Tignes, France

I understand now why people say the mountain air is healing. Stepping foot off the train I immediately felt cleansed, but the remnants are still sticking to me. The unfamiliarly of every aspect of this atmosphere making me feel like a dried up fish out of water, too soon after being a fish out of water in an unforgiving place.

So here I sit, in the hotel lobby past midnight with a glass of white wine, long past everyone has gone to sleep with my laptop so I can feel something familiar. Sitting cross-legged with my fingers on the keys, trying to find the right words to express the chaos that is another day of existence.

Thinking I could be a hotel night manager, people at night are something different, reduced to their basic more needly selves, and you can have grace, like the man who poured this drink. His manner was calm all throughout even when interrupted by several impatient guests at the front desk demanding one thing or another.

Right now none of the answers are clear but I need something kind, and I think I’m somewhere kind now.

New people, I don’t know who they are, I try to let them unfold before me. I realize trying to categorize people to find where you can fit with them is a defense mechanism for self-protection and the categorization only in turn applies the same to you and prevents change.

Yet when people tell you who you are it is always intoxicating, whether it’s what you want to hear or not. If you ever want power over someone just tell them often who they are, they will lap up every word. But I don’t want to make people lap anymore, I don’t want power, I only want connection.

Still I don’t know what I’m doing here, a ski resort in the southeast of France having dinner with jetset strangers, or so they would like to have you think. But as I’ve said countless times I stopped keeping track. Is that just what happens past a certain point in life? You realize your delicately made plans don’t result despite your best intentions, and it’s all more out of your control than you could ever imagine? Ok, I know, who am I kidding, I never made plans and I’m still incapable. As long as there’s another hotel lobby for me to loiter and another kind stranger’s arms to feel around me occasionally, and if I’m lucky a good story, or hope of it — I can find a reason to wake up tomorrow.

The more people I meet the less self-perception I have. Perhaps this is the attraction to be a lifelong wander. Every person is a mirror, we all know, but what if they’re also something else? A portal? An opening perhaps, a tear in the fabric. Like Lee Miller’s photograph of the tear in the mesh leading to the desert landscape. We like to think of life as some development of steps and actions leading to reactions, but in reality it’s a never ending unfolding web that occurs every breath we take.

They’re all little tears from which we catch a glimpse of another world. Another self, another other. Another landscape not traversed. Another heart ungraspable. Another climate. Other words. Kinder words. More brutal words. Another world that cuts deeper. Maybe something permanent. Maybe something soft. Maybe something cruel. Maybe something hidden, only waiting for you to find it. When he looks at you from the other end of the table trying to figure you out, sizing you up to see if you’re worthy of an apple. But you’ve seen that look before so you look away casually. But some you haven’t. Another look is out there maybe, keep your eyes open — except for when you’re dreaming, in which case keep them tightly shut.

Image: “Apposite …” Portrait of Space by Lee Miller. Photograph: © Lee Miller Archives