March Paris Saturday by Masha Makutonina '21.5

MARCH PARIS SUNDAY

WORDS & PHOTO BY MASHA MAKUTONINA '21.5

If the world were to end in 15 minutes I would begin my final message by writing out the English alphabet and giving some examples of words in the hopes that future civilizations could decipher my letter. I would write a brief summary of human history, include a couple of lines about its beauty and horror, and give the geographical coordinates of my home, Odessa (46°28'38.89"N, 30°43'57.43"E). I would attempt to describe our five senses with examples of my favourite things such as the feeling of the sun on your bare skin, a hug from a loved one and the incredible taste of chocolate with hazelnuts after a very boring class. I would leave some poems in Russian by Brodsky and Pushkin, draw the sunflowers of Van Gogh and finally, record myself busting the best moves I could come up with to ‘Rock around the clock’ by Bill Haley & His Comets.

In true Parisian fashion, the day started sunny and gradually turned into a gloomy rain as I popped into a Starbucks on Rue Saint-Michel. During my time there I had discovered a number of things including to never to trust a sunny sky (as half-sunny days were a common occurrence) and that libraries close on weekends, a righteous reminder to students like me that there were much better things to do than study.

Earlier that day I had attended a free theatre workshop at the Cité Internationale held by the directors behind the adaptation of Dennis Kelly’s play ‘Après la fin’. It isn’t often that you come across a free theatre workshop in Paris so when I saw that it was available I immediately signed up. There were about 20 of us, mostly international master’s degree students coming from a range of different backgrounds: computer science and management, diplomacy and psychology, filmmaking and chemistry. We were all given a simple prompt, the world was ending and we had 15 minutes to come up with our final message. We were asked not to invent a character and not to limit ourselves in any way, there was only one condition – it had to be personal. It took me around 15 minutes to construct my final message and as I finished, I looked up and saw everyone around me passionately writing out their own ‘final’ words. The urgency of the made-up situation suddenly sank in and inspired me to add a couple of lines about how dying in on a half-sunny day in Paris is certainly not a bad way to go in an apocalyptic scenario. We spent the next two hours reading and recording our messages. One person took us outside onto the main lawn and told us that it was his favorite spot to look at stars during the summer nights: ‘Life is pretty simple for me’ he declared ‘it is a constant rollercoaster between love and depression. I suppose it’s actually good that this is the end of the world. There was a lot of beauty and a lot of pain. We had a wonderful nature and we killed it, but life was still incredible because there was love. I actually met my soulmate four days ago. Bad timing, I guess. In these final moments, I will be calling my family and singing. If you find this, you should reinvent the world with less pain, and no social media’.

A girl took us to the auditorium of the theatre and said ‘I like going to the cinemas and theatres alone. It is my favourite place. If this is the end, at least those scumbags in the government are going down too. Freedom is something even death can’t take away from me.’

Another boy took the stage and stated that: ‘This world was bad, we had hunger when we had enough food to fight it, we had poverty when the army budgets kept rising, actually I suppose I am happy this world is ending, with it will end all the suffering we have created. It is for the better.’

Someone else climbed the stage and told us: ‘I cry every time I have to speak publicly, it is really awful, here we go again. I am crying right now. Actually, I thought I was going to die a couple of years ago. It turned out to be nothing but for two weeks I was sure I had a mortal illness. Three nights before they told me I was in fact perfectly healthy; I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of all the things I still wanted to do. At 28 years old, all I have done is follow the path designed for me by others. But after that night, I have decided to do all the things I want to do. I even forced myself on stage today. Sorry, I keep crying. Thank you for listening. I hope that I never see any of you

ever again because this is so embarrassing.’ ‘If the huge wave has arrived, don’t worry’ another said ‘ Wait for seven days and then God will recreate the Earth. In that case, stop reading this, you don’t want to have spoilers. If you can, watch L’enfance de Tarkovsky, listen to the second concert of Rachmaninoff, and be happy it all existed.’

If you had 15 minutes until the end of the world, what would your message be?