Stethoscope

Eastern France station at 7:30 am

I’m twenty minutes early. It’s a bit cold, but not too cold. Do I wait inside the station, a bit crowded with all those people who got up early, or do I wait outside, quieter, but a bit cold? I went outside. I’m sitting facing that TER station over there, and then that little white house behind the “Alsace” train. Is it this morning’s light? Is it the sweet text message I’ve just received from a dear friend, is it the combination of the two? Is it me? I find this morning very soothing. And yet I’m sad. Yes, I’m very concerned about the disappearance of my son. Of course, it’s a leitmotif in my soul. I haven’t yet fully assimilated, psychologically, that he’s gone forever.

A rubbish bag misplaced on this garbage can in front of me. A few people have gone down the little staircase to my right, to other platforms. I’m on platform A, the first one. Car 1, seat 33. I wondered, as it’s a bit cold, if the train would arrive well in advance, or right on time? It’s sure to be right on time, because this isn’t a terminus station. I accept this and accept that I’ll be cold for a little while longer.

I love traveling on trains. I haven’t had a fear of trains since my son stopped his life by throwing himself under a train. I could have. But I don’t. I still love trains. I think this network is such a blessing we have! I deplore the fact that there are four times fewer railroads in France today than there were a hundred years ago. It’s such a shame. And there’s no making up for it. This is not a time for ecology, no matter what anyone says. Ecological hypocrisy, yes.

A small, colorful “Grand Est” train arrives slowly from the left, on a platform a little further on. I can hear it clattering on the tracks, rather quietly, as the song I’m listening to is quiet at the moment, the 1990 album “Livonia” by the American experimental rock band “His Name Is Alive”. I lift my headphones for a moment, hearing “Destination Paris Est” over the automatic voice.

The brightness drops. The train, much louder than before, enters from the right and darkens my little world. “Fluo Grand Est”, an old train with stickers on it like clumsy make-up.

28 September 2024

High school entrance

Rolling suitcases behind high school students. Maybe he’s got a bad back. Rolling suitcases didn’t exist in the old days, and secondary school students carried huge backpacks or satchels, sometimes “bigger than they were” to describe the impression one could get. Maybe with digital technology and lockers, we carry fewer documents. Here, I can see a young girl behind the glass in the entrance, rolling a very large, cream-colored suitcase, as if she were a traveler. Objects have symbolism, which can evolve. For me, a suitcase evokes travel. But you often see workers taking public transport with a rolling suitcase, just to get to the office. Today, I travel with a sound system on wheels. Two smaller, black suitcases. And a third suitcase. Ah, but maybe this high school is a boarding school, yes, yes. And it’s Friday night. So these are real suitcases for traveling home.

I can see them coming in with their backpacks open. No doubt they’re being checked by someone. As far as I’m concerned, nobody checked me when I came in. Different privileges for different ages: I’m less feared.

The students who go out now don’t have suitcases, just a small backpack or handbag. I don’t think they carry much, compared to when I was in high school too; in my memory, we carried a lot. And all young people now have cell phones, and have had them for a very long time. That didn’t exist when I was a teenager.

The exit door opens, closes and opens again. Small groups exit as they go. The front door receives fewer people, at 4pm. “Did it ring?” “It rang! Stop lying!” I know it rang, there were the two rings. The teacher who’s supposed to pick me up isn’t here yet.

A new large suitcase, black, rolls silently by a teenage girl. “It’s me Bénédicte”. Another teenager enters, colorful backpack open in her hand.

I glance through the window: the teacher isn’t coming. It’s beautiful, I think, this emotion, this anxiety that comes over me, this sort of diffuse fear of having been forgotten. I like to feel emotions flowing through me, I try to be the observer, with a little distance.

Suddenly, it’s very quiet. No one in the hallway, just the muffled voices of people elsewhere. Just a young girl walking very quietly, as if gliding across the floor. And then a few bursts of voices: “Look, an NPC”.

I can feel the worry inside me. He’s still not there. I call to him. No, I get up, I’m going straight to the classroom. I’m off.

In the courtyard I passed the teacher coming towards me.

