Of Sheep and Men

I’m not the only one who’s uneasy about life’s lack of coherence. I’m currently reading “D’où viens-tu berger?” by Mathyas Lefebure.

Mathyas was a young, successful, wealthy advertising executive in an agency called Cossette, in Montreal. I happen to know it well. I’ve worked in film advertising for years. I know some of this man’s colleagues. Advertising uses a mother lore of often young, very creative and extremely brilliant people. There lies the paradox. They are way too brilliant not to be struck by the futility of their work. It’s an awareness they all have, and some deal with it better than others.

Mathyas decided to give it all up and become a sheep shepherd in Southern France. The book tells of his experience.
It rings many bells for me. I know exactly the milieu and lifestyle he gave up. But I also grew up in Provence. Let’s say I can relate to both where he came from and where he went.
Johnny Depp, who chooses to live in France, often says that North-Americans have forgotten how to live. Indeed, life in Europe is on another beat and in small villages, it’s another planet altogether.

There’s also the fact that my father had this lifelong fantasy of giving it all up and becoming a shepherd, exactly like Mathyas did. My father was a dreamer and this lifestyle was his Utopia. It took me years to realize that he was dreaming out loud, and that the dreams themselves were fulfilling enough to sustain him. It wasn’t about doing it. It was about dreaming about it, and polishing the dream like a well-loved object.
I waited for years for us to move to a small village so I could go to the market, riding a small donkey, to the Saturday morning fair. I believed every bit of it. When I finally stopped believing, in my teens, I grew older.

I remember a time, back in France, when people sat around a table and talked at leisure. People sat in the bistros and talked. I see myself sitting at a café, on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix, watching people strolling by, and being more entertained by their variety, and personalities, and idiosyncrasies then by a 50 million Hollywood action movie.
This capacity to take the time to savor the moment and the beauty around you, I once knew it, once had it. Here, I cannot conjure it back.
Being torn between worlds is not so bad. But I’m still waiting for coherence.

Watching and waiting…for what?
I hear echoes of bleating, rusted neck bells, and crickets’ song in dry grass.