?

I really don’t know.

I had a great exchange today with one of my new Tweeps. One post on his blog triggered my interest. “MSP… Do you have it?” was the title of it.

MSP stands for “My Sensory Perception”. It was fascinating to read how somebody I don’t even know can feel and think the same way I do. It’s not the first time I come across someone who sounds so similar to me. I knew I wasn’t the only one after all who felt weird all this time!

I grew up surrounded by people who didn’t understand me. They saw me as a bit too crazy for them, let’s admit it, my vision of life didn’t correspond to theirs. I loved to be alone so I could lose myself in my thoughts, bouncing ideas with my imaginary self, singing loud in the middle of a field, letting the rain fall on my shoulders and laughing at my cat who hated stepping in puddles. I used to run, wearing my sweat pants and my dad’s old shirts that were too big for me, until I reached my little hill, my realm and my sanctuary, and I sat on my throne, my rock of life, my inspiration growing from the grass and the silence surrounding me. I watched cows in the horizon moving at a very slow pace, and clouds forming shapes in the sky, painting faces and animals on this never ending canvas. At night, I would stare at the Moon, wondering if I could touch it one day. I remember being very little when my mum told me: “You know, people can see you from the Moon.” I really thought that it was inhabited, so I waved at them and I even tried to find them with my half brother’s old pair of binoculars.

I sensed the world around me, became conscious of my own breathing, and reflected on the beauty of having five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. I lied on my bed, eyes wide open, letting the shadows of the night overwhelm me, until I closed them to create new stories in my head. I wrote and let the pen guide me, my imagination taking turns as scary as they were exciting to me.

I learned about love, sex and death through books at first, then I made them my own. The first time I saw two people making love in a movie, I was 11. I got shocked. I was young after all. A little later, I found my half brother’s old Playboys and Penthouses at the bottom of a closet, hidden under a pile of rags. I got repulsed when I opened them. I found all of that sexual exhibition very puzzling and disturbing. A few days later, however, I went back and searched for them, and this time, I looked at them. I observed, studied, examined until my brain got so sick of them, I wanted no more.

A few years later, I read Romeo and Juliet and cried when I reached the end. Looking at a bunch of porn never killed my romantic side. It was like everything else. Eating sushi for the first time, grabbing chop sticks and not knowing what to do with them, and then driving a car, feeling it move as I pressed on the gas, and thought I’d really die when I drove at 2 MPH. Tripping balls and seeing colors I thought existed only in my dreams, feeling the beat of speakers vibrating against my body, making my heart shake so hard, I almost threw up. Wandering in an empty street, hearing steps behind me, clutching my car keys ready to deliver a blow if somebody indeed jumped me. Touching silk, breathing the scent of a flower, eating fried pickles and drinking great wine, listening to the opera, composing my first song, giving my first kiss, making love for the first time…. I learned about loss when my cat disappeared. I mourned like a part of me had died when my marriage ended.

Every new sensation triggers something different in me. I like it or hate it, but I always keep an emotion attached to it, so I can remember it when I write. My life has always been like that. It’s an adventure of sensory perception, everything I can experience and retain, simply because it makes my time on this earth richer. I would feel lost without it, aimless, worthless in a way. What would be my purpose if I didn’t satisfy my constant thirst for exploration?

Some people crossed my path and showed me how little these things mattered to them, and I didn’t understand. I felt excluded, confused, cast away from a logic that seemed illogical to me. Life is not routine. Life is not familiarity. Life is not boring. Their opinion doesn’t matter. I’m happy living this way. At least I know I’m not dead. To me, they are.

My head was always full of dreams, since I can remember. I grew wanting out of the country where I was born because I felt different, and just never really belonged there in the first place. The language, the culture, all the traditions and the customs were never mine. I just did not like it there.

So I dreamt. I dreamt as hard as I could, searching for a place where I could be happier. I wanted a new freedom. When I turned seven or eight, I can’t exactly remember, my much older half-brother had left to the United States and had been in New York for a while then. He had found a girl, and wanted to permanently stay. Like every foreigner before and after him, he had fallen in love with the American dream.

I don’t really know how it all happened, maybe it was supposed to be that way, but I know I wanted to go to New York too when I grew up. I stuck the idea deep inside my head and it never really left me. Despite all the doubts, the worries and the trouble figuring out who I was, I always knew I would go to New York one day. Mostly, I wanted to be an American. I loved the language, the accent, the people and the culture, everything about that country attracted me so much, I would have sold my soul to the devil to be able to live there.

