zeitlos

Lately the Light is back in Provence but I, having adopted certain conceits of the 19th-century English novel, am still misty-eyed and of dampened spirits. I’ve been suffering from a general fever of the nerves, as if Schubert’s mother’s ghost had come back from the grave and told me to stop being so relaxed. Last week in class I attained such an appalling pallor as to faint, I’m told, at the blackboard; today I wore my hair in peasant braids. I can’t help thinking I was the only one uninvited to the Facebook event of the season, “Feting Corie’s Anniversaire,” because my tainted history makes me unfit for such society…I would have made her a bomb-ass cake too, but for my delicate constitution.

I’m getting better at transliterating fragments of speech, but my character is still as graven as writing. The Mistral has lent my days a lyrical bent. I sleep at odd hours, even ones too...most of them, really. The infirmière at the lycée, perilously infirm herself, asked, “Tu t’es couchée de bonne heure?” and in my time-addled delirium I could only reply, “Longtemps…”

Meanwhile je me brouille avec mes brouillons brouillés…I can’t seem to get my stories straight. I spent my weekly arugula allowance on Stendhal’s De l’amour, so I’ll be living on love for a while. I can’t wait till Hannah comes so we can roast rabbit with the flavors of Provence and discuss the particulars of the Schengen states with Liz.