27 September 2024

Subway train

A slightly faded white loafer that moves forward, then out of my peripheral vision into my central vision, then back into the periphery of my vision. A telephone operated by two hands, also in my peripheral vision. One of the two hands grabs the bar beside me to hold on; and then, as soon as the subway has stabilized, the hand goes back to manipulate the phone, with the other hand.

Suddenly, the crowd around me leaves. Bastille station. A few feet, shoes, coats and telephones calmly replace them. Earlier, a woman jostled me to get out, irritated by my presence. Perhaps she’d asked me to get out of the way and I hadn’t heard her, thanks to my noise-cancelling headphones, in which I’m listening to “Men at Work”, an 80s rock band.

Quai de la rapée station, again. I don’t even need to see it, I can feel it. I know the movement of the metro as it approaches this station, in both directions. Yesterday, I was standing upright, and as the metro left this station and made its famous turn, skirting this building as it twisted and turned to follow its shape and approach the bridge over the Seine, I was trying not to lose my balance, without holding on, like a metro surfer. I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet, next to this place that was so charged for me. The place where my son’s remains were laid to rest a fortnight before his burial two years ago. I stood.

The new, small crowd got off at Gare d’Austerlitz station. The metro is quieter.

26 September 2024

Flour hall

Worry. This big university building, in which I can never find the room I need to go to. A few months ago, with two very heavy suitcases full of equipment, I climbed up and down dozens of stairs, sweated, exerted myself, went from one place to another, ending up in front of the wrong room every time. Eventually I found it, swimming; the students had been waiting for 45 minutes. But this morning, I had to be on time, coming back from the train from Châlons-en-Champagne, because it was the students’ exams. And I was worried about my journey, about my ability to reach the room, quite simply. It’s a trauma, imprinted on me, that produces fear in me.

I enter the large building, whose entrance looks like an emergency exit, with a nonchalant person in front. All the other doors are closed on this Saturday morning, apart from this strange passage. The building is half-closed, which doesn’t reassure me. The fireman on duty tells me “down the corridor, third floor”. I go up to the third floor, there’s a map and I can see that the room is indicated on the map, with a corridor leading to it. But the corridor doesn’t exist. I look for it, I go back several times, it really doesn’t exist. I even touch the walls where it’s supposed to be. Eventually I realize that I need to go down to the floor below, and take another staircase, to reach the part of the 3^rd floor that contains the room I need to get to. But it’s not indicated that way on the plan! So if the plans are wrong, where are we going? How can I, who’s already worried about getting lost, find my way around if the plan shows things that don’t exist? I resent the renovation of these large old mills.

I wrote these two paragraphs this morning, while waiting with some students for my turn to take part in two dissertation defenses. They were a little surprised to see me taking out my laptop while sitting in a corridor. But taking out a telephone doesn’t surprise anyone, even though it’s just as much a computer, just more compact and focused on communication functions. I’m finishing this short text tonight, listening to Berlin electro music, house music style. I’ve been transformed by the death of my son. I can’t compare myself to who I was and how I functioned before; from now on, I’m not exactly the same. I have to rediscover and reinvent myself. Not go back, because the before is no more. I’m so sad, so sad... of course. But what can I do? Give myself a double whammy? Or deal with it, even if it’s with the most absolute unacceptability. Know that I’ve been transformed. I don’t know how, or where. Just as it’s not possible to go back in time, to bring Hippolyte back to life, it’s not possible for me to go back to being who I was before. I am other.

I added a few bits of text in the first two paragraphs five days later. I couldn’t help going back. While I understand that this method of writing, of writing in the present, and assuming that time moves forward and you can’t go back, has to do with my transformation following the suicide of my eldest son, this transformation that I can’t change. Just like the text, which I can no longer change. Here, I’ve changed the first two paragraphs, not the third. And this fourth paragraph was written five days later.

I remember that the day I ran up and down the stairs with my suitcases, each weighing over twenty kilos, looking for and eventually reaching rooms that were never the right one, at one point a guard refused to open the elevator for me, which was reserved for I don’t know who. I didn’t put up a fight, because I was in a hurry, and with my two suitcases, I wisely climbed up the many stairs, only to find that I hadn’t found the right room, only to come back down a few minutes later in front of him.

