France
Once upon a time you meandered south alone, through France, learning on the spot how to order a coffee for yourself and not sound like a total idiot. How to sit out with the sun on your back, sipping the coffee on metal cafe furniture, scraping on gravel, tearing at a pastry with a book in your lap. Phones didn’t work abroad then; there was still a chance to escape.
Yesterday, in a singing lesson over Zoom, Rose taught you a French song, to be sung as a round. You are alone in your studio. Bon soir, Bon soir.
The sound of another language - possibly this particular language? - made your heart soar but also brought with it a tight feeling, causing the soaring bird to sag a little. A nostalgic feeling, a feeling for a place not so easy to get back to.
La brumé monte du sol -the mist rises from the soil - and you’re there again, early mornings at Dechen Chöling, unfolding limbs from a tent with a loud zipping sound, to find the sodden dewy grass has soaked your shoes and the mists are swirling up into an endless blue. A meditation gong. A shrine at the base of an old tree. The shuffling bodies of those who feel little need to speak. Fresh breath in nostrils, a cup of tea on a log next to a stranger. A guitar slung on your back, ready to sing.
En entend le rossígnol - we hear the nightingale. Then, a different summer in the same country, you’re sat with John on a bench in the village of Labastide Esparbairenque. Eyes open, eyes closed, side by side, chatting about vipassana, chatting about nothing.
‘You need to take a trip,’ said someone inside your head, after your singing lesson was gone. And you breathed in France. You breathed in the spooky bedrooms, nights alone, writing songs with the window ajar. Citronella. A strange man asking who he’d heard singing with the voice of an angel.
You need to find a way to move. Life has grown rich with family and quiet comforts. Three meals daily at the same table, and no need to complain. But some days you breathe in another side of you, waiting patiently behind closed doors inside your mind, rolling garage doors sliding up and down over past lives.
