C'est la vie

Waking up to the dark and rain was not a good way to start a Monday. The weather visibly turned to pitch black; caused my brain to tumble toward insecurity and anxiousness. However, by the end of the day, it turned out to be quite beautiful; our fall has lasted golden and plush.

Last Friday, I was looking at a map of France. I traced the places I hitchhiked; my starting points were at the Sorbonne in Paris for a few months doing some preparatory work and then I went on to study at the Universite of Tours, France for ten months. It was an art epiphany of Van Gogh in Amsterdam, the Rodin Museum which floored me, The Louvre, The Jeu de Paume in Paris. Paris, Paris, Paris. Most of it was emotionally striking and I remember those times clearly. As students we were housed in these very small rooms; quite stark and placed in a wooded area (aren't most dorm rooms?) Socially, I spoke French very well but my grammar was very spotty. It wasn't until I taught French back in the states that my learning came together and I had arrived at speaking it fluently.

I especially remember my Marxist boyfriend who took me around to all the political rallies; we visited his sister on a farm in Limoges, smoked Gauloises and Gitanes and it was there that I really learned how to taste food. His name was Jean Claude Jandin and he wrote me love letters after I returned to the US, asking me to marry him. Helas, I was too young and fickle and I blew him off; still think fondly of him to this day and often wonder how my life would have evolved. Quite differently I suppose. It was from Jean Claude that I truly learned the psychology of Voltaire - on peut cultive notre jardin de l'amour.

So, as I looked at the map of France, my relationship with my past became surreal; as if I had never been there, never traveled through this wonderful country, never felt a foreign place, learned another language, tripped through the neighboring lands by trains, ferries, hitching by trucks. I became sad because it was if that part of me was gone forever. It is extinct I suppose; you carry it buried in the present, deep and distant but it can be recovered in a heartbeat.