I’ve been in France for a little over two months now, and of the many memories that this trip has added to my life, one stands out very vividly for me.

It was during this memory, that I met a man named Swan.

The day started with a trip to Toulon where, while swimming in the Mediterranean Ocean, I somehow crossed paths with two English speaking acrobats (there to perform as part of the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series).  I was so excited to hear English being spoken, that I swam over to them and introduced myself. The three of us treaded water and exchanged stories as we watched several men in rollerblades catapulting themselves off a dock into the water.

Back on the shore, just as their troop was getting ready to leave, I asked if I could join them wherever they were going, because:

“I know no one else here.”

To which the handsome British acrobat said, with an apologetic hunching of his shoulders:

 “No.”

But only because they were on their way to eat at the ‘performers only tent’, and then afterwards would be warming up for their show. And so I waved my hand in a ‘no big deal’ fashion, and then returned to my towel, admittedly, embarrassed.

I eventually got over it, and later in the day started wandering around Toulon looking for a place to eat on a Sunday. This brought me to a pub, where I met a man with short buzzed off hair and a trepidatious swagger, who took it upon himself to act as my tour guide and led me around the corner to a place which he assured me made the best kebabs.

We sat down together at a table outside as I waited for my food, and where he told me, uneasily, “I’m schizophrenic.”

Although his admission startled me, I could hear behind his words another question, being: ‘can I still sit with you?’ So I smiled at him, shrugged one shoulder.

“Doesn’t make any difference to me.”

We talked for over an hour. I was touched by how quickly a store of emotion rose to his eyes; how quickly he trusted me, a complete stranger.

His name was Swan…

and as I asked him question after question, he leaned against the table, often tipping it at a steep angle (without seeming to realize it) so that I began keeping an anchoring hand on my plate of food at all times. Once, without a word to me, he abruptly leapt up from the table and ran away from the restaurant, only to return moments later with a packet of cigarettes.

For most of the conversation, Swan did most of the talking, as encouraged by me. I prefer to be the listener. But, to my discomfort, he turned the conversation around at this point, and asked me a question with a surprising amount of urgency in his voice:

“Why are you here?”

I gave him an answer, a vulnerable answer I thought: “I needed to escape.” But he wasn’t satisfied. “I came here to die in some ways, so I could come back to life.” He still wasn’t satisfied. “I don’t know why I came here,” I said.

Because here I am in the South of France away from all of my friends, most of my belongings sold and given away (still can’t believe I did that), learning a second language… and I thought I must have done all this for some grand reason like death or life. Something that was bigger than me, pulling me; not my responsibility. I thought and hoped that I would be taken care of in some magical way, and in a lot of ways (to be honest) I have been.

But I also hoped that my months here would momentously lead me towards a cacophony of clarity, and that, with something similar to the frantically unconscious effort which brought me here, I would experience a transformation that would completely upend my life.

Oh, the pull of transformation. Point A to Point B.

There’s something inside of me that wants the completed version of this experience so badly it hurts. So badly do I want the things that I believe that I can’t have…

But I find myself wondering now if there’s a stage in the transformative process which precedes us; where although we have actually transformed, we don’t yet realize that this is the case.

How differently does the soul which inhabits the same caterpillar and butterfly see?

What is required of us to embrace change as it happens, instead of always talking about where we came from… Do butterflies consistently remind one another ‘we didn’t always look like this’… and if they do, does their memory of where they came from add or take away from the beauty that they now so effortlessly dance with…

“I think you came here to be free,” Swan says to me.

If he’s right, and this is the case, then maybe what I want to be free from is the pull of the perfect story which I often try so effortfully to live; a story which I believe doesn’t include the one I’m living now.

Our ability to see is such a strong and all encompassing sense, and I think it’s easy to think of our individual worlds as nothing more than all that surrounds us in front of our bodies. But when I caught a glimpse of my back in the reflection of the mirror behind the mirror I was looking into one morning, I remembered, sharply, that I am more than just a reflection… and that although I only ever see myself in glass surfaces and captured memories, that I’m actually here now. I’m real.

Also, even if I don’t deliberately try to, through memory I become bigger (although perhaps not more alive) than I am… as is true of all of us. Our stories widening, and becoming fuller with every passing day. A world of stories; a world of growing stories.

Our whole lives, in so many ways, being no more (and no less) than one second of an evolution that not one of us can hide from.

Our second, in even more ways, is, and can be, an eternity.

Ultimately, regardless of whether I’m willing to see it or not, there is space for me in this world.

There is space for my love and my embarrassment. There is space for my successes and my failures. There is space for my wings, if I choose to open them.

But if I do choose to open them, the only place I can do that in, is now… in my second.

Meaning… although maybe there is a part of transformation that lies in the questioning, maybe there’s also another more powerful part that lies in decision. Because there must, and has to be, a part of transformation that isn’t metaphysical, but that is alive and complete, with all of the imperfections and idiosyncrasies that being alive in the way that we are entails.

For if I wasn’t alive, I wouldn’t have been turned down by the English acrobats, and I wouldn’t have met Swan. These stories so different, and yet so linked to who I am now. These people so obviously apart of my past, and yet also so inevitably apart of my future.

As France will be at some point, for I won’t be here forever. But for now, I am here.

And with all of this, I think that what I most want to say is this:

Maybe it’s less important that the stories and the transformations we live through ‘mean something’ and more important that we simply find the courage to enjoy them.

Featured artwork by Eva Lewarne: ‘Listening to Blossoms’

Eva Lewarne was born in Poland and came to Canada after completing high school. In Canada she attended U of T, then OCAD, majoring in Fine Art. Her last body of work Enigma and Illusion are influenced by her many years of meditation practice in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism.

Learn more about her paintings: www.evalewarne.com
and photography: www.evalew.com