LETTRE D’AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam, 19 August 2025
My dear reader,
Do you know that peculiar nostalgia for a summer that seems to have vanished without a trace? A season that slipped away too quickly, rushed past us, and is already missed.
Here, the light has shifted. The trees have begun to don their autumn robes: cashmere brown, carmine red, radiant orange, and golden “bouton d’or” yellow. The air is cooler now. The sun still shines, as I write to you from Amsterdam, yet it is no longer the same sun. Its rays no longer hold the warmth of July; and the sky, once a deep azure, has grown paler, sometimes cerulean, at times azurine, at others a delicate sugared-almond blue, translucent with that crystalline clarity unique to September, like a pale aquamarine.
Not long ago, I had scribbled a few lines, it was Tuesday, May 13, to be precise, when summer was only just peeking into view. This week, by chance, I found them again in a drawer. And in rereading those forgotten words, in revisiting the memories they carried, I felt a gentle nostalgia envelop me.
A nostalgia scented with crisp citrus cologne; sweet as a fraisier filled with crème diplomate; luminous as golden, iridescent light—the kind of light only the Mediterranean knows; and steady, enduring, like the centuries-old stones of a Provençal château.
So I returned to those notes, reworked them, and shaped them into a prose poem—
a poem for a summer that has only just ended, though we had only begun to welcome it. And yet, it will return, as it always does, next year. And we will already be nostalgic for it before it even begins.
The Near-Nothings
What if happiness lived here:
in the golden hush of a May morning,
in the velvet skin of a fruit not yet ripe,
in the warm breath of air grazing one’s cheek?
In those near-nothings that, silently, change everything.
The stillness of water at dawn.
The freshness in the air, the filigree of breeze,
that ancient silence stretching long, unbroken.
The warmth of sunlight on bare skin,
gently waking me without a sound.
The evening light folding into the water—
and the water, in return,
casting its trembling reflections
to dance across our walls.
The scent of neroli and osmanthus,
a memory of summer in Ibiza.
Winding paths through a Mediterranean forest,
the Vespa, the warm wind steeped in wood, resin, and sea air.
A freedom so simple, its rarity forgotten.
And then, a flash of emerald in the Amsterdam sky:
rose-ringed parakeets.
Their presence astonishes. Enchants anew.
From my acacia-wood table, worn by time in the loveliest way,
the view over the water: always the same, always new.
At times smooth as a thought,
at others rippled with light, dizzy in the wind.
My cat, forever seeking the place where shadow meets light.
He stretches, dissolves, becomes sculpture.
And I, too, feel the urge to melt into a beam of sun.
Morning incense. Evening candles: Madurai, Ourika.
The living room transforms into a suspended garden:
swirls of flowers, warm spices, ancient resins.
A floating world, invisible but fragrant,
where one breathes a little deeper.
The clack of pétanque balls colliding—
echoes of summer evenings just beginning.
A cry, a cheer.
A glass of rosé, somewhere nearby.
And beneath it all, that quiet hum of anticipation:
a summer not yet lived, but already in the air.
The man in the boater hat,
his little dog trotting proudly beside him.
He appears at the same hour each day:
my living clock,
measuring time with the ease of his unhurried steps.
And then, one suddenly thinks
that all of this is fragile.
That the happiness we thought fleeting may, in truth, be the essential thing.
That it isn’t elsewhere—not in the grand, the distant, the spectacular.
That it isn’t ahead of us.
It is here.
In the warmth of evening light.
In the ordinary gestures we barely notice.
In the moments too small to name.
Let your fingertips touch the light.
Breathe in a memory.
Listen to what makes no sound.
Perhaps happiness was never meant to be found.
Perhaps it was always here—
waiting for us to finally see.
— Léonce.
P.S. If these words offered you a moment of light, you may pass them on to someone dear. And should you ever wish to say thank you, think of a simple croissant shared in spirit. A small, tender gesture that helps me continue writing these quiet things.
