I did need rest though, didn’t I. I’m reminded of nothing I’ve actually read myself, that teaches you to be in the moment and resist trying to shape your reality around your own egotistical expectations. In Tours: it was cloudy and about to rain for two days. In the hostel were the old Jewish man and the maid, and with my Spanish/French I booked a comfortable room with a nice view. I forced myself to walk around Tours because I was there, but I was in so much pain and had no money or plans for the next day. The time zone meant my parents were asleep, and I couldn’t figure out the electronic pay phones anyway. I was not a traveler right then. But I wasn’t even lost. I was just moving.I saw the bus off, waved the other pseudo-travelers good-bye, wondering why I would bother (I didn’t even know their names) and if they thought it was strange. They all wished me luck with big smiles, and the driver even gave me a pat on the back. The only one to get off in Tours, they thought I was where I wanted to be. We weren’t familiar enough for me to break down and wail how sick I was of clouded France.
I walked around and figured out I was in an artsy part of town. Gallery, knick-knack artsy, though. Lots of people in small, zippy cars delivering framed things and shapes in bags. Everyone ignored me.
Tours is a shiny place for people with money in the middle, and a rough, unknown place around the edges. I think.
I don’t remember sleeping that night. I went back to the room before dark, and couldn’t find the shower, or a person, when I looked. Then it was morning and I’m in the train station across the plaza two hours early for no reason. A man tried to give me a kitten. “Merci, non.”
I told someone the story of how I managed a conversation in French with a woman on the train. Last week, I was thinking back on it in my sleep, and I realized this had never happened. The woman, in a knit cap and shawl, carrying a tightly wound leather bag on her lap, had asked me a couple of questions about who I was and what I was up to, but I couldn’t translate fast enough to reply. We just smiled awkwardly at each other and sat in silence all the way to Nantes.
