No, not the painter Nicolas Saulnier, also known as Blase, who spends a lot of time finding classical old paintings and then adds modern and surprising elements in an identical pictorial style - see here.
The blasé I want to explain is the feeling of indifference that comes from overdulgence in the same thing, such as losing the sense and the sight of just what a privilege and blessing it is to live at "Riverbend".
While we still ran our little "Riverbend Cottage", the ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing - not to mention the wow-ing - of our dozen-or-so guests every year stopped up from losing sight of just how privileged we are.
Some two years ago, our last guests, a feral couple from the big smoke who turned our hospitality into hostility, made us remove the 'VACANT' sign and we've been enjoying our privacy ever since. However, without the guests' constant ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing, I had become a little blasé and it required a trip to Sydney to open my eyes again to the beauty/tranquillity/serenity* (*you take your pick!) of "Riverbend".
In fact, I already felt like jumping off the bus as it drove into Sydney in between those several-metre-high concrete barriers. They were a futile attempt to keep the noise and visual pollution from those misguided homeowners who had built or bought there years ago when the traffic may have been less noisy, less polluting, and less bumper-to-bumper.
What a contrast to "Riverbend" where the only truck coming down the lane is Friday morning's garbage truck, and the only car the mailman's (and I've pretty much stopped him by renting a mailbox in town!)
In 1992, "Riverbend" had been advertised as a true retreat which meant nothing to me then, but it's coming into its own now as I retreat from a world that is too much in-your-face and no longer much to my liking.
Blasé no more!
