Foreign Love Affairs

By Taegan F

The missed connections. The intense short lived burning passion. I’m not talking just about a romance with someone foreign with a different mother tongue, or the lingering eye contact you make with someone across a cafe as you have your daily croissant; as the eyes are the only way you can really communicate anyways. I mean the aching desire and longing love for olives that your motherland can’t even dare to replicate, the engulfing admiration for architecture that you pass by with every little step and grieve as you go to the next street, the next city, and the next country. I mean the playfulness of using a broken language with someone who laughs at your ignorance, the way the stars are slightly shifted in the sky, the grass that really is greener on the other side, the richness of an orange and the way its aroma bursts into the air, dosing you in its perfume as it fills your tummy. I mean all the knick’s and knacks you couldn’t justify buying but will always remain fond of, the unevenness of the roads - nurturing and massaging the bottoms of your feet as you walk 31,000 steps in a day, making sure you’re never sore. I mean all the strangers next to you on the planes and trains telling you their stories and never being able to know how they finish. I mean the intimacy between you and a moment that’s never been touched before, and that you can never recreate. I mean the desire bellowing in the air from cinnamon so sweet yet so smoky in a 2 euro latte, the heart throbs and swelling eyes as you stare at your favourite painters sketchbook displayed in a museum in the town he was born in, the tension between you and a stranger from who-knows-what country from the bunk below you in your hostel, the cheap bottles of wine that flush your cheeks and make the night rich. I mean devouring a pastry while sitting beneath a budding pomegranate tree and not paying any mind to the crumbs falling in your lap, being disconnected from your phone but feeling so connected to yourself and the world around you, the pilots bringing you down to Earth safely without even saying a word to them, the outfits you keep repeating because you packed light but really you just want to keep wearing, the flirting with your mind and ideas with the life that you could live if you left everything behind, the tease of endless possibilities and what if’s. I mean the love that oozes and drips out of anything you lay your attention on, the raw energy of simply experiencing and letting yourself go, the seduction of new things, places, things, sounds, and words. The captivation and allure a new place has on you like a new crush that you can’t stop thinking about, but stronger. It is an intense desire for living. Absolute reckless abandon like falling into somebody’s arms. But it so much more than that. The foreign love affair is about your life and mind reconstructing and turning it into perpetuating love making with the moment. It isn’t about a lover at all - you’re the lover. But truly only if you allow yourself to be, to see, to soak it all in, and be able to let it go so you can experience it over and over again, in all the different forms it will present itself to you. 

Taegan has been writing practically from the first time she held a pencil. By letting an unknown force take over, words, ideas, and inspirations flow on countless sheets of paper. By allowing this divine force in, not only do words appear, but her spirit grows, inspiring others to chase their dreams, follow their heart, and honour the discernment of the mind. A powerful feminine force, she honours the balance of all energies, making it her dharma to create and inspire harmony.