Joyful Exile

Before I begin this post, I have to say that music really is the greatest form of intuition. Right now, as I begin a post on the desire to leave and be in the calm of the country, Queens’s “I want to break free” is playing on the radio. The synchronicity of sound never fails to astound me.

As I type these words, I am currantly hauled up in a guesthouse in the town of Montabaun, near the medieval village of Bruniquel- featuring a picturesque village, an impressionable 12th century castle, complete with dungeon and a hearth larger then my last apartment and turrants that make any American mind flash right to fairy tales. The ambiance of this place bespeaks “Call me by your name”. Breezy days, slow sips of wine, collages, piles of literature, windows and doors ajar, photographs of the great singer Sere Gainsbourg and Francious Hardy scattered about, marauding lazy old dogs traipse in and out with a passive though enduring haughtiness that says, “we’re the owners here.”

Now, please don’t misconstrue what I’m speaking of as an admission of some sort of idleness. No. Far from it. I’m here as a worker and assistant, and I’m grateful to do so. In this afternoon alone, I have parqued floors that brides will soon dance on, swept liters of leafy debris from pathways, set up a leisurely country breakfast for almost all but unseen guests from the city, scrubbed floors, pressed towels and sheets, scraped dishes and pruned roses. Other than small siesta earlier, this is my downtime. Perhaps its the idealness of the outsider, or simply my latino heritage- but I feel more like myself when I do some measure of manual labor. My most lackluster creative periods were times when I lay idle. Examining not great stanzas of poetry or reading what great minds had to say, but wandering the tainted labyrinth of my netflix menu or musing on what takeout was next. I was glutted by the world. No poetry comes from this- at least not to me.

So now as I sit here listening to some sort of dissonant piano tune and nursing a mid day rose as the hounds nap below me, watching the hours pass- I’m grateful for my small scrapes on my angles, my muddled hair, and my face in need of a shave- my mind has been on work, and its mechanism have activated the gears that make me want to produce words, write poetry and more or less do whatever I was called on to do.

Suffice it to say-it’s a lovely day.