No rules!

I thought it was going to be much easier for me to come back here at The Bridge and write a post once Sophie broke the ice and surprised us all with her unexpected blog entry days after her birthday in July.

I can not find the right words to describe the emotions I felt. If I try hard (with the help of a dictionary) I'd say for a couple of days I was overtaken by some state of elation and overjoy just for the wonderful thoughts of stepping again and walking through our cherished bridge.

However, two months had already passed since that happened and nothing had come up until today that I decided I could not longer stay in limbo waiting for the inspiration to come in order to write something valuable, meaningful, shareable that could match the delicious, thoughtful, marvelous post Sophie wrote back in July.

Maybe I got intimidated by her. Maybe I was rusty (and still am) after all this time without writing anything like this in English. This blog used to be my Arcadia, my place to experimenting with words, to play with them in Shakespeare language for no other purposes than the sheer pleasure it provoked in me.

Just until today that with this post I'm officially responding to my dear friend and accepting the conditions she's proposing. Which are really no conditions, because she's proposing no rules and strangely this sentence would become the one and only rule, the no existence of rules. We know: life is full of paradoxes.

This agreement should free us to write whenever we want, as much as we want without any kind of limitations, themes or other restrictions. At the same time it shouldn't constraint us to not do the opposite if we so feel pleased to, if for some reason we feel inclined to do otherwise.

"Writing in The Bridge as we please" suits me quite well. Why? Because even though I can follow rules and I understand the need for the world or the universe to have some kind of reigning order to avoid chaos, I feel I thrive better when that order is hidden, it's not imposed, when I feel free to choose when and how, if I control things and things don't control me.

What better illustration than the reflection of this on my own life! Let me share with you the good news. Since October of last year I'm free. I decided not to be an employee anymore. Since then I work independently by myself, I set my own rules, choosing the companies to contract with, without obligation to show at a certain time or bosses bossing, ordering, demanding things ... you get the idea?!

So much change this has brought to my life... It comes handy this bridge is open again for the business of exchanging these new experiences occurring in both sides of the pond.

I recognize that things could have been better, I still don't have the money I wish I had, however, better times are approaching fast and I still hope to make good on the promise I shared at the beginning of 2014 and I still expect being in Paris before the year comes to an end. Who knows!

But so far, that Coffee still goes on!



                                                                                                                            Love from New York,

                                                                                                                                                Fernando

Back?

Back? Back...

No, i am not promising that i will be able to Bridgify (good lord, it feels good to use that word once more!) every other day. But i cannot recall how many times since my last post here i found myself visiting a place and wanting to pull out Moleskine and pen to write a few lines about it. But it just seemed pointless. The whole idea of pretending, or rather trying to convince myself as well as others every time that i would be more serious about posting on a regular basis was more than i could brace myself to do. Somehow, it was perhaps necessary to suffer the long sterility to be able to come back, freed from all pressure. A pressure implied by the lack of time, the lack of ideas perhaps, the lack of energy, added to the contradictory nagging desire to do it anyway. To write something, here. Do it! Just do it! Steal the time! Steal the strength and bloody do it!

Seven months ago, Fernando and i exchanged a couple of text-messages in which he announced me that he was planning to visit Paris some day this year. A wonderful occasion, we thought, for a real coffee really shared, really really enjoyed together. At that point i started thinking that it would also be the perfect occasion for us to reopen the gates of The Bridge. But the weeks came and went and the more i would think of it, the more obvious it would appear to me that doing so would be a very odd thing, not altogether comfortable. Surfing on a wave of enthusiasm and nostalgia, a bright Ephemera, bound to fail just like good old bonfires are known to be of very little endurance. And i didn't want that.

I didn't want to come back here just because The Bridge would have, for a very short and happy moment, become tangible. There are different levels of reality. This very example of Virtual life is one of them, as paradoxical as it may sound. And to be certain that this would have a chance to last, it would have to be the result of a stronger desire than the mere nostalgic wish to dig out the 'good old times'.

Many things remain unmoved, unchanged from what we we'll call 'back then', and many others changed (i.e: i now am an old hag of almost 3o :) ). I still am running after a great job and money, i have even less free time than i used to, but i am perhaps a bit more reliable when it comes to 'holding bonds'. A bit braver, a bit less ostrich-like. It is a quite recent discovery that i made about myself. And there would be no point to be bragging about that without putting it to he test. Give some long craved for evidence, at last, that i do not forget about my friends, no matter how far they are, or how 'virtual'.

Life does not provide as much freedom as it should to do everything that ought to be done. Days are short, rents are tightly packed around the edges of busy months, seasons melt in the depths of a narrow jug more commonly known as 'Year', filled with joys and decay, traps and fast lanes, burn-outs and procrastination.

So... what then?

Give the place new rules?

Take Fernando on a private conversation and decide together what would be the best recipe to put the place back on its limbs?

Maybe we should yes. But maybe we should just think about the fact that the best way to never break rules, to never miss appointments, to never disappoint expectations, is to never set any?

No plans, no backstage work, nothing but feel-like-it-ishness.

I'll leave it to Fernando's discretion.

But i'd be happy to feel legitimate about coming back here, from time to time, and hear the echo of my french accent come back like a boomerang from a smoking coffee mug emblazoned NYC.

love from Paris,

sophie