The note

When I leave home to go to the corner or across the world, I always leave a note. On a post-it or on a large sheet. Next to nothing, just in case something happens to me. Not to leave without saying goodbye, or is it because by writing leaving becomes more bearable? “I stay a little bit with you, since my note remains on the kitchen table, where you will eat soon”.

The metal shutter of that Brooklyn copy shop is similar to my kitchen table. When closing their store after 25 years in business, these merchants did not want to leave without a trace… They took care to write to their neighbors and customers, and they did not write this note because they would come back soon or because they would open another shop two blocks away. They wrote in order to somehow remain there, with the people who made their daily life for a quarter of a century. They probably had to tell « we have spent our lives to produce copies, but our appreciation is genuine ». The addresses have not misunderstood: they each wrote a note in turn. Oh! almost nothing, you may say, but just enough to show that in this Brooklyn street, life has surely been sweet. Just love.