21 September 2024

The mirror

A heart-shaped mirror. White, with hints of sky-blue for the frame. The mirror only reflects. Inside, I can see the top of the wall, a beam, a wooden lintel, the top of the doorway. And I can hear the wind in the trees. I also feel the wind on my skin at times, light because it was broken by the front door. This mirror hangs on the wall of the house. Next to it is a window. The mirror is like another window, but showing the inside of the room. I look outwards, and the mirror reflects an image of the interior, which depends on my position in relation to it.

18 August 2024

Starlings

An impressive flock of birds. Like a powerful breath. Seem to bend the sky. Land in the big tree. And then another swarm, like a wave coming towards us, overtaking the building from above. At breakneck speed. Such coordination. Where did the decision come from? To go here or there? To this tree or that. Their volume gradually rises, the huge tree on the banks of the Rhone at the end of the day becoming louder and louder. From the balcony where we’re watching them, we’re at or near their height, just a few meters away. An ornithological observation post. Composer Olivier Messiean was reproducing bird songs. I’m tired. Very tired. It’s hard to write and concentrate. What immense energy in nature. I’m in, but I need to rest.

17 August 2024

Chips

A few weeks ago, I was sitting next to a young obese woman on the TGV. Obese, but hip. It was around lunchtime, and she had placed her phone in an ad hoc slot, which I had occasionally discovered was useful for watching a film or series while eating her meal. I thought of her because in the subway where I am now, a young obese woman sat down in front of me and then left. She was eating her meal, which she had prepared herself, and then she was eating chips. You could feel her immense pleasure in eating, how it brought her bliss. I could see the pain she was inflicting on herself.

16 August 2024

Backlight

This couple is sitting against the light. Side by side, facing the window of the fast-food restaurant on the side of the Centre Pompidou. What’s their view? The gable of the building, nothing. But they can see the people passing by. Their show.

Center Pompidou. Entrance. Museum. Exhibitions. Cinemas. Live shows. Youth activities. Libraries. That’s what they can read in front of them. A pole. A small tree. Leaves moving in the wind. A young woman goes to the left, loaded with DIY materials. A man on a bicycle, passing quickly. A man in an orange T-shirt passes by. A young woman with bleached hair. On the low wall, three remnants of small posters torn off; we no longer know what they represented. One red, one yellow, one blue. They still have cracks in them. A young woman is walking to the right, already stooped over. Young, old, rich, poor. Here, in the heart of Paris, at a touristy time of year, you pass a lot of people. A woman in her sixties, with grey hair, walks slowly.

After their starters of grated carrots in a small cardboard bowl, they attack the sandwich. This spectacle of humanity passing by is beautiful. I understand why they’ve seized the opportunity to be here. The restaurant is almost empty, it’s not yet noon and all the seats are free. Normally, the place they’ve taken must be one of the most sought-after. The staff are chatting quietly.

The mandibles are twitching. And I’m waiting for something to happen. That man with the big belly. That woman with a surgical mask over her nose, that couple earlier with huge backpacks, that couple in their seventies who are a pleasure to behold. And then a white car, slowly down this pedestrian street. Is anything happening? Everything happens, and nothing at the same time.

The man stands up! Micro-event. He’s much younger than I’d expected. Looking at their backs, I’d have thought they were in their sixties. He’s in his forties. I don’t know about her. He comes back with a cup of tea. Maybe he’s finally in his fifties. I’m 54 myself, so I make people look younger, because I don’t look at them from the same place. Similarly, when you’re young, you age people. Children only see “old people” from the age of 25 onwards; they don’t differentiate between ages from 25 onwards, because of their perspective of vision: what’s further away is increasingly indistinct and merges with what’s closer, to form a fairly homogenous mass. Similarly, from my point of view, as I imagine myself more in my forties than in my fifties, what seems closest to me are people in their forties, and everyone else is a bit close.

“Shall we?” She stands up, I finally see her face. Her hair is gray. From the back I thought she was 60. Now I think she’s 50. No one is sitting at this table, and no one but me has any recollection of this non-event, these two people who ate there, and we watched a lot of people. Perhaps they’ve recorded something in their memory of that moment? Maybe it’s a simple, precious moment they’ll remember from their trip to Paris, because they were vacationers? Or perhaps this moment will be quickly forgotten forever in the normal selection that the brain has to make in memories?

