Echo, or the Sieve of Time

So here it is: the summer languor; it seems summer will never end. The leaves on the trees are green — they’re not turning yet; the grass is green, too, occasionally refreshed by the warm summer rains. The bliss of indolence, when, as the rhythm of the city slows, the rhythm of the blood slows as well, when, after the avalanche of work abates, you gaze, lost in thought, at the motionless cranes over the Samaritaine Department Store imprisoned in scaffolding, or, lounging on the banks of the Seine at the tip of Cité, your eyes comb the willow branches enveloping you, until finally you drown in their thicket. There’s nothing you have to do — everything is already done and written, everything has already been said. If you do or say anything, you will just be an impediment. To yourself, to others, to everything around.

The August of that year in Paris was strange. I hadn’t left the city, but I felt as if I had come back to it after many years. And as always when you return to places you have not visited for a long time, Paris looked empty and abandoned. It also looked sad, as if it had lost something. I wanted to say that places age the way we do. But no — places don’t always age, there are times when people rejuvenate them according to their understanding, but returning to them after many days away, the longing for time gone by always sears you. At least it does me. It’s only an illusion that you have returned to the place you left.