Niki had told me I simply must go to Nice. No reason not to, I guess, even though I've been backtracking myself through the south of France. I thought I'd stop there on my way to Italy. I awkwardly got on the train, getting my guitar wedged horizontally between my body and the door opening. I am always getting caught in doors with it, like that scene in ‘The Sound of Music’ when Maria von Trapp takes the bus to go to her position as governess, all nervous about her new life’s direction. We have a lot in common, old Maria and me.The train followed the Mediterranean coastline eastward. Farmers were out in the fields burning waste and the air was hazy and mellow in rheumy sun. Fields and vineyards became craggy rocks rising from the sea, dotted with villas. The soil changed from chalky white to brick red as the train moved east, terrain getting rougher. On the left side I saw dry hills and on the right, flashes of the Mediterranean Sea below. Nice’s old large and rectangular, was full of rowers, sailors and freighters. After wandering around the town, I walked along the breakwater and gazed out over lapis. The sun broke through cloud at times in long shafts of hazy light illuminating one spot of sea, then disappearing before finding another spot to transmute into sparkles of molten gold. Like a finger from heaven. I got one of those jumps in my heart. I tried to absorb the image, eyes closed, holding it as a memory. Ever since I was a kid. Another ‘golden second’. I wish I could find some way to express the joyous pain I feel at such beauty but I’m no artist. No poet either. A reader of other people’s words. A player of other people’s songs.
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