season of the swan

Among the many (many!) books I have never read is Un Amour de Swann which isn’t even really a book– it’s a story within A la recherche du temps perdu— which is pretty much de rigeur reading for all French students so how I managed to evade its acquaintance is yet another example of how my diplomas should be peppered with scatter shot to more aptly indicate the gaping holes in my education.

Yes, gilt-framed sheets of swiss cheese would be most accurate were I ever to hang such things on my walls– which I wouldn’t, but I always enjoy having a plan for things I will never do. Keeps me grounded.

And it’s not like I am particularly interested in Marcel’s story– I should be, you know, if I had even a modicum of intellectual curiosity– it’s just that the word ‘swan’ seems to be swirling around me and somehow that book title rides in with it.

First I had the two surprise encounters with swans that I told you about– but then I saw two more swans last week and then again today, so that despite their gorgeosity* — or the way they capture my total attention– I can hardly call them a surprise as they are becoming regular features of my dreaming daytime.

Et voila, the verb that floats through my mind as we glide down the streets in this fairytale town with bowers of blossoms cascading about our pedestrian heads: kids, we’re swanning.

Which is not to say I do not have all the normal pinch-y, monkey mind noise taking up space between my ears– I am doing better day by day to release all that with a lifetime goal of being clear and perfectly evolved within the next 84 lifetimes (give or take a lifetime) but seeing as last time I checked, I was still human — all that sturm und drang seems par for the course, alas.

All the more reason to focus on a color that never ever fails to rouse my spirits: palest, prettiest pink.

bisous, e

*I know, not a real word– please refer to: confession. intellectual curiosity. absent.