Lost And Found

I suppose you’ll think it an exaggeration if I tell you my life was changed by such a minor thing as being lost once with the woman I love in the countryside around a Belgian town she had worked in many years before. To prove it was no exaggeration, I could write about the map, the whole issues of maps and how the map is not the place. I could write about the whole issue of being lost and how unimportant you become, when you find something or someone even more lost. I could write about setting out one day with a view of a person and because of the place and what happens there, the view changes. I could write about all these things and the incidents. I mean there was salmon mousse and a shrine and horses and traitorous cows along the way. I could write about all of that. Yes, I think I will.

On my first trip to Europe, we had already stayed in Paris, in Champagne country outside of Rhiems, in Brussels for a few days, and having borrowed a friend’s car, we had now driven south of Brussels to a town called Bonlez. Here Bonnie had once worked as a nanny for a family of 5 (while her pregnant companion hid in the attic, breeding away in misery and indecision.)