It all started last month when in the middle of my Summer Reading Companion (I.e, A Year In the World by Frances Mayes) the author was spending a delicious vacation with her husband in the South of France. Nice, Provence, Saint-Saveur-En-Pusaiye.
It was there that I first came across Colette.
Mayes had studied her extensively in college, and had read and re-read her works throughout her entire life, and in the period she spent in the South of France and Burgundy she interspersed a lot of Colette's words with her own. Her and her husband took a pilgrimage to the childhood home of Colette. The very same home she wrote about in one of her most cherished works, "My Mother's House and Sido."
Of course, after I finished my travel book, I ran to the library and picked up My Mother's House and began to fall deeper. Around the same time, I finally got around to creating a La Vie En Rose playlist on Pandora. This is where I really toppled over the edge, as I became absolutely enchanted with France's most famous popular vocalist, Edith Piaf.
I first met Edith through a youtube video when I heard the French version of La Vie En Rose for the very first time. This must have been almost 2 years ago.
But it was only last month that I really explored beyond that one song, and I'm completely addicted to what I've discovered.
As I was experiencing the region of Yonne through Colette, I also picked my copy of Julia Child's My Life In France which I started several years ago, but never finished. Julia showed me Paris and all of it's rainy, rosy glory.
I finished the book; I encourage anyone who's ever experienced sheer determination to pick it up. It's a highly inspiring read.
Of course, I've decided that I must experience all of this beauty and taste and inspiration for myself.
I especially want to read more of Colette's books. And I, too, want to travel to that small village and see Colette's childhood home for myself.
Doesn't that make you want to pick up all of your belongings and just move?
I don't mean move only as a sense of physical movement, as in moving houses, I mean it in a emotional and psychological sense, too. To move something, to move someone, to be moved by a place, a person, a meal. To be touched. To touch others. To inspire, to be inspired. To change circumstances, to be changed.
For reasons like these alone, I live my life.
And all of these reasons surface when you listen to French music, or cook a French meal. Or even read a book by a French author.
I believe that the French have figured out the secrets and eccentricities of life. They know the way things work, and I willingly sign myself up to learn the same lessons as soon as possible.
de vous envoyer tout l'amour et de pépites de chocolat dans le monde,
Hannah Xx
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