Homage to Landfill

Landfill. Curious name to give to a lodging, don’t you think? You’d assume we were about to describe a garbage disposal unit, a dumping ground perhaps. Well… not quite. It’s the esteemed title we gave to our Parisian abode. An ordinary chambre de bonne to most, a myriad of memories for us. Like most safe spaces, it preferred to remain out of the way, concealing itself in a backstreet not far from Pont Marie and waiting for us at the summit of six too many flights of stairs. Rickety, narrow, steep. Each squeak a betrayal of the building’s lost youth. To our dismay, the climb seldom got easier… Most certainly not after a day of back-to-back classes at the Sorbonne, our minds weary from Flaubert’s Bovary and our feet sustained by the umpteenth cup of wonderfully bitter espresso.

But as endless as they seemed, the final steps would come into view eventually, and the initial glimpse of Landfill’s entrance, often left ajar, signalled to us that it was time to blurt out a breathless apology for the ‘state’ of the place and direct any visiting friend to the neighbour’s doorstep. This conspicuously uncomfortable block became a makeshift foyer for “just a few minutes” whilst we rushed in to throw things about and declutter the few square metres we came to call home.

If you were to see Landfill for the first time, you would tell me it looked like any other studio. A rectangular room cordoned off from the city by a set of walls. You may be wondering how such a name came to be. To us, it made sense. The paint losing its vigour and disseminating flecks of white here and there. The leaky boiler that punctuated our laughter with its steady dripping. Plug sockets sat suspiciously close to the bathtub. Then there was the sofa bed from which our feet would always awkwardly dangle; the foldable table, that really was just a slab of cardboard dumped onto a pair of wooden legs, a cause for concern anytime we put down something other than a candle. There was the faulty toilet, the broken light, the occasional plate that accepted it was best to serve as mere decoration lest it confront more expired gnocchi. The place had lived out its years. Evidently. But there was something to be said for it. It became a strange yet constant comfort among the chaos of life abroad, a cocoon of rambling conversations and delusions. It wouldn’t judge us nor tell us we were crazy. I’d like to think it found us rather funny.

Landfill gifted us our fondest memories. It witnessed our debriefs curled up on the window ledge, faces swelling from the cold, the outline of the city’s Mansard roofs keeping us company. The chattering wouldn’t stop even when the light began to fall below the horizon and the glass would shine that ice blue so distinct to Paris. Oftentimes the soft pitter-patter of rain would be drowned out by our 2000s it-girl playlist, while other days it was quiet, just our bittersweet sighs knowing the end of term was encroaching, preparing itself to take Landfill from us.

By then we had become overprotective parents of this tiny space. No one could utter a single remonstrance about the dump. It became our home away from home, our reference point, and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.