(listen to the podcast ici!)
Pressure’s off, Paris. There has never been any. Pressure’s off. To be there with you fully or to be here in London mostly – I travel around a lot anyway. Pressure’s off because I can do whatever I want – always have been able to – anyway, not because I always have the resources before I make a decision, but because I am brave enough to take the risks, every single time, and I will only be brave enough when it feels right to me – yup: I’m an emotional being, intensely so.
I’ve been trying to be reasonable looking for ways to make my time with you sustainable. Why does it have to be sustainable? One of the answers is probably because changes are scary (even scarier than Barbès metro station at late hours), and one tends to want to stay where one has made oneself comfortable, as it usually takes a lot already to finally feel comfortable somewhere (even if that somewhere is not Barbès metro station).
Am I even comfortable already? I’m fine. I feel fine not knowing what the final result will be, and what is a final result anyway? There will always be changes (as the Northern line commuters would say), that much I can predict, as there have been a lot of changes in my life even just in the recent year. And changes are always scary, even if they, usually, lead to better things, as they have been in my case (unlike in the Northern line case). There were probably a couple of occasions where I looked back and thought: “if only I did that instead of what I did…” But those days are long gone now, I don’t have time for regrets: today is exciting, with its changes and challenges, with going through them as my reward.
Today, it doesn’t feel right, yet, to decide to be there with you fully. My life has been bigger than you, with all these running around and being pulled in all sorts of directions, even before I added you back in the equation. I used to be anxious to death waiting for something to happen when I was much younger in the town where I was born, and since I left there, I have been moving around constantly.
Things have been happening, to me and for me. I used to dream of simply having a home with a dining table, where everyone would gather and share their love over meals, but my dining table has been in different houses, different restaurants in different parts of the world for many years now, and it’s time to recognise its powers: it is flexible and adaptable, and it is primed for serving wonderful food.
Sometimes I feel that you would be too small to contain my restless mind, Paris, with your walkable size, famous landmarks and so many people I know who know each other, yet I know the world might be too big for my fragile heart which never bends. Sometimes I suffer random homesickness for the sheer fact that I don’t know where home is (in this sense, I am already living a more bohemian life than Parisian artists – some of them anyway, we don’t want a manifestation. Just kidding, artists don’t protest anymore).
The kids are big now and they’re used to witnessing all the changes happening in my life over the years and with all these changes they have come to realise that, although we are in three different places most of the time, although the rest of the world has misunderstood us (but mostly me), it has been love that binds us together and brings us closer and closer. It is time for me to accept that love is my dining table, and it is flexible and adaptable, and it is primed for serving wonderful food. And my dining table is sturdy and extendable, Paris; it can contain you, doesn’t matter where life takes me. Come what may, madame est servie!
londres, le 25 mai 2025
je t’embrasse!
–d.o.
Imagined Paris 