A young delivery boy on a bicycle is stopped, and he consults his phone. Or maybe he’s not a delivery boy, maybe it’s just his personal bag? I think back to a time, more than 30 years ago, when the cell phone was a marker of social class. Today, poor or rich, you own a cell phone and a telephone line.

A young woman approaches this empty area. Surprisingly, she doesn’t sit where the couple were sitting. She stands to one side, and gets into her phone. One leg of her black pants is much shorter than the other, showing her calf. Is she a cyclist?

The young man on the bike slung his backpack over his shoulders. I don’t think he’s a delivery boy. He leaves slowly.

I think back to that couple, almost forgotten already, during their meal, neither of them had opened their cell phones. They preferred the spectacle of the restaurant’s glass screen to the spectacle of the glass of their phones. I think that, as tourists, they had sat there to make the most of the city, to take in the sights.

I think of Bernard Stiegler, that great philosopher of technology, who was no technophobe. He founded the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation at the Centre Pompidou here. He committed suicide four years ago, in the summer of 2020. My son Hippolyte committed suicide almost two years ago, in September 2022.

The sun came out from behind the window screen. A slightly wiry young man passes by, long hair, T-shirt and large backpack. He reminds me a little of Hippolyte. I step out.

15 August 2024

Subway stopped

At Quai de la Râpée station, right next to the Institut Médico-Légal, where the body of my son Hippolyte was brought after he threw himself under a train, nearly two years ago. “Accident grave voyageur”. That’s what they call it. It’s unpleasant for travellers, it’s happened to me before. Hippolyte had found a very effective way not to miss himself, so his mind was really made up. No one in the stopped metro seemed worried.

On the same metro, in the other direction, I’m about to arrive at Quai de la Râpée station. This is line 5, a fast line in the Paris network. For almost ten years now, I’ve lived near a station on this line. I often, often pass the Institut Médico Légal (IML). Anyone whose loved one has died on the public highway in the Paris region knows about the IML, because that’s where the bodies are brought. Hippolyte’s body remained there for 15 days, before being buried. “I don’t have a body. All you could see was a hand sticking out of the sheet. I didn’t want to.

The metro approaches the station. It skirts around the IML building, almost caressing it. The metro stops at the station. In this direction, towards Place d’Italie, we stop at the station before skirting the building. And then there’s the little parking lot, the one my grandfather used because it’s the only free parking lot in the neighborhood. In this direction, with my back to the movement, I can see the building’s windows overlooking the stage. I think I’ve spotted the window where we’ve come to close the coffin (still without seeing Hippolyte, he wasn’t visible, it was his choice not to be, a matter of modesty I think, well that probably wasn’t his subject, his subject was to be sure of putting an end to his psychic suffering). Which window? It’s starting to get a little fuzzy for me, which is good.

Sometimes I used to come on pilgrimage to this building, on the other side of the stage from the Seine. I don’t come here anymore, I just pass through.

14 August 2024

Your time will be mine

These are the words of a blind man who has just sat down next to me at this terrace on the square in front of Saint Médard church. A few meters away, a man from Paris is complimenting a woman. He must be over 80, she must be 30, and he’s sitting with his wife, who’s the same age as him.

The church of Saint Médard strikes the hour. The blind man says “eh yeah”. The woman who had received the compliment listens to a friend of hers, who tells her about her life in an invested way. The 80-year-old man, standing with his back to me, holds his spoon in the air - I thought it was a cigarette he was smoking. He makes this gesture, after each bite, of holding his spoon/cigarette in the air, as a gesture of well-being to indicate his satisfaction. The blind man sings along to the music. He is obese. He’s in the dining room, almost on the terrace. The 80-year-old couple is at the beginning of the terrace.

“Here Nono, hop over there.” The waitress hands the blind man a pitcher of water, which he had asked for a few minutes earlier, while waiting to place his order. To get in, he’d been accompanied by someone who’d helped him over the step and into a seat.

