Later in April
Friday morning, 7:41am. What do I write? I let the pages of this notebook — the pages filled with text — run through my left hand. Breathe. Consider. An endeavor.
Last night I started reading Patrick Modiano´s Invisible Ink. He does some things similar to me. I do some things similar to him. I write into notebooks by Moleskine or — almost even better — by Cavallini. He writes into Clairfontaine notebooks. Approaching a revered author: My next set of notebooks will also be by Clairfontaine. Amazon offers them. But of course I won’t buy them there, but at a local shop — or at Fnac. I search for online retailers on Google and come across Clairfontaine booklets on paperbistro.com. What I’m looking for — simple thin notebooks with something like fifty to sixty pages, preferably in strong colors, strong simple colors — they don’t have. That they don’t carry them would have been the language of my parents. On the other hand, they carry colourful exercise books. And the design of these tells me something. I even think that I have bought such a exercise book before. Either at a book and stationery dealer in Levallois, near the town hall, or on one of my long bike rides through Paris. When I lost myself on an early evening, coming from Asnières, Quai du Dr Dervaux. Traversing Clichy, through the underpass of the Périphérique, past the Palace of Justice, the sparkling and magnificent building by Renzo Piano, then left into the Boulevard de Maréchause. Usually I continued straight ahead, towards Place de Clichy. Either early in the morning on the way to Gare de l´Est, the station in the east of the city, to take the train to Bettembourg. Or in the evening to have a glass of wine somewhere in Batignolles, to visit the exhibition or just the bookstore at Le Bal or to shop in the wonderful organic supermarket La Récolte Batignolles, 18 Boulevard de Batignolles. Actually, I wanted to go to Place de Clichy on this mild bright evening — as usual. Only I had the idea to take another, not the direct way. So I was turning left into Boulevard de Maréchaud and then at some point turning right again. The Boulevard de Maréchaud is very modern, four-lane, in the middle runs the tram, wide cycle paths right and left. You can drive fast, making good progress. So at some point I turn right.
On Google Maps I can find the place: Diane-Librairie Papyrus, 82 Rue Ordener.
Is it really this stationery, bookstore? Suddenly, I’m not sure anymore. It was quite a narrow street. While Google Maps shows Rue Orderner being not narrow. The store was on the left side of the street. While, given the direction from Boulevard de Maréchaud, the store would be on the right side. Actually, I always stopped when I saw a bookstore on my tours. The bookstore was in the middle of a closed row of buildings. But this Librairie Papyrus is close to a crossroads and Rue Ordener also seems to be bigger than the small narrow one-way street I remember.
It is wonderful how Modiano describes the uncertain memory of the first-person narrator. I take a closer look at the Librairie Papyrus on Google Maps. It’s more of a stationery store, less of a bookstore. Somehow that doesn’t fit with my memory. It was a blue booklet that I bought, very similar to those at paperbistro.com. A school notebook with a somewhat confusing design. I never used it and I probably threw it away at some point. I had imagined so firmly, I still imagined it firmly, where this bookstore was, as it was on the street, a little further on was a children’s shoe shop where I bought tiny socks for Dorothy. So it did not happen in summer, but rather in December, before Christmas. Because socks as Christmas gifts I bought in the weeks before Christmas.
So it’s not so much a memory, but imagination. An experience is reflected in me and is transformed into something else, rebuilt by myself. The bookstore in summer is a redesigned bookstore in winter. How can I still trust the so-called memory? It’s a little scary, unsettling. On the other hand, however, it is wonderful to understand what is happening: I myself make this imprint, this impression. I myself turn a winter experience into the impression of a summer evening. I do what I want.
I have the power.
