Moments that change everything

I looked out of the plane window, saw the Eiffel Tower and snapped this photo through the Paris pollution. I was just a regular person on her way home from giving a paper at a conference. The Paris stopover was a reward to myself for having survived some tough years with my sanity relatively intact. Originally planned for only a couple of days, I extended the trip in order to facilitate my once in a lifetime opportunity to see my long-time music and words love, Mr Leonard Cohen, in Lyon. I always wanted to go to France, always knew I would.

But, I didn't know that going to France would change everything.


I took a ride on one of those double decker open topped tourist buses in order to get a feel for the the layout of the city. I quickly grew annoyed at the loud-mouthed tourists getting excited by the LV store and insisting on telling me their life stories. I got off the bus and walked around. It started to rain and I sought shelter under the umbrella I'd bought the week before in Dublin. It was an Irish umbrella and and kept collapsing on my head. I didn't care. I was happy. I was wet through. Most of the people disappeared. Not me. I stayed in the rain with my collapsing-on-my-head-umbrella and before long I felt something change.



Another day I danced in the street with this man while waiting for a carnival to start.


I caught the TGV across France. I experienced Leonard Cohen in France on top of a hill overlooking the city of Lyon. The audience was unlike any other I've ever experienced. Strangers went out of their way to be friendly to the woman who'd travelled alone all the way from Australia. Everyone was just so civilised.

*****

I came back to Australia, happy to see my family. But something had changed.


*****

I started French classes, took to reading everything about France I could, renewed my French genealogy obsession, started a France related blog having become obsessed with reading the lives of expats in France. All the while I'd never felt more like an alien in the country of my birth. . .



. . . other stuff happened. One day I saw a book in a shop. I opened it and read the first few lines and peeked through the photographs but resisted buying it as I thought it would only make things worse while in that frame of mind. . .

. . . more stuff happened. One day I wrote a blog post around the time of Dorothy Porter's death and received a comment along the lines of "I have come to accept that sometimes we are born in a place that isn't suited to our personality." Someone got me, the person who'd written that book, no less. I felt something change.

*I bought the book. It was wonderful. Maybe you would like it too.



Leonard Cohen came to Australia. I cried when I heard the news. He wasn't supposed to do that. He was my once-in-a-lifetime-in-France-dream-come-true. Of course in the end I couldn't resist the opportunity to see him not far from home. Despite hesitating I managed to get wonderful tickets. I could actually see his features this time. I went with someone I love and now he loves Leonard.

Leonard Cohen was as brilliant as he'd been in France seven months earlier.

BUT. . . the show was in an Australian winery. On an outing to an Australian winery most Australians don't have a glass or two of wine. The idea for many at a concert in an Australian winery is to get pissed as fast as possible. They run buses to the venue to allow for maximum drunkenness. So, naturally lots of people got very drunk, and very loud. Many staggered up and down the aisles, called out inappropriately, and were just so. . . gross and Australian, I suppose. The people next to us were falling all over the place, talking, yelling out, talking some more, spilling wine on me and singing along off-key.

Mostly I focused on Leonard and refused to let it spoil my night.

Yet I felt that all too familiar alien-in-a-strange-planet thing creeping up on me. At some point during the evening the thought "I have to get the fuck out of this country," ran through my head like a mantra. Some people hear the voice of The Lord and have a life changing moment. In my moment of clarity I just heard sewer-mouthed Me. I can still hear my voice and see the words, they're imprinted in my brain like a tattoo.

The next day I spoke the words out loud. It has to be, I said. It may not be forever and it won't happen straight away. It may only be a couple of months at a time when I can manage it. But it is going to happen...

. . . because something changed.