And Other Things
I took that picture from the street in front of Shakespeare and Company, one of my favorite bookstores. Rooms follow rooms, and it is an American book store, which is a bit of a nice relaxing thing for an American tourist. Now, on the 11th of April this year, in 20 days in fact, I will fly out of Las Vegas and, with a stop at LAX, to Paris, from which I will take a train to Poitiers (the town where the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine literally held court,) from which I will drive my rented car to Lizant, where we will have, as of March 29th, a second home. If you want more details, see Follow Me to France on this very blog. By the way (BTW if you insist) the region is now known officially as Nouvelle Aquitaine, or New Aquitaine. France feels the need to rearrange internal political boundaries every so often.
I was getting rather nervous about the whole thing. After all, I do speak French now, maybe at a level B1, somewhere around there, which is okay if things don’t get too technical, but not okay for banking, dealing with tradesmen, or for that matter talking on the phone. We want to make some modifications on our house, so I must see the Maire (just pronounce it, it isn’t difficult) and get official permission from the Commune (relax, that name goes back to Napoleon and means “municipality.”) Hot damn. And then there’s the issue of hiring tradespeople to do the work, or at least most of it, because I am, as my son will point out, older than dirt. And lazy. They don’t all speak English, and I don’t know if the Maire does either, although the sheer numbers of anglophones in the area suggests that he might have to. Not everybody is so happy about learning a new language as myself. (If I live in France, I speak French; sil je habite en France, je parle français.) Also, I have to arrange for all utilities to be in our name, get cable and Internet, buy a frigging TV, and a printer for our computers, plus some cookware and other stuff. And the sellers, bless them, are leaving most of the furniture, but not the living room set, so there’s that, and well, that’s a lot of stuff to do five-thousand miles from home, it seems to me. (There are some serious modifications to the building in store, too.)
So, I was getting nervous. Then I read a Facebook post from my friend Leslie, who is one of the Oddgodfrey’s from whom I regularly repost blog items. They are in year seven, maybe eight by now, of a planned five-year circumnavigation in their 40-goot sailboat, the SV Sonrisa, which is a great name for a boat. It makes me smile to think about it. (It means “smile” in Spanish.) Unfortunately, I can’t repost it here, but the essence of it is that they had a meal in a South African restaurant that she described as “maybe the best I’ve ever had.” Yes! If you want to have lived before you die, you’ve got to get out there and do it. There’s a saying I learned from the Oddgodfreys about boats: A boat is safe in port, but that’s not what a boat is for.
By the same token, you won’t get too many surprises or difficulties if you stay home, but you’ll probably never find the “best meal of your life” either. Living life means getting out there into where life is lived, which isn’t at home for most of us these days. I mean, what’s gonna happen? I’ll need to type into Google Translate to be understood? Heck, I’ve been there before, and it wasn’t at all dangerous. Hey, I’m going on an adventure! And I think everyone should. If it’s okay to say YOLO before doing something arguably stupid and silly, why not apply that philosophy to bigger things? Pack up and move to Tibet, if that’s what you want to do. I’m sure it will scare you, but that great experience is just champing* at the bit waiting for you to show up!
*Yes, it’s ‘champing’ not ‘chomping.’ It’s a horse thing.
