Matthew Lyle Landsman

Humphrey Bogart said it best in the movie Casablanca,

“We’ll always have Paris…”

I say it today, though I’ve never been to “The City of Light”…nor have I strolled through a vineyard in Provence. I doubt I will ever peer over the cliffs of Normandy, or hear the surf that once pounded the shore with the crimson remains of so many brave souls.

But shortly after the change in the millennium, I fell in love with the voice of a lonely friend as she stayed not far from the shadow of the Eiffel Tower… while her feet left a barely visible set of prints along the banks of the River Seine…and  the fragrance of baguettes teased her nose after a summer shower, and tempted her palate, begging to be shared with a flute of sparkling wine, crisp apple slices, and a stash of cheeses with names I cannot pronounce.

I saw her off for a six week trek across the land and sea, for a trip into the past… into the vineyards, cobblestones, galleries, narrow side streets and country roads that are France…her rite of passage as taken by others before her.

It has been a long while, so the details of her journey are misty to my memory… but not the wonder of discovering our hearts peering into the nights beyond either shore, and far past the horizon… the search for the familiar serenading of the senses, for the familiar scents that had been her and I, then the two of us together.  She was nowhere in sight, but I felt her presence everywhere I roamed in my solitude.

Perhaps as I passed beneath a non-descript overpass, on an unremarkable stretch of highway, she may have been taking a journey through history, while her taxi or walking shoes took her through the Arc de Triomphe. While stranger’s smiles, in the most romantic city in the world, may have tapped on her heart’s door, the reminder of my certain adoration and growing fondness, here in our desert hamlet, pounded with determination for passage to a place neither had been before.

When infant dawn splashed over the morning sky, with hues from nature’s palette of reds filling the eastern sky and giving new shadows to the purple hills of the fading night, I knew that afternoon shadows were growing long in the French countryside.  Here, on the avenues of rustic towns she ventured, while making lasting memories of the beauty at hand, with a sense of history urging her on alone…and with the knowledge she might never wander these paths again…all the while a presence of growing liaison between our two gypsy souls calling her heart home again.

While she broke her evening bread and held a letter from home against her homesick, aching breast, I was greeting the day with weary eyes and an envelope full of fresh words about the day before, and the night of distant intentions, about to be postmarked and sealed with a kiss, then sent off across the cool Atlantic.

While she wandered the Louvre and silently gasped at the beauty and wonder of works by the likes of Rembrandt and Leonardo Da Vinci, perhaps the quiet smile of The Mona Lisa filled her with a sense of mystery and awe.  I am certain I was enamored with the vision of her simple smile and the eyes that nearly vanish when joy invades her being over simple pleasures like “treats” at DQ, or “scenes” from next week’s episode of ER.  To be sure, Paris in July is magic and might come but once in a lifetime, but in the midst of all this worldly travel, the two of us were discovering there really is no place like home when someone you love is waiting there anxiously.

In the heat of the afternoon sun, I busied myself with pulling weeds from her lawn just to be closer to her somehow.  As she strolled through a market in Provence, after an early morning train carried her from the city bustle and left her with a camera full of photographs, and as the wonderful chill of a morning breeze filled the air with conversations it carried and caused the leaves of the olive trees to softly rustle, maybe the breezes were my thoughts and love on the wing, reminding her of all that awaited her when she made the journey home.

And as we both pondered what the other might be doing at a given moment, words for tomorrow’s letter were spilling over in the hearts of the two of us.  Perhaps a pen was being set down momentarily to empty a hand that would wipe away a knowing tear, or reach for another serving of yesterday’s letter…like a sip from a glass of last night’s wine to greet the dawn, clinging to every passage that filled the cup with sappy declarations and promises of hour long hugs upon her return…over and over I would drink it up till I became intoxicated with emotion, loneliness and anticipatory longing.  This was a slightly guilty pleasure since no liquor, ale, or wine had passed over my tongue in over a decade, but the metaphoric spirits, in the form of her words, filled me, nearly drowned me, and left me reeling with familiar warmth and an aching desire.

France and Washington state share nearly the same latitude on God’s earth, lending to their innate ability to produce quintessential wine grapes, amazing sunsets, and inspirations for lovers of all things natural, beautiful, fragrant, tasty, and romantic.  Straining out to the west of Normandy, the granite isle of Mont Saint-Michel stands vigil in the Atlantic waters, reaching out to mariners and all sentimental souls alike…pointing to the British Isles and the last leg of her journey abroad.

When the object of my attentions and desire at last took leave of Bordeaux country for a final time, and spent a week in the green country of Ireland, she toured castles and the sources of legend and Celtic tunes and lore. Then a weary traveler bid farewell to Dublin and, an ocean crossing later, was greeted by first the east, then the west coasts of our fair land.  Finally, as July faded and August debuted, I traveled to a terminal to collect her at last.  I remember the fragrance of airline-conditioned air following her, and accompanying us home, through the mountain passing and safely home to our desert abodes.

The drive marked the end of one journey, the beginning of another, and the eventual culminating of our last summer together.

Now it’s nearly three quarters of a decade later, half past “0 dark thirty,” and I’m still waiting for my phone to ring again. I long to be awakened from the sleep that hasn’t found me yet. I long for the pad of air delivery paper that lay next to my bed, which I penned my heart upon, pouring out prose, poetry and love like Cabernet into a Dixie cup…mailing it off nearly every morning shortly after dawn.

On the shelf in my bathroom stands a long empty bottle that once held cologne she brought to me from France.  I call it “Far Away” because I can’t pronounce the name.  I remember the homecoming and the scent she gave to me.  And I yearn for the swelling of emotion and growing anticipation of her next words, either spoken or written, the journal of her days abroad.  I miss her taking me through the places that for me existed only in movies and novels.  I miss the most romantic, extended moment this poet ever had…when we had only a continent and an ocean between us…but I had never been closer, felt more embraced, never felt more comfortable, even while knowing that our reunion held no promise of forever.  Still I knew that I would forever hold fast to the memories and moments, to the absence of a hand to hold, while I walked at her side some five thousand miles and nine time zones away.

And, oh my God, how that trip we took together, yet apart from each other, has saved me time and again…rescued me when I’ve nearly stopped believing in romancing, walks in the warm rain, and slow dancing.  I step back a few years to the most endearing of times my heart has ever known. I return to a fantasy that invaded my reality, gave me inspiration for some of my fondest work and most
heartfelt intentions to meld with the ink in my pen and the faintly-lined paper that would soon somehow find her and speak softly to her in English among the foreign speaking souls all around her.

I have no regrets, only thanks for the elation and honor of an epic moment shared…for the words that all these years later flow once more through my hands, an old friend revisited, refined, and aged to perfection like vintage wine. Again I enjoy the twinge of pure intoxication, look out over the eastern horizon, and remember when…and thanks to Bogart and Bergman, and a time spent apart from one I loved, I quietly look out into the night…and softly utter,

“We’ll always have Paris…”

Matthew Lyle Landsman, July 2008.