PAUL CHRISTENSEN

It's fall here in southern France. The tourists have thinned out to a trickle of rubbernecks aiming their smart phones at almost anything green or shaggy with vines. They hardly notice how the air has sweetened and left behind the ghost of lavender smells in the harvested fields. But something moves them to stand and stare at a few slow-moving shadows on the empty paths, and to marvel silently at the dark, rusty looking privet hedges that guard the stone houses here and there

Sometimes I find myself wandering out of a book into a rambling daydream, one that has neither a beginning nor an end, just a labyrinth of choices and minor discoveries that don't add up to much. It's good. I love the feeling of letting my mind forget the rules of reading and plunge into the high grass. Usually, the place I enter is a field near a river. I can hear the water chattering over the stones, and look out for birds that might be hovering overhead. I keep relaxing mo