Tournoiement (English Version)
The swirling, bright lights mingling with faces and dancing bodies, my body twirling, intoxicated with joy, my feet coming alive on a dusty, earthy floor. Until the early hours, in an old barn in the hinterland of Montpellier, my body revels in this simple happiness that dance offers us. I still hear the laughter, I still see the smiles, and I see myself twirling, alone, then in the arms of another. Twirling to the rhythm of a colorful and vibrant life full of encounters and beauty. Beauty was the other (l'autre): their story and the elsewhere (l'ailleurs) was this curious place that I was always eager to explore. I used to love contemplating and fully experience life. I was 27 years old.
Her slightly graying hair, tied in a falling bun, she leaps, or rather she dares delicately to extend her arms in a subtle, expressive, and graceful movement. Her body gently undulates from side to side, carried by those curved then extended arms reaching towards the sky. These graceful movements blend with the soft light emanating from the window in front of which she stands. I can't help but look at the aged skin of her hands. Years have not, however, diminished the natural grace of this woman, who suddenly, overcome with melancholy while listening to an old vinyl and a song on which she loved to dance, sets her body in motion. Delicately, all these gestures harmonize and evoke verses of a poem that I had forgotten. The one about finitude, about a life that eventually wilts. Elegance, however, knows no end; the delicacy of a body carried by joy, serenity, or an awakening passion, this beauty is ineffable, timeless. I feel my body reflecting in hers. My body, too, will eventually wilt. I see myself in this woman. She reminds me not to forget the essential: that finitude or more precisely the path toward the end can also be graceful, vibrant, and subtle. This subtlety, this fragility is to be recognized and cherished. I am 45 years old, 18 years have passed since that evening in the barn in the hinterland of Montpellier.
What have I forgotten? What have I learned during these last 18 years?
The window of my office is open. I hear the song of the birds and the hum of the ocean. Biarritz, I will soon leave you to find a piece of your ocean on the Pacific side. In a few months, my hands will again caress the foamy crests of the waves on Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, Canada. 18 years ago, I also left France, heart heavy, body gnawed by fear. Today, despite this separation that I cannot avoid, calmness has taken hold of me, and the pain is no longer there. I leave with my heart filled with joy, memories, love for my country and stories. I depart elsewhere, uncertain about what I will enjoy finding again, but I leave with serenity, excited at the thought of being carried once more to this welcoming land that has so nourished me in the past.