The day began not with sunrise, but with an espresso barely strong enough to pull me from the haze of sleeplessness. My shower was a waterfall of heat, coaxing my mind into coherence. Grand Musk lingered on my skin, spicy, woody, animalic—a second skin of warmth. My camera battery blinked in its death throes. I had none of its resolve.
The model, Lane, arrived promptly at 11. A creative himself, he brought an energy that matched mine, though I was running on fumes. The shoot unfolded like a dream on borrowed time. Each shutter click felt like a heartbeat stolen from the blinking red light of my camera. I kept thinking: These images will collage themselves someday. Shapes will overlap. Meanings will multiply. But not yet.
The battery gasped its last. The shoot wrapped with a smile, and Lane left me with Parisian recommendations—a breadcrumb trail I could barely follow. I needed espresso. I needed a camera shop. I needed the buzz of life, not the static of anxiety.
On the way to salvation (or, at least, a battery charger), I detoured into Etat Libre d’Orange. The air inside was thick with mischief and memory. I asked to re-smell Secretions Magnifiques—a scent of metal, salt, and skin. The saleswoman smiled and sprayed my wrist. We talked about fragrance as art, as emotion, as storytelling. I discovered I Am Trash—an olfactory paradox of rotting apples and fermenting flowers. Then Afternoon of a Faun transported me to a forest damp with morning dew. On my other wrist, a Harrods exclusive oud transformed my perception of shape and smell: angular, jagged, unlike anything I’d known. Art in a bottle.
But the battery loomed. I pressed on to the camera shop, where language barriers wrapped me in knots. Did he have the charger? He did. Then he didn’t. Then he did again but couldn’t sell it. A second shop was only blocks away. Hope persists. There, the man smiled and said, Lucky you—this is the last one. Relief, a purchase, and at last, a path back to the essence of calm.
But first, the grocery.
Inside, rows of labels stacked like a pop-art installation. Colors screamed from every aisle: marbled meats, neon fruits, metallic jars. Sicilian lemons caught my eye, their waxy yellow skins promising a burst of memory, of scent, of taste. I cradled them like treasure.
At checkout, the man behind the counter and I spoke two languages that collided but did not combine. He picked up my lemons, looked at me, then tossed them into the trash. The act was surreal, absurd—a punctuation mark I hadn’t written. I didn’t argue. Some losses, like a drained battery, are inevitable.
Back at the apartment, I made espresso. Dinner followed, simple and satisfying, a punctuation mark I could write myself. The camera battery blinked with new life as I charged my own energy: wine, emails, the quiet hum of accomplishment. The day had been a sequence of collisions—lost translations, tossed lemons, and detours into the art of scent—but here I was, whole, alive, powered once again.
In Paris, even exhaustion feels poetic. Charging a battery, whether for a camera or a soul, is an act of trust. The power returns. The images wait. Tomorrow, they will come alive.