How I Crowdsourced My Travel Notebook
There was nowhere to go but everywhere
The air had a rhythm to it at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Gently buoyed by the earth beneath, I watched trails of smoke dance through the air above. They stirred sensually and lazily from the ends of idle cigarettes, writhing ever skyward, some joining another tributary with a kiss, or else dispersing altogether with the wave of a hand.
With my index finger, I reached up and stirred the nearest smoke stream, watching it whirlpool outward before fading into nothingness. I scanned for the source: a boy nearby, slim and fair, with fiery red curls. He was lying on his stomach in the grass with a cigarette clinging to the corner of his mouth, like it was something he was once fond of and now just couldn’t let go.
He’d caught my interloping and stared at my hands as if they had scarred something sacred. Propped up on his elbows, he began to write in a notebook, itself reclined in the Jardin with blades of grass hugging its sides. He looked at me again, and wrote more. And then again.
Unsure of what to make of this attention, I readied for a beeline to the nearest bakery when he approached me. Language-barrier anxiety gripped my chest, but he disregarded my stiltedness, handing me the open notebook.
