Hi!
My name is Papillote (likely, hm). It's a French sweet we eat around Christmas. Papillotes come from Lyon (culinary capital of the world - well, of France, anyway), same as me. They are chocolate and wrapped in very bright paper.
Inside joke, people. I'm allergic to chocolate and I hate Christmas. Fake cheer, too much family and presents you don't really want. What's to like, exactly? Plus, I'm a very gray person myself.
I come from a huge family: three sisters, forty-something cousins and even more extended family. Pretty much everybody I share DNA with is crazy so they take more than their fair share of space and attention. It's hard to stand out when your house is a cross between a circus and a boarding school. I feel like a hall monitor.
Maybe that's why I like writing so much. It's quiet. Every word matters. I can taste each and string them together without interference.
And writing is an equalitarian art form. Everybody in my mother's family is gifted: she was a painter, but there are writers, interior designers, gardeners, sculptors. My sisters sing, play the piano, draw and take amazing pictures. Me, I was never any good at anything until I first picked up a pen. I brought a music teacher to tears once, my sketches never look anything like the models, I can't even keep a cactus alive and my pictures always come out blurry.
But I can lose myself in my poems, in my stories.
I love words. I love words so much than one language isn't enough. Reality has so many nuances, one language can't possibly cover them all. Take a smile for example. In French, we have only one word for all smiles: sourire. That's good enough for a nicely bland and generic verb like smiling but what of grinning, smirking or beaming?
My awareness of the world expands with every new meaning I learn, with every shade of color I add to my palette. I want to keep improving, to sharpen my understanding of reality further.
Reading in English isn't enough anymore. I'd like to try my hand at writing but I lack any kind of formal teaching and I don't have the necessary distance to assess my work and decide which areas need working on.
Please, read me, help me.
Be kind because I'm still a little shy but be sincere and be thorough. I'll need your help improving.
Gender:
Points: 144
Reviews: 126