Tonight, I feel this writing device imposing itself on me. I know what I have to do. The 80-year-old woman laughs a little, and then she looks at her husband, and then she looks around a little. The 80-year-old man, let’s call him Jean, doesn’t dare say anything to the 30-year-old woman, let’s call her Anna, because his macho attitude is no longer acceptable. So he’s back to concentrating on his wife, who doesn’t make any comments. Everyone moves on. Jean’s leg sometimes trembles. His wife, let’s call her Annie, laughs sometimes too. She knows her husband, she knows he’s cheated on her, and he’d still like to be the flirt for whom it works.

Jean is the modest one, the man who questions himself, with gestures. But he’s calmer, and his voice much less timbred and loud than earlier, when he was flirting. Annie takes out a fan. It’s a warm day.

“Sorry, my Nono, it’s crowded,” says the waitress in the green T-shirt as she returns from the terrace.

“A garter belt” says Jean. “These are your friends” says Jean. If I say so” says Jean. We hear snatches of his words. Two pensioners with their two little girls greet Jean and his wife. “The music was great. “It’s the last night.” “It’s your last chance.” “Listen, we’ll call each other. We’ll try to see each other. The girls are leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh, he’s dead, how happy I am!” says Annie. “He was two weeks in a coma,” says the friend. “He was a great researcher. He never understood anything anyone said to him, he was always on another planet. He had his whole team around him. If it didn’t concern his field...”

A TikTok song comes on the radio.

“I remember it was September ’77. We know each other well!” says the friend. “That’s going to change, today you had to lock yourself in, it wasn’t great. Tchao tchao.”

“It’s not that,” says Jean.

“So, my Nono, what can I get you to drink?” She sits down next to him. They flirt, she plays at making him feel good.

Jean stands up. I see him from the front. He’s looking at the women at the counter, four Chilean women. He’s in a hurry. He shows it in his attitude. He says he wants to pay. He makes a sort of sneer. He says a few Spanish words, “Calme te”. He’s angry, he’s dominant. He’s despicable. His wife is sweet. He’s the boss.

The waitress talks to her colleague, who’s seated but not on duty (the one who was talking to the 30-year-old woman): they talk about this 80-year-old man, criticizing the remarks he’s made to Chilean women, the waitress says he keeps saying “my daughter” to her, in short, they’re fed up with his sexism, he seems to come often. I discreetly join in the conversation, agreeing and confirming his attitude. And then they say that it’s the singer Hervé Vilard (the famous hit “Capri, c’est fini”), and that he comes every morning for his coffee.

“That’s funny, that, Hervé Vilard, that’s funny,” says the blind man. “Does he live around here?” ”Yes, he lives on rue Mouffetard, up there.” “He must be 77 or 78.” “He’s kept up with the times.”

12 August 2024

Photography tips

At the terrace of a café on the Place des Vosges, two men in their early forties, in Bermuda shorts, relaxed and upper-middle class. One of them is giving the other advice on silver photography.
He advises him to buy a small tripod.

He talks a lot. The other nods, happy.

He explains how to clean the lens of his camera, and not with a cloth, even a soft one, as there may be impurities on it, but rather with a small brush.

While I’m writing this, a little mouse visits me, wandering quietly beside me. I’m the only one to see her. She comes and goes, gray as the asphalt.

My friend had gone to the toilet. He comes back. The mouse leaves.

The one who’s going to take photos asks him: “What time’s the ceremony? 9pm?”.

They were both bored.

Earlier, he was showing her his film camera.

The mouse returns discreetly, then leaves. And the music, a jazz trio, double bass, saxophone and drums, playing at the restaurant on the corner, a classier place than the one I’m at, starts up again.

I took a glass of champagne, I offered myself this.

They get up, they go to pay at the counter, they wonder.

The one who’s going to take photos has “Unlocking the power of clothing” written on the back of his T-shirt. The other wears a bicycle helmet in his hand.

The music continues.

My vegetarian meal is brought to me.

And then a waitress tidies up the two men’s table, and moves a table, against which I had my foot, she says “sorry about the foot”, and creates a block of two tables.

The music stops.

I glance down: the mouse is gone.

11 August 2024