It occurs to me that I really should clarify something – to the few readers that I have left (there aren’t many of you, but that’s okay with me, one day I *may* open the blog back up to the general public, but not today). Anyway, what I need to clarify is this: I’m not unhappy.
I know I sometimes sound like I am. But rest assured it is less unhappiness and more…pensiveness, perhaps tinged with a bit of confusion. I’m working through quite a few things right now, after all, my life is about to take a very big turn.
It came to me recently that I have been running about trying desperately to balance everyone and everything around me, my mind completely full of problems to solve, numbers to calculate, huge decisions to make what feels like nearly every minute of every day – that I have…in some ways forgotten about myself. Which is foolish, because in some ways I also feel like I’ve been nothing but self-centered, partially because there is so much going on. Anyway, I have taken a lot onto myself, some of which I actually needed to take on, some of which I didn’t…
So, since this is a quiet contract – very quiet – I am taking it as a welcome opportunity to…make myself relax.
And as such, I have rediscovered reading. Sounds silly I know, considering that I’m sure it seems like all I do is read; but it’s something I haven’t really made a lot of time for in the last few months.
Oddly, it seems my reading choices keep falling into a pattern these days: Paris. Every book I pick up, every one that catches my eye, seems to be either set in France, or in Paris itself. This is not on purpose on my part, I am not ..seeking out Paris; it just seems to keep finding me. Don’t believe me? Five Quarters of the Orange – picked it up because of the author, found it was set in the small town on the muddy banks of a river in occupied France. Enchantee? A magician navigating her way through the churning currents of Versailles in the lead up to the French revolution. And the list goes on…
As such, I suppose it’s not a surprise that I ended up back in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes; and the world of Chocolat. It’s been a very long time since I visited Vianne Roche, I had almost forgotten just how much these books touched me….one in particular: the Lollipop Shoes, the surprisingly little known continuation of the story of Vianne. In this book, gone is the red-caped, light-hearted heroine of the original, her magic dimmed, her light shuttered. And into her purposely careful world, waltzes a woman who is so close to what she used to be…Zozie…with bright red shoes and an attitude of “F*ck you, I’m Fabulous”…
Changed the way I looked at a lot of things that book…so perhaps it’s not a coincidence that it wandered back into my life just now…just when I am finding it most important to remember that there absolutely is magic everywhere…
When I am happy.