MeliGoesRogue

I have this habit of allowing music so deeply into my life that it has become the loudly silent narrator. I don’t necessarily regret it. I think the way I connect to music is beautiful, I think the way I can sometimes allow it to take over is dangerous and often times reckless.

Im leaving my chateau today and so much of me wants one more day, one more sunset. Because I can’t have one,I instead find myself out in the courtyard with just the vines for company. I press play and she begins her aria in my ear. I am desperately trying to snapshot this moment and this feeling of bliss and freedom.

I have an answer to give when I return but I’m still so unsure what it’s going to be. Time such a cruel ruler, she brings about change and then stalls by changing time zones and creating a vortex of emotion. Every thing heightened.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to Turkey, and it was an amazing experience. It was filled with firsts and awareness and dare I say forgiveness. It left an impression on my heart to say the least.

Soon after returning I saw a film about Turkey during the ottoman empire when it was Anatolia. It described a love story set against a war torn country. Nothing new there, but while watching I was once again confronted with the amount of things people do in the name of their “God”.

Complete destruction and disregard for life. Somehow I can’t bring myself to love, adore, and revere a God that would do that…and yet don’t I?

I can already feel my mother cringing in her chair (I think). Yet when I look at the examples of the Bible where this “destruction” took place it was always at the hands of God, perhaps he used messengers to convey and advise repentance but he did not put the match in their hand. Noah, Joseph, Lot. These were all men chosen in a time of deep depravity.

I can see us sinking back into that depravity and I wonder what now? He promised to never end the world by flood again, but isn’t there a loophole in that very statement.

There is something so disconcerting about being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and which any attempt on the side of the residents to speak is met with criticism. At first I thought it was an American thing. But in truth I am finding that more and more it’s a cultural thing. The French are obsessed with preserving the past. There are things they continue to do that have either been industrialized or at the very least faster ways of doing it are available but it will cause them to forget their past. Their history their heritage

The same film brought another lovely example. As Americans we are taught to believe we are the greatest in the world but that thought that seems far from true.

The rest of the world remains in constant watch. Yes perhaps it’s true that we have innovated more than any country in the technological sense but the truth is we are quite far behind in the human sense.

In the film the Armenians are fighting the Turks. Muslim v orthodox Christian, caught on the middle is an American hospital. There is a mini monologue in the film when a man of the Turkish military says to the hospital director.

“When your lands were still swamp and grass we had lit up the world for thousands of years, and when you fall like Rome and Greece. And you will fall, we will still be here”

I think this is the core of the French and their unwillingness to change. They know the world and ways they live are sustainable. They will grow slowly so they can guarantee the progress and growth. As much as I hate not being able to communicate or the fact that there are certain amenities that i must do without, somehow I remain in a state of reverence for their diligence and stubborn ways and in some ways so is every American that has been willing to brave the discomfort and visit this spectacular country.

Im still nervous and uncomfortable every time I have to go to a restaurant and ask for a table or a menu, a drink or a damn breath of fresh air so instead I plan to learn as much French as I can so the next time I set myself upon the terroir of the countryside I can enjoy every moment and change my fear to fun.

In the meantime I suppose a French boy would do just fine.