Bonjour Paris. I'm doing everything I can to
be with you. I'm doing everything I can to be
with you without losing myself. In fact, I'm
doing everything I can to be with myself, which
I found in you, through you. You of all people
know how important myself, I mean this journey,
is. Strange dreams, twisted plots and unusual
plans I've been actively going through with main
character energy. And in the process, I've been
drinking all sorts of different coffees from
different households and cafes, like someone
who's too flexible to know what they want. But
I know what I want. And I know the type of coffee
I'm getting isn't usually the most important
thing in each occasion. It's the connection with
the people, the place, the moments that I want,
and thus the connection with myself. So, thank
you for the strong double espressos, as well
as excessively elongated coffees I ended up very
happily drinking. You know who you are, as I
know who I am. I'm writing this in the same room
as the first time I wrote to you for Imagined
Paris about a decade ago. My teenage daughter
is having a heavy cold and lying awake happily
next to me. This room now belongs to her. And
she had asked me recently to change it to look
as much as it did when I occupied it, more heavily
leading up to the divorce, after previously going
through a couple of different changes in wall
colours and furniture over the years. This room
doesn't belong to me anymore. And I am a happy
visitor to this room and to those years. My heart
feels heavy sometimes, these days, only because
the thought of freedom has been seemingly fast
approaching yet is still not there. Freedom from
things and places that do not align with the
life I wish to create. The only way I know to
lighten my heart these days is to let go of my
attachment to the outcome of the work I've been
doing and ask myself, what's the worst that could
happen? And I'll come up with the worst that
could happen and accept it. That and the mere
existence of my son, my daughter, and as a bonus,
my elongated and excessively supportive boyfriend.
And any god knows they don't merely exist. I
would say to everyone that I could see that life
already. I have walked it in the streets of Paris
where my heart felt so light, so open and so
touched for seemingly no obvious reasons. And
you've seen what I'm capable of with a heavy
heart. I'm doing everything I can to be with
that light, open and touched heart, Paris, at all
times. Where it all began. Le 28 septembre 2025.
je t 'embrasse.