listen to the podcast ici!
Three days until I’m with you again, Paris.
I want to talk to you about waves. Not only the ones that came and went rocking the boat my friends let me use on the Thames for a few days last week, and test, or rather train, my balance, which I got used to rather fast. I want to talk to you about the other waves too, and how at times I am soothed by them like a baby, other times they turn my stomach upside down and make me feel dizzy. So dizzy beyond my determination, though my determination could keep me standing – at times.
I wasn’t aware of the waves while swimming in the Seine this summer; I knew it was a long way down from where I was floating, but it didn’t make me shiver either.
It’s always when I’m out of you that I feel this way – carrying waves inside of me and constantly trying to settle them, to settle myself. Without a destination, without a solid plan – are you it? Or is ‘it’ just me? With the visa requirements (Fuck Brexit!) I don’t know if I can have you soon enough, but do I have me? Ah, the waves are at it again, asking me to feel comfortable with the uncomfortable question. Though the answer is ultimately ‘yes!’ the waves follow still.
But why do I quiver? Waves aren’t something unfamiliar to me. I took a midnight ferry leaving my hometown 23 years ago, with a bag full of dreams, uncertainty and tomorrow’s lunch only. I wasn’t chasing a man; I wasn’t chasing money, and suspiciously I was already famous in the country. I was only hoping to find myself and feel at home, and make a few hundred thousand rupiahs from publishing poems in Indonesian national newspapers every so often to survive the big city of Jakarta though, believe it or not, Paris was already my dream then – the French romantic conversational pocket book I read for free after school in a Gramedia bookstore in Lampung was my distressed witness.
A year later, waves of confusion from my sister’s death took me to another city. A year after that came waves of motherhood when I was barely twenty: the biggest of waves – and the best.
Waves after waves, and ones I couldn’t possibly ride simply because I created them for myself, and everyone around me, have come and gone. And here I am: about to move out of my beautiful flat in Wimbledon days before my 41st birthday, with no forwarding address and too many vague plans including a Paris event planning venture – simply because I’m that good with people, without current reliable income or hefty savings except for a couple of flats with mortgages; having to remove my blooming vintage corner because the main shop is closing down, and all I want to do is talk about waves.
There I said it, and I feel less queasy already. My friend who owns the boat told me recently that if I felt woozy from the waves, it would be better to go upstairs and out to look at the water and align my mind with the waves – I think she’s on to something here.
Don’t I have you, Paris – and two cool, independent and loving kids who are bizarrely proud of their dizzy mother; a silly boyfriend who is supportive of all my giddy dreams and whims; and a few good friends who have witnessed my waves old and new and still dare believe in me? And when all other plans fail, does it matter when I still have me – with all my waves?
sherborne, le 31 aout 2025
je t’embrasse!
d.o.
Imagined Paris 