Saint Valentin

 

My Valentine is the country of France.
We made a wonderful little dinner yesterday for both French and American friends,
complete with a divine raspberry tart and little colorful flowers from the Marché Aux Fleurs.
France, mon coeur is yours forever.

Nice & Monaco

 I've just recently taken a little trip to Nice and Monaco for a couple of days.
Seeing the ever translucent and transcendent Mediterranean once again made my heart skip a beat,
The Côte d'Azur is aptly named, and it rolls off the tongue like a jewel dropping into the sea.
Although Nice and Monaco are both summer cities, 

they proved just as radiant and colorful in the mild french winter.
I preferred Nice, where me and my new-found American companions wondered about,
climbing and searching and laughing,
absorbing this strange new world that I am beginning to understand.
 We sat by the sea for a while, with spirits high, just lingering,
and for the first time since I've been here,
I felt an intense and overwhelming awareness
of being alive,
like sipping water for the first time,
leaving me all at once satisfied and thirsting for more.

A New Realm

 Bonjour!
It's been only a few days and I've begun an affinity with Aix en Provence.
The world is different here, even from the other parts of Europe that I have been to before.
I am beginning to understand the french way of life,
and the art that is everything here;
 eating and drinking and dancing and walking and breathing and dressing.
The people here are constantly surprising me in the best of ways,
so that my expectations are slowly drifting away down these long ancient corridors.
I simply can't believe a place this beautiful is part of my everyday life.
I have discovered the Boulangerie Jacob on my way to school where I buy a fresh baguette everyday, 
and I have fallen in love with vin rosé, which I drink every evening.
I am surrounded by new people and an exquisite, tender language.
I wake up to the city coming alive every morning, I can hear it from the balcony across from my bed;
cars and families and men without women, and women with men, and dogs and buses and wind,
and the lives
of people simply existing.

Today I arrived in France to start a little new life for myself,
to learn myself and others,
and thus far it's left me completely breathless.
My apartment is ancient and gorgeous,

and the people I share it with are intricate and fascinating.
There's a darling little lonely breakfast table in the courtyard that I will be exploring as a breakfast nook soon,
I saw a cat keeping it company today through my window.
The weather is mild and inviting, and the people mysteriously beautiful.
I flew over the French Alps on the way here, and was completely besotted.
This land somehow reaches me in a way nowhere else does.
Watching those mountains pass, with etched valleys and rivers slipping between them,
like some ancient fable,
I fell completely in love,
at first sight,
with the country of France.
This is going to be an incredible five months,
I invite you to share them with me.

 Only a few short winter days left in America,

when I return from Europe the world will be lush and green again.
Such change is coming.

In the meantime I am to travel for a few months and learn other ways of life,
which I will be sharing with all of you, on film, naturally.
These are some images taken
 on a cold recent afternoon on a little exploration of the winterum countryside.

an unexpected thaw.

 

all my stumbling phrases never amounted
to anything worth this feeling.