Back to the roots: what could be better than starting from the starting point to take a new direction?
When we are looking for a new path to take, when several directions are open to us, when choices must be made, when decisions must be made, wouldn't the best thing to do be to go back to square one? Much more than the Monopoly's starting point, which allows us to cash in 20,000 francs and get back on the water, a kind of backtracking, which will allow us to push forward, to gain momentum, before making the big leap.
It is up to each of us to find our own starting point. It can take different forms after all. To take stock of the major milestones that have marked our journey so far, to take stock of our desires, to take stock of the situation, at a glance.
My starting point is not really mine. I kind of borrowed it from a person I care about.
"So you, when you have an idea in your head..."
My starting point, I located it in Locquirec, in Brittany. This is my grandmother's birthplace." So you, when you have an idea in your head!" is the sentence she said to me when I told her that I was planning to spend a weekend in her home village. It's funny finally, to be told "So you, when you have an idea in your head..." by a stubborn Brittany like no two with a strong character. Finally, I know who to hold my pugnacity. She had been talking to me about this place for a while, I had spent some time there, as a child, a few times. But my memories were blurred and distant and I needed to make this place concrete.
It is perhaps also this photograph of the port of Locquirec hung on the wall of his living room for so many years that inspired me. I'd walked by hundreds of times without really stopping by. It was part of the set but I never took the time to look at it in detail, to dwell on it. I had never realized the potential of this place or what it could bring me.
Initially, I started with the idea of nurturing a personal writing project. I wanted to be able to put images, concrete places on the memories of my Grandmother. I wanted to feed myself with an atmosphere, the vibrations of this village of Brittany in order to be able to transcribe the atmosphere. Under the guise of nurturing this project, there was also the urge and the need to continue to do things for oneself, things that make sense. The desire to embark on a new adventure and new discoveries. And then when I found out that in this village of 1200 inhabitants, there were no less than two surf schools and great spots, so the decision was made very quickly.
The preparation of the trip was almost as enriching as my presence on the spot.
In the same way, I still don't know to whom this trip will have brought the most benefit. To me, who left with ideas of discovery in my head or to her, who had left so many memories there. The most beautiful thing that this return to square one will have brought me is above all the sparks that I saw in his eyes by showing him on google maps the places I had planned to go.
On the spot, I discovered a little piece of paradise. Every step of the way, I felt like I was walking on his own. At each coffee shop on one of the harbour's terraces, I felt like I was also a child of the country. At each street sign read, at each new place discovered, on each of the beaches, her voice resonated and one of the anecdotes she had told me came back to me in memory. I walked her every day to school again. I have passed ten times in front of the church in which she was baptized to the point of making me an almost common place, on which we can no longer stop looking at her, so much so that we now know that it is situated there. I went to the feast of Saint John, a tradition that continues to punctuate the life of the village and which was a major event at the time.
She had told me about this picture of me taking my first steps on the fallen rock beach. From the white sands beach where my mother spent her month of July 1987, a few weeks before I was born. My memories were distant and blurred, but the simple fact of going back to them will have had the merit of creating new ones for me and to imagine hers, the ones she tells me.
I envied her for growing up in this place. Despite a tumultuous childhood, she told me that she was always very happy and it's amazing how much I understood why, by discovering the place where it all started for her.
When I returned home, I had the feeling, in a way, that I was bringing a treasure back in my luggage. Again, those stars in her eyes when she discovered the photos of all those places in which she knew so well, taken years later. She was with me all along the trip, but I did it all the same.