I think that God heard my prayers at some point, and if not God, somebody above must have, because I finally came here. My first time to New York City, I was 17. It was 11 years ago. I was a tourist with a video camera, one of the first generation of digital technology available on the market. I had bought it because I wanted to become a movie director at the time, so I had to practice. My German grandma had given me enough money to get it, and I splurged. I got the best one I could. I filmed everything, made a movie out of it, the soundtrack being a series of songs by the Backstreet Boys (I was a die hard fan). The movie was awesome. It was New York City at its best, and man, how good it was.

After that my dream never died. I pushed myself to improve my English, took notes in all my classes (taught in French or German) in English, and I devoured books written in English, watched all American and English movies in their original version (with English subtitles at first, then without), and I went online, chatted with people, always speaking in English. I lived and breathed English. American English. I even found a job as a legal assistant in a small international law firm where I would speak and write only in English all day long.

During the summer of 2005, fate put on my road my husband. And then you know, I just decided to take the leap. I applied to law school at Hofstra University, got accepted to pursue an LLM, and I left. I packed all my stuff in two suitcases, and took the plane on July 26, 2006. A one way ticket.

I remember landing and then feeling lost, homesick, wondering whether I had made the right choice. I could not understand when people spoke to me, my English was good but I realized it then how bad it was. There’s nothing like being in the country when you want to perfect your foreign languages. I suffered from a constant headache for the first six months I lived here, as if my brain was subject to a weird transformation, creating new connections the more I listened and spoke, thought and processed information, completely cleansing all the French out of my system.

Like every change, this one hurt like hell, but God, how thankful I am today. I can write and tell stories in English. I live here, and feel like an American. I’m not French anymore. I belong here. The best thing that could happen, after living for months with an uncomfortable nervous feeling in expectation of getting the good news, was to receive what I had been expecting for so long. My reward, my prize, my pass to freedom: my green card.

I am so thankful, I want to cry. Thank you God, and thank you America, for loving me so much. You made me a very happy woman today.

She gifted me with her presence. She sometimes gets mad when I don’t take care of her as she deserves, but she always forgives my lack of attention when she realizes she still is the first in my thoughts. Yesterday, I gave a tribute to her, a piece that will last as long as I live. This is to Myo, to Esperanza, to Ete, and all my strong female characters who are as strong as they are fragile and vulnerable, and as dominant as they are submissive. They are the purest reflection of my soul, the independent woman who fears nothing but also doubts a lot. To my love, to my anger, to my passion and my fears, my muse is my rider and she guides me to new territories as I grow older.

When I look at her, I knew she was meant to be. The blank canvas felt an immense solitude without her. She belongs there and stays with me, protecting me every step of the way. I let her take me where she knows I like to escape, and as I am beguiled by her charms, she whispers to me the ideas that will become the inspiration for a new story. My muse is simply my all.

So today is July 14. I’ve celebrated July 4 since I moved to New York, but I’ve celebrated July 14 since I was a child. I remember getting up early on that holiday to watch documentaries on the French military, including the Foreign Legion, and was even a little obsessed with joining the army until I turned 21. I remember being in Paris on July 14 and watching the parade of tanks and army troops on the Champs Elysees. It was so nice. Jacques Chirac was President at the time.

I still sing my national anthem, as a memory and tribute to my origins. France is, after all, the place where I grew up and became an adult, so as much as I hate it now, I still love it too. I wish France was a better country so I could be proud of it. It makes me sad when French people behave like jerks.

My father taught me the old values of being French. Honor, culture, discipline, art. To this day, I thank him for being there for me like he did. Despite our differences, he’s the first man in my life. I also want to thank my mother for giving me the German pride. It’s a more discreet, less arrogant pride, but it is there, buried in the marrow of my bones.

I tend to think that I represent the best of both worlds, or the worst, depending on how you look at it. I’m deeply European nonetheless, and belong to a continent which history is older and richer, and where war for our people was a reality until not so long ago. I love the US for its youth, but I miss Europe for its wisdom.

On that note, let me write down the first verse of the Marseillaise. Happy July 14th!

Allons, enfants de Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrive;
Contre nous de la tyranne,
L’etendard sanglant est leve,
L’etendard sanglant est leve,
Entendez vous, dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces feroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras,
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes.

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!