Paris Was Burning

Yesterday was a BIG day. 

I finally opened an air-tight box which contained my few, most prized journals, wrapped in acid free paper, stored for over a decade.  Ten years! I hadn't realized it had been that long.

While there are many things of far greater monetary value, nothing compares to how precious these journals are to me. Their pages contain my raw experiences, captured in the moment, as I did the rare thing of living a long held dream -- a dream that ended up surpassing even my wildest hopes and imaginings: spending four weeks by myself in Paris, in an apartment I rented, just writing, reading, eating, observing, listening and walking at all hours, as I pleased. 

Twenty five years later, I decided to finally turn those journals into something polished - for myself at least, to publish at best. It was a bucket list item for me as a writer - but in that highest category of things you must do to leave this world without regret. In 2013 took them with me when I rented a house on an island at a crossroads in my life.  It was a time of extreme challenge, and I began beginning that writing project to bring me back to a happier time and soothe my soul. 

One March evening, when I went to the gym, the house's faulty electrical system sparked a four alarm fire. So hot the initial responders had to crawl in on their bellies.  I raced back to learn it contained -- but to the areas where I kept all my "best stuff," which I'd recently retrieved from storage in another state. I begged the firefighters to please rescue my journals, even though they said they were surely gone. When they saw I was ready to run in myself, one was kind enough to go back in, as I shouted to his back exactly where they were and what they looked like. A few endless minutes later he emerged with a dripping, sooty pile of mush on his wide mouth shovel. Still, I scooped them into my arms, held them against my work out clothes (the only thing I had to my name, save my purse and my car), closed my eyes and exhaled.

As soon as I found a place to lay my head, I worked to dry them out. The edges were charred and flaking, one's metal spiral was black, the binder glue melted off on another. They stunk to high heaven (a scent that has still not dissipated). I arranged towels on the wood floor in a wide sunny spot in front of a set of sliding doors and carefully placed them apart from each other to allow air to circulate. The covers were so fragile, I could not see what was left to my words inside. But after a few days, the covers were dry enough to open.  To my surprise, the pages that were intact were awash in a blur of pink and blue - what remained of the violet ink I'd romantically used in my fountain pen to write many of the entries in those cafes and stone stoops along the Seine! 

Crushed, I wept about the effects of the fire for the first time. 

It was going to take time. Once a page was dry, if it went easily, I would turn it to dry the next.  If not, I dared not attempt to pull them apart for fear of ripping the pages. If a section could fall open, I went with that instead, figuring any part that dried would help the individual pages eventually. On one of these turns, I saw an entry in ballpoint ink that was legible! However much I'd lost from the ashed edges that began to crumble as they dried, this gave me hope that the partial sentences and random words that were still legible would be enough to piece something together.  Sparked memories would help, but I mourned what was lost of the immediacy and authenticity of what I had written in real time, each thought, feeling and sensory excitement fresh. How could I recreate that? 

All I could do is wait for a time when all the moisture evaporated.  

When that time came, I had to move again. Considering all the other loss and big questions I was grappling with at the time, I gently wrapped these journals in museum quality acid free paper, secured a post it note identifying the book on the outside of each, and put them in a safe box... until yesterday.  I opened it again on June 23, 2023, 10 years, 3 months and some days hence. 

Fortunately, before the fire,  I had transposed about a dozen entries and since have blissed out while editing them into a starter collection - but there are holes that needed to be filled. All that content was in the fire journals.  

I write so much every day for clients, that I had been letting my own writing go. And I could use some joy in my life right about now. It struck me that the perfect way to address both was to return to the Paris Notebook project and finish it. So I went into a dark corner of my office to excavate the tomb in which they were stored. I lifted the piles that had collected atop, layer by layer until there it was! I put the box on a table, and removed the lid. 

Gingerly I picked up the first little package and unwrapped the paper with great care. I noticed I was holding by breath again, eager and determined. I opened the first volume - the one with the melted glue. In it I had recorded my earliest impressions with that now blurred violet fountain pen ink. I expected nothing to have changed, but to my surprise, some pages, which I can now turn, have a ghost of the original words visible! Subsequent pages had words I could make out when I held it against a light or window. 

 

On pages like the below, it's indiscernible. But fortunately, much of this particular book had entries in ballpoint ink, so for the first time since the fire I was able to see that more sections were in tact than not. 

It will be painstaking, but I am overjoyed! And... I can't wait to get back to work on this!