Dress me like a clown.

But seeing as I am a hopelessly devoted lover, read: I get attached and can't tell an abusive situation when it, well, hits me in the face, I pine after her.  Of course I talk a big game about leaving her and truly starting over here in Salt Lake City, really make some forward motion on this Utah wine thing.  Those vines aren't planting themselves, are they?  All the while, my almost lover is on my mind.

So I begin to assimilate back into the real world.  I buy a car (ok, its a van), I begin the search for a house, and a few really good job opportunities crop up.  I begin to think, "wow, maybe this time I've done it.  I've left for good."  I tell everyone the news; Salt Lake City, my home! "Maybe this was a sign," I say.  "Perhaps it just took something like this to get me to actually chill out and stay for a while."

In walks the devil.  Isn't she so beautiful?

With the slightest of emails, the faintest glimmer of hope returns and I burn for her yet again.  We begin to see each other again, somewhat on the DL...I've told everyone we are through, my pride won't let me admit the fact.  Countless messages to the Binner family (even Audrey's sister chimed in on occasion) finally pay off and they agree to sponsor me.  'On s'occupe des papiers,' is easily the greatest French phrase I've ever read.  This is a bombshell.  This absolutely does not happen every day.  I can count on one hand the number of American citizens I've heard of getting sponsored by a French company...esp in the last few years.  Even still, they're typically highly trained, expert-type medical researchers and IT specialists.  So I'll put on the silly costume, big shoes, red nose, face paint and do the France dance again.  Love is a funny thing, isn't it?

On again.

I'll take her back a thousand times.  The sad and beautiful truth.  I think of peering out over the vines, over the rooftops, the steeples, and setting eyes on the Rhine.  It absolutely kills me and I am no one else's but hers.

"It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are."
- Marguerite Duras (The Lover)