Au Revoir Paris

I write to you from my favourite spot in my open window with a glass of something bubbly interrupting my typing, a tear glistening my eye, Ludovico Einaudi playing piano via Spotify and a sense of concern for Mickey.

I've just closed up mine and Mickey's home. Mickey doesn't know yet. He is somewhere in the wall. I shall be woken no doubt by his horrified cry when he descends without his carefully placed plastic crash mat. That's right. I have removed his thousands of plastic bags and plastic egg boxes which he has been carefully dragging to the back of the cupboard and packing together. I even found an egg box lined with bags which I can only assume was his bed. So when he comes back from a hard days hunting for food he no longer has a soft place to rest his head. I am feeling guilty. He'd put a lot of care into that home of his. Apart from his poor toilet habits that I've had to clean up, his sanctuary looked pretty comfy. He was well hidden from the human enemy living next to him by a baracade of bags. He'd even pulled a bag with medicine to the back of the cupboard, heavy medicine. A glass bottle filled with cough medicine and another glass bottle filled with tablets. And I KNEW when I searched for that medicine a couple of months ago that I hadn't thrown it away.

For my part, I am looking to the patch of sky I can see from my window and into my tiny but beautiful sanctuary and mourning. I have loved this flat with all my heart. My own personal space. I have had no money and yet it is the closest I have ever been to having my living space exactly as I want it. I've felt sad, happy, safe and just content here. So much has gone through these walls. I feel like I am leaving a little part of myself in this room. Strange to think soon it will be home to someone else.

As for Paris, I have no time to actually say goodbye to her. I haven't been to the river since my cousin was here at the end of May and the cemetery since Easter. I wish I could but I am also happy that she said goodbye to me with weeks of pink skies and then just a week before the Commandes started, when I still had the head space to appreciate it, she gave me the most spectacular light show. It was the perfect goodbye. It took me back to the beginning when on a visit to Paris to set up my life she welcomed me with a silent lightening storm as I sat with my ex on a boat by the Eiffel Tower. It was terrifying and beautiful and arresting. We couldn't take our eyes off it despite our very real fear. This time I was in the safety of my flat but the force of the lightening show forking all over the pink sky meant that I couldn't even watch with the window open. So I closed the window and lay on my back and just looked up at it and I said goodbye and thank you all at once. For all my rants and raves and however much I've missed London, I cannot begin to thank Paris enough. I've been through so much here and come so far and grown so much. I leave Paris an entirely different person to the one who came. I can now see why Hemingway calls it a Moveable Feast. She will stay with me forever. And so will Lecoq. And neither will make any sense or start to be expressed in me until I am away from them both and no doubt then I shall miss them both unbearably.

But for tonight I am enjoying my flat for the final time and wondering how I will be alert to Mickey's night time visit without his plastic home rustling away. It's my last night in the flat as tomorrow my cousin is staying in the flat and I am staying with friends so I do hope Mickey makes himself known to me tonight, otherwise last nights rustling was my goodbye. Although I am getting used to these goodbyes that happen fast with no time to linger and get morose. On to the next in a whirl of hurry and excitement. There's almost no time to feel sad. Almost.

Yet, if I had the time I would walk the river and go to my favourite little vintage shop and walk amongst the Sepulchres at the cemetry Pere La Chaise and see the friends I am not saying goodbye to. However, this rush leaving will leave me with things to miss and an excuse to come back, which for the first time I can tell you I will want to do. At some point. Although I think never with a partner ever again. Paris is just for me.

So Paris...so long for now. Mickey, GOOD LUCK. Lecoq, thank you. Readers, thank you. I hope to see you on the other side.

Good lord this feels strange. Keep playing for me Ludovico Einaudi, I need you tonight.