The School (English version)
On the terrace of the house where I grew up, as I hang laundry, I gaze into the distance at my childhood preschool. The gentle, fresh smell of wet clothes lifts me out of my everyday life and carries me back to a memory. I was 7 years old. Interrupted in my reverie by the teacher's voice that startles me as she calls my name, pulled out of my daydreams, I blush with shame. I am surprised, exposed in what I hold most intimate, most precious: my daydreams.
Back to reality. That of the classroom, the green chalkboard, the dusty rectory, my desk adorned with ink and scribbles made by many other students before me. Just beside me, I see my sister and my cousin. Both of them have their faces buried in their hands. Their heads slightly tilted, noses in the air, kidnapped by their own daydreams, that sweet escapade, that precious gift that life has offered us, the freedom to wander towards a world, any world, the one we need when we are children, a world softer, more flamboyant, or calmer. The school and the array of teachers. The extreme severity and authenticity of one, the gentle luminous blue eyes of another, or the roundness of another. I don't forget their shapes, long and rigid, elegant and slender or round and warm.
What did I learn during those years? I remember tracing my first letters and my first sentences colored with geometric shapes. The discovery of reading and the discovery of books, of stories. Some have never left me, like "The Fables of Lafontaine" or "Mishka" by Marie Colmont. I also don't forget the learning of drawing and the end-of-year shows.
High School. My first friends. My first big loves. And that learning that flows over me, that does not sink in. I hear the long monologues of the teachers, I see again their shapes, the color of their hair, their gestures, their professorial essence. I observe and sometimes contemplate these men and women who talk to us but I retain nothing of these hollow words. The knowledge that I now crave seemed so outdated, absent, devoid of meaning. The lessons we often had to memorize made me drowsy.
So I leave, every evening, at homework time, my mind wanders, it escapes far, so far into that invigorating world where I am the adventurer I want to be, far from school I flee. I often resurface to pick up a line or two of my lessons before falling asleep again. Learning my lessons takes me hours. Nothing of what I learn hits me, resonates with me. I think about what angers me, about what I observe around me. I feed off what I observe, what I feel, I become an expert in "listening" but slowly I drift carried by overwhelming feelings and unfortunate encounters. I drift and move away from the books I once loved so much. The other. The other becomes the object of my desires, the other's story, his uniqueness. My love for the other, for others, leads me, guides me, and gradually distances me from self-love. Fortunately, writing has remained. In my journals, I hid the words, the truth of the words. I hid the words that can hurt by describing the essence of what I was experiencing, with distance and contemplation, or by abstract and symbolic descriptions of the sufferings and uncertainties that my child's body then adolescent body was going through.
This me, I have found it today, fulfilled by the quest for beauty. The beauty that reveals itself to us through nature. The one that hides in every corner of our imagination, beauty.
The laundry bag is empty. My daughter's hand gently tugging at the bottom of my t-shirt and her soft voice calling me back from my reverie. Back to the reality of everyday life. Years have passed since those dreamy escapades during my school days. What will be my next getaway?