It's hard to believe how each individual thing keeps happening, one by one, like a marching order of shiny tin soldiers dancing across the Atlantic. I just tracked down my landlord, the sweetest and most like-minded one I’ve ever had while living on my own in Nashville, to let him know I would be officially giving my 60-day notice for the apartment.
“I’m moving to Switzerland!”, I told him.
His eyes gave me a warm, knowing smile: “You’re not going to believe this, but I had a feeling...I was going to email you this week. I just got this sense, for no reason, that something was up!”
I knew exactly what he meant. We who are intuitive get these notions before we fully understand them. And eventually, they show up standing in the parking lot wearing gym clothes on a Wednesday morning, after a week of nervously practicing my speech in the bathroom mirror. He'd known before I even had to say it. (Also, I think he might want my apartment.)
And It's of course only now that I've successfully soap-sprayed the aphids off of my pepper plants that I'm putting the farmer's rack on which they're sunning themselves up for sale. I've luckily and indulgently had the last two days off to hang around the apartment in sweatpants, taking pictures of my furniture with an iPad like a tourist in a modern art museum. In the background, for hours on end, play old episodes of The French Chef, competing with the endless whirr of my AC units while Julia Child jovially tries to teach me how to make a meringue. She's serving as a palate cleanser throughout this process, empathizing with my predicament through the prism of her television show; featuring cuts back and forth from the mainland US to several different locales in Europe, visiting friends in a wide array of landscapes and accents. If Julia became the female equivalent of a French knight in her lifetime, maybe I could too.
If anyone has any tips for me as I slap price tags onto speakers and get ready to move in with Sharon, don't hold your peace. I feel less nervous now that we've been approved for an apartment in Lausanne, one that will certainly be a wonderful place to call home sometime in the next year. C sent me Swiss furniture websites, one in German and one in French, to peruse for ideas. (I did the best I could.) We're going for a modern-minimalist, Japanese-inspired thing, I think..full of clean lines and muted colors. Now I just need to figure out how to grow hot peppers in chilly Switzerland.
May the furniture fairies shine brightly on me, casting speedy, high-value charms onto my IKEA furniture so that they'll sell high and fast. May the move ahead be filled with unbroken friendships and hours-long skype calls with large glasses of good wine. May my armor be unbattered by the time I make it across the water, and just like Julia, may I forever be free as a bird to live, work, and eat my meringues in any place I choose.