The Courtyard

My new first floor neighbor threw trash out of their window and into the trash can in the yard on a brisk morning in October. “Brilliant.” I thought. Courtyard life is a style where public and private begin to blend in a space of tiny whirlwinds and kicked up dust in the center of an apartment complex.  

When was twenty one I smoked cigarettes out the window of my fourth floor nest in Paris. The Sacre Ceour rose from behind the opposite end of the courtyard with its onion shaped grey crown as I inhaled out of my generous floor to ceiling window. The courtyard below was made up of old cobblestones that may have dated all the way back to the 12th century, now stomped on by children and swept with trash and brooms and leaves and dirt, nothing stayed long there but our consistent gaze from the towering windows. The courtyard was transient. It connected three buildings. I didn’t know most of the people in the buildings, except for the “maitre” who lived there, and possibly never left. They had no particular inclination to be male or female in dress or presentation or name. At the time I thought it rude to ask and it seemed irrelevant for our interactions.

My window directed north so the many plants I bought to cheer the small room up withered within weeks. I left them though, like skeletons I would water every now and then in a hope to keep them revive, but the water ran through the brittle, empty soil, soaking the carpet beneath. One afternoon, as I leaned over these plants, enjoying a smoke, I met a young mec (guy) who was also smoking outside of his window. Over time we would sometimes meet there and exchange words over the chasm. Once he invited me to a party at a youth hostel - which I guess was a thing in Paris at the time. We met in his apartment. He was a student as well, his friends were loud and French. The party was in the basement where thick clouds of smoke absorbed color like elusive sponges in the room. After a few drinks I realized through half comprehensible French that he and his friends were joking about my sexual orientation and inclination, this was also the point I realized it was time to go home.

There was no cab summoning app in 2011. I had a prepaid red flip phone that I paid for each text and each minute I spoke. And cabs were rare at that 3am in Paris on the Champs Elysee, let alone the outer arrondissment in the North East where we had travelled to. I had no card that worked in Paris, I would carry cash around with me. A card was the only way to pay for a Velib, Paris’ shared bike system. Unlike the system in the New York now, Velibs were used by almost everyone, and was a quite effective way to get around if you had a French card. It must have been somewhere sliding north on Boulevard Clichy where I realized he might have been enjoying the ride more than I was as I pedalled and he sat on the seat behind me. When I woke up - and every time I thought about it I became shrivled and grey. 

Courtyards are not all places of poisoned meetings though. Sometimes kids come out with their parents and say hello as you tuck your boxes into recycling containers, convincing yourself that they may truly become a notebook. One you’ll keep on your desk, one with deep desires obscured by quotidian complaints. The courtyard: depth between the buildings, the place for a square of sky.

Temporary, I know, as is everything, I’ve been feeling like a housecat, a job twice a week that leaves me full afternoons in the new place. And the crickets, there are so many crickets cascading the outside train platform, no birds anymore after moving from Astoria, but cool breezes, and the park two blocks away. And my job: to read, write, and teach. 

Courtyards come from the franco-germanic court, referring to house, law, or regal building. Yard translates directly back to a stick, “a rod,” can you hear the similarity? The exterior of the inner building of royalty. It is an outside place where dealings are brought to air out. Where people are to walk quickly through. Unless someone uninvited finds themselves here - by chance or wit or desperation into these halls of relative abundance.

I was writing at my desk as the sun turned the city night sky black against the harsh angles of roofs, black gliding down and outlining the bulbs of glow from the streetlights. The cat was lounging like a shady puddle on the bed behind me as I worked. Sometimes writing feels like you are traveling through a desert. After miles of stale breath and clunky words the very taste of inspiration is juicy and full however small the form takes. But these words were dry and cracked, with no order of craft as they withered beside one another, leaving a long trail like lone footprints in the sand. Writer’s block feels awful in these moments: not when you can’t write, but when writing feels desperate, the equivalent of running in sand for your life. The stakes were high and I was exhausted. Meanwhile, my cat was having another experience that woke me from the demi-nightmare that was my writing process.

Long hisses cut the grappled silence from beneath my calming “Sigur Ros” station (an attempt to seduce words with Icelandic moans like wind from another country. I always write better when I am in new places, which includes new states of mind, but not all states of mind. I am constantly attempting to outcharm myself.) The cat hissed out into the night. At first I thought she saw some of her kind in the courtyard, but instead, there, on the other side of the screen of the open window were the opal eyes of another, a high backed raccoon. The two similar sized beings looked at each other in shock. Having grown up in a place where we were taught that raccoons probably have rabies, I shut the window quick, while the cat and the raccoon scurried away on their respective sides. Later I saw the raccoon lomping on the second floor fire escape and realized it was night. The raccoon probably was very healthy (probably looking for the beehive on the roof). How shocked I had been to see the stranger so close, touching the air of the apartment, nose to nose with this little black apartment cat. 

Is there really much difference between inside and outside? What detriments does this separation have from daily life? What benefits? What illusions are maintained by this distance, and what can the two give each other. Imagine the yard unpeeled from the court like tangerine zest.