It is a summer of wide traveling, and I revel in my good fortune, and dwell in my silent wounds, that stubborn gift.
The landscape changes. The thoughts come and go, incessant, and the joy is there too. I am in the country I grew up in, France, visiting my aging mother, and I feel like a stranger, and the thoughts follow me, with the wild breath of the horizon on their tail.
The boys like the food here, and it is good, and we revel in it, and laugh. The bread, hard crust, the infinity of cheeses, raw milk at its best, the yoghurt aisles that stretch on and on, that sort of hard salami that you can only find here and that my mother sent me once in a package only to have it confiscated at customs and a stern note slipped in admonishing me that it is illegal to ship meat and I will be prosecuted (but I didn’t do anything! I protested silently, while also silently bemoaning the waste of such good food.)
I find the voices judging, they open old thoughts. It is all in my head.
The sights are wonders, majestic mountains here, the multifaceted beauty of Paris - but for its trail of memories, even the careful arrangement of macaroons in the window of a bakery. The art of eating for the sake of its pleasure has to please the eyes too. It is all an elegant feast.
I feel like a stranger, in my longing for the clamors of the New World plundered. My thoughts yank me there, the wounds whispering.
