La Muse

I am currently staying in the South of France for three weeks for the purpose of writing. However, I am not writing. Instead, I am reading, napping, and eating way too much bread and cheese.

I am land-locked in the small town of Labastide Esparbairenque, which is 1.5 hours from Toulouse and 30 minutes from Carcassonne. During the day I open my windows to let some warmth in (the house is from the 12th? century and holds the cold very well), and end up killing various kinds of insects that find their way into my room. Once a week I am driven to Carcassonne to wander around and buy groceries. Then it's back to my room at La Muse, which is a nice room -- spacious and tiled -- but not a room that I am managing to write in.

In fact, here is my sitting room:

It's odd, how I avoid writing. At home, I write because I have to, for school mainly, and I have a small amount of time that I can schedule in that writing. But here, I am choking on free time, and still, I avoid writing. My head occupies different space over here, and I find myself thinking about different things or nothing at all. I came with the goal of writing more Russia poems, which was a large chunk of my thesis. There were holes in the story though, so I've been trying to fill in the holes to complete a manuscript that will hopefully become a chapbook. Turns out, I write worse when I'm in France. Go figure.

Anyway, here is the view from my sitting room:

Now that right there, that is beautiful.