Merigoesaround

This American proverb hanging from a kitchen fluorescent light bulb in a friend's house might be the best driver to live happily ever after. Don't blame yourself, don't blame others, things happen for a reason. All things. You didn't get that job. It had to happen. You found prince charming. It had to happen. You haven't yet. It will happen when it has to. This weekend we spent time with a new guru, a person I rediscovered, the eclectic kind of guru. We hit the Swiss slopes close to where he lives, we hit them so hard that boyfriend husband damaged his elbow badly. We ate immense amounts of cheese, rolled in the snow after sauna, inhaled as much fresh air as possible, and rediscovered the streets and the cafes of Geneva, a tiny elegant welcoming town that according to Borges is a place favoring happy lives . I tell Borges that the best place to visit is home. This weekend I saw small and big pictures of life.

Two nights ago a sophisticated, extremely cultured, lovely person who might become a good friend revealed to me a secret probably too secret for sharing with an stranger: "when I make love in a language that is not my native one it is never the same", he said. The funny part is that my potential friend is trilingual. So, or he gets lots of pleasure, or he is lost in translation. Maybe I am too. This blog should be about development economics and not dictionary ergonomics. But, multilingual couples of the world, speak out...I am listening.

My friend the ex-corporate-guy-now-converted-into-photographer is really good at his new occupation. He dreamt once of becoming a photographer, of expressing right out of his gut what he had inside after life gave him a kick off straight into his heart. He is succeeding. And recovering. He is so good that I want a picture with him very soon, this guy has a lot inside. Beyond all this free February love, let me explain his occupation. He takes pictures of pain. Not a very good way to relieve his, indeed. He does development porn, an irreverently ironic term that does not give credit to so many dozens of photographers around the world telling us what is beyond the Galerie Lafayette in Paris. So my friend the photographer is as good as having one of his pictures shown in the huge publicity banners of the Parisian metro. It was almost like a dream. I took line 9, my daily commute...and when I got to "Bonne Nouvelle" (literally, Good News) metro stop there she was, one of his Viet...