Reflections on what's next

Finalement! It's been a long while since I had some time to just sit and reflect. My two weeks at Domaine Gaury were magnificent; Kathleen and Yves prepared delicious meals for us every day and kept us busy with work and sightseeing. Jess and Dave were fun and easy-going and great to hang around. The location was spacious and serene. All told it was the perfect antidote to the prior homestay, as well as the three weeks in Paris preceding that, and indeed - what moment of my life up to now was not in some way bringing me to exactly this place??

I'm just so interested in how the process works, of encountering a new environment or person or having any sort of experience, that immediately new preferences are born within me. As soon as a need or desire is met, an even newer and amended version lies ahead, beckoning me onward. Even wondering if or when I'll desire to linger longer sparks a new potential to be satisfied with staying put, in a way that didn't exist before I found myself inclined to move on. It's like an eternal pendulum, always seeking but never resting in perfect equilibrium. I like that. It makes me think of water, cycling through all its phases, whole and complete at every step along the way - and always moving on to the next phase, unless it's not... As in when resting for a spell in a lake, or ocean, or in those great voluminous clouds that are powerful and yielding, full and full of nothing, all at the same time.

It's fun to notice what my new preferences are. I'm on the train now, heading south toward Toulouse then east to a small village. My next host is French, which was my most prominent amended request from where I've just been. It was a relief to be able to speak English with my hosts to clarify what was said in French, but with two Canadians also around, it was just too easy to slip into talking English all the time... And then when Yuri the Russian arrived, and he could speak no French at all, I knew I had to go. I'm eager and nervous to converse with a native French speaker, but (aside from seeing the country) that's what I can't do at home! The food, it's true, has been wonderful; but Asheville is already such a foodie town with amazing markets and farms and import shops, I'm not lacking for cultivated tastes (nor appreciation for both the fine cuisine available in France, and for my own discretion about eating the same kind of supermarket crap you can buy here as well as in America).

 

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