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Monday, September 3, 2012

Waking from a Long, Long Sleep


 Metz is a beautiful place. Sometimes too beautiful. There are literally children playing in the gardens with balloons. Trash stays on the streets only for a few hours or so before street sweepers claim it. Flowers and trees are eternally in bloom. Even the sky is the perfect shade of blue.

We live in a small palace where cherubs smile down at us from the ceilings and begonias greet us from the window boxes. Sun streams in from 20-feet high windows flanked by silk drapes. Moroccan rugs cover our floors. We eat the finest cheeses and drink the best wines. And stress about who will walk the dog on the esplanade today.

There is something unreal about loveliness such as this. We are anesthetized from the hardships of life and feel ourselves growing soft. One day melts into the next in a serene dream-like state of non-existence. Stories of war and politics flash across the tv screen, but stay there as I sip my coffee and move lithely into the next room.

I miss Georgia, where I come from. But I was never at home when I lived there—I wanted France instead.

1 comment:

Aimee Wheeler said...

It sounds like a dream. How Lovely.