Views of the past

Five years ago at this time I was walking through the deserted streets of Villerville, France. I remember being enchanted by the fall there, and by the feeling—the certainty—of living moments that I would never in my life repeat. I would never be in those gray, shuttered streets
in the autumn,
on the arm of that person,
not ever.

It was a sweet and melancholy feeling, and an addictive one. In fact, everything about my time with that particular person, and the places we went, were tinged with that very same seductive melancholy. I remember the damp and the chill of his room under the eaves, with its disintegrating stone tiles underfoot, its yellowing, dust-laden stuffed swans overhead, and his face of a medieval king who had been beheaded several hundred years before.

I suppose there was something archeaological about my entire 18-19 year old stay in France. Maybe after my parents’ divorce that’s exactly what I was looking for—a romanticized study of lost glory, of crumble and decay.

Maybe too, that’s why the Paris experience I had this winter of 2006 was so much different from before—I was trying to retrace my footsteps from before. But at that time I needed to ponder loss and the past whereas now I’m fixated on growth and the future. I should have been seeking out a newer Paris.

That will be for the next time.