4.18.2010

Paris, La Rive Gauche


This city...this city continues to haunt me.


Tonight I sit as a stranded passenger. The volcano in Iceland that's name I willl NEVER be able to pronounce, has cast its volcanic spew for so many miles and stopped air traffic for days. One week here already, and two more days before I may leave, at the earliest...stranded with 8 colleagues, and facing a planes, trains, and automobiles trip through Madrid on Friday if things don't improve. So tonight, this stranded passenger in what feels like her upteenth trip to Paris this year, sits from a room on a quiet street, Rue du Sommerard in the Quartier Latin, my favorite, but longing to be home.

So much has changed.

Three years ago, I left Lexington for the DC area as a girl longing to live an international life. Longing to live abroad, in Paris, specifically. I came to work for a French company, and only in the last five months began the deluge of transatlanticsm. I met the love of my life, the best friend and companion I could ever ask for, a Frenchman, but tonight in France - without him, I feel like this city is swallowing up my soul.

It seems it always happens, whenever I am here and alone. Today, as my routine here dictates, I sat on the left bank of the Seine. That same spot where I always return to, right where Notre Dame and the river meet. I soak up the spring air, and the smell of budding flowers, and smoke cigarettes while pondering my small existence. I feel sad, and alone, and am missing him.


I sit and am an awe again, to see lovers entwined, young, old, attached. The spirt of romance exudes without effort here, and it is here that I always wish to have the affection of a man. It's here on the river bank that I notice how inately cool even the oldest of Parisian women are. Their style so simple, so complex, and though they appear to be effortlessly beautiful, yet, I suspect it is all very much a contrived effort to appear flawless. The children play or sit quietly in their carriages, and the dogs walk as if nary a stranger be near. Friends gather for a leisurely lunch on the river bank a top a blanket with their pastries, bread, and bottle of red, and just lavish in the joie de vivre which is so pervasive here. This city fuels my fire within, but it scorches my soul with a consuming sadness for reasons I can't explain.

When I am alone here, it is easy to be reminded of how alone I am. I sit here in this city and I am romanced by the air, and seduced by the sound. I am surrounded by the envelope of lonliness that she holds me in. Tonight from this quiet street, I am sad and loathing everything I love about her. Tonight, I wish I could feel the electric energy that everyone else around me has found.

My sweet Paris. You and I are entangled in ways I cannot explain. You pull me in and spit me out. You feed me love and romance, and you make me yearn for a hand to hold. Once only wishing to be here, and now only wishing to return home.

To the Parisian who I left at home.

4.16.2010

Does this thing still work?

I have been yearning to come back to you - and still somehow unable to remember how to push that little publish button. So much has changed, so, so much. And yet I still look back and see the same girl from 2006 and 2007 who told her tales of love, woe and some bits of adventure. She sits in a very different place today, and life has taken her in a direction well different than she ever imagined. But she is the same.

She still misses you. She still longs for you. She still needs you.

I think she's ready to return...