Reminiscing our first introduction to Le Berry, in those days still our mystical destined home to be, circumstances were absolutely archetypal: warm, midsummer and with just the right amount of heartache to engross because of Ivory’s eminent departure to the United States for months to come, forcing us to make the most of our time together whilst still allowing us to let these rolling hills enchant us. ‘We’re going to live here’, I said, when we drove our car up to the chateau, blatantly unaware of the truth and its entailed clanger. ‘No, no’, Ivory refuted, ‘I’ve only booked for three nights.’
In hindsight my personal connection to the abundant beauty lurking here behind every sharp turn in every twisted road, all to nowhere, goes back even further though, to my mothers foreverness, or neverneverness as we would jokily call it and her ‘answer’ to me finally confessing the break up with the one never to be named again, hesitantly because she felt such a maddening affection for that fool. It took me years to understand her trustingly love of who she thought I did too and by the time I popped that bubble, she lost her ability to speak, but still produced a distinct ‘Barry’ and with it guiding my future steps.
The image of Peter Pan and his safe shelter for Lost Boys is terribly tarnished in reference to the King of Pop’s estate name and the unimaginable things that took place there, undoubtedly forging its author Sir James Matthew Barrie (there’s that name again) to twerk in his grave. This lost boy however grew up, only to still recognize analogy in how Les Pierres’ safety net compares to the La La Land first entered and only narrowly escaped.
This first glorious sunny day of winter, so fittingly pointing to Saint Valentine because no love should be kept in the dark, this day where our winter jasmine rules and dominates and spreads the news of what’s to come, is the day after I received a mysterious envelope in the mail. Ivory needed to complain about it because his name wasn’t mentioned on it, oh wait, maybe open it tomorrow.
When home is a person called Barry and when he turns out not to be White but Ivory, who am I to nitpick. Happy V-day y’all!
