Unintentionally, sure. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and comfortable couches, and there I was, sleeping like a baby in the middle of the afternoon, flat on my back, no shame whatsoever. Two hours. Gone.

You’re going to say: come on, your body needed it.

Maybe. But you didn’t see what crawled out of the couch after.

Because when I nap, something shifts. I go into the couch a relatively functional human being and come out a creature. Like a bear at the end of hibernation, hasn’t eaten yet, Mr. Bear already on her case with his big springtime ambitions — and she’s got fangs, fur in full chaos mode, zero tolerance for anything that breathes. Or a cactus. The kind that grows in a forbidden desert, covered in inch-long spines, and if you’re unlucky enough to brush against it, it cuts you without even looking up. No warning. No mercy. No apology either.

That’s me. After a nap.

Nobody wanted to come near me. Nobody wanted to talk to me. Nobody wanted to love me, even charitably, even from a safe distance. The evening was grim. Flat. I grumbled about everything. The cat I don’t have. The floor, freshly washed, as it turns out. The ambient air.

I went to bed early anyway, small moral victory, but my daughter was out — the little criminal — and like any perfectly reasonable mother, I waited for her to come home, grumbling in the dark like the same old bear, the one who knows spring is coming but finds it takes forever.

The door. The goodnight thrown into the darkness. Sleep.

By morning, I should have been fit for human company again. But no. A headache had moved in instead. Discreet at first, polite — then it started doing squats in my skull, lifting weights, building muscle, settling in as a permanent roommate with all its stuff.

It’s still there.

I tried to paint bookmarks. I destroyed paper with great conviction. Too much water, too much friction. The paper started pilling like an old washed-out sweatshirt. The tape proecting the border finished the job: when I pulled it off, it took half the surface with it. An artistic crime scene. I threw them out.

After lunch, in a fit of questionable optimism: let’s get some air. Walk to the dog park with the big guy. Twenty minutes along a boulevard not built for inner peace, me calculating my trajectory to keep Mr. Anxious Shepherd from announcing the end of the world to every passerby.

We arrive.

Park closed. For “soil regeneration.” In April. On ice.

We did the loop anyway. There, around, back. The dog sniffed things. I looked at the fence with the quiet solidarity of someone who understands that you close things off to let them recover.

Coming home, the couch looked at me with the treacherous tenderness of a toxic ex.

“Come on, just five minutes,” it murmured.

I refused. Heroically.

Because I know now that naps are interdimensional portals. I always come back. Just… not the same day.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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On Saturday, I return to the image. I offer my own writing and share the texts I’ve received, gathering them like echoes of the same light.

This week, the image held cold and two motionless bodies. I saw thaw in it, the push of life beneath the stone, that movement that begins again even when nothing seems to move.

offers us a special kind of embrace.

Suzy Wong

Le câlin qui gèle pas

Y’a un vieux prophète de fond de cour, Saint-Bernard-du-Dégel, qui dirait …

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10 days ago · 4 likes · Suzy Wong

gives us an exquisite minimalist line.

And we can always add more texts, French and English, if other players come forward.

Here is mine

Two children frozen on the threshold of a dream. The older presses the younger against his side, one arm around the torso, the other buried like a root beneath the armpit. The younger leans forward. Is he trying to escape this too-insistent embrace, or simply to continue a movement that winter has held back? His mouth, barely open, hovers between a cry and an inaudible laugh. In the silence of the stone, a pulse can be sensed, faint, stubborn, the heartbeat of something alive beneath the cold.

Snow has come to seal their sleep. It falls, settles, erases shoulders, softens arms, smooths the edges. It quiets the world, layer after layer. The bodies merge, become a single white mass, compact, almost without memory. The cold keeps watch. The stone folds back into its original stillness, that place where time has no age.

Then, slowly, water reclaims its rights. The snow cracks, slides away in sheets, revealing fragments. A cheek, an arm, the curve of a back. And in this reappearance, something persists: the inclination of the smaller one, that gesture once thought stilled. It is not a struggle, nor a sudden impulse, but the quiet pressure of a stem beneath the soil. A force that does not name its desire, but pushes because nothing else is possible.

Pause for a moment. Light skims the stone, still cold, yet crossed by a new clarity. Look: the two bodies seem to move, almost imperceptibly. The space between them shifts, like a shared breath. The smaller one advances. Barely. But enough for the motion to be felt, a murmur within matter.

The older does not hold him back. He carries him. His arm, rather than a barrier, becomes a contour, a support. This gesture of restraint gives the movement the time it needs not to break. It is the holding before flowering, the tremor before form.

Outside, bells answer the light. People speak of a rolled-away stone, an empty tomb, a risen body. But that is not where your thoughts go. Your vision overflows the myth: a resurrection without promise, a silent uprising, the secret life of stone. It is what matter does, every year, when the cold consents to withdraw.

In the days that follow, the snow completes its retreat. The movement becomes invisible again. It is not gone, only returned to the stone. In spring, the statue stands there, motionless, offered to the gaze.

But now, you know. Nothing is fixed.

You will return next year. It will be there, in the light, in the insistence. And the smaller one will lean forward again, as if for the first time.

See you Monday!

If you saw something, leave a trace

I really tried everything with this big goof.

The first time, he was on fire—600% motivation, a heroic surge, the voice of the wolf rising from his belly, echoing across the snow. I thought, this is it. We’ve found our athletic destiny. At 65 (for me, not for him), it was about time.

Then came the second attempt.

He had understood everything. Sometimes I swear he’s more intelligent than 75% of the population… and I’m being generous. He looked at me for a long moment, with the quiet gravity of a dog who sees straight through human absurdity.

And then—he collapsed.

Spectacularly.

He flattens himself into the snow, theatrical, unmoving, like a dying star—black on white, blank, vaguely depressed, deeply committed to the role. A low whine, just enough to break your heart. Not a muscle moves. Not even the suggestion of effort.

Just a large, furry refusal:

No. I’m not doing this.

The dogs’ strike.

Total. Solemn. Irrevocable.

We never tried kicksledding again.

Or any dog sport, really, because it’s always the same story. This dog refuses to perform. End of discussion.

He’s not a circus animal. He’ll gladly do a few easy tricks—give a paw, offer kisses in exchange for a cookie—but follow pointless rules for no reason? Absolutely not.

And honestly, I respect that. No way I’m going to “break” him just to make him obey commands that only entertain the human.

Still, I thought I was getting a working dog—active, tireless. Instead, I got a slightly unhinged little creature (much calmer this year, I have to admit) who does exactly as he pleases. I’m still a bit confused.

Apparently, herding dogs aren’t built for endurance. They’re not marathon runners—they’re sprinters.

And yes, I see it.

That first ten minutes at 600%? It’s real.

So that’s our life now.

We go all out for ten minutes, then collapse for an hour… and then we do it all over again.

I wouldn't mind a steak...🥩