(listen to the podcast ici!)

Bonjour, Paris!

Today I feel free. I have been walking with myself for the last few days and today I walk like someone in love. Little dances that I predicted last week have been translated into something more profound and more aligned with who I am, that is tears of joy.

For the past few days, I have been walking with myself and trying to soothe her, but I know now she doesn’t need soothing. She is always there; she is everything that I have become and I just need to go where she is and walk with her, with myself. Always. Focused. Deliberate. Until it becomes automatic, and still, I will focus on deliberately walking with her, wearing the same fabulous designer vibes, on the same ground, or water – I’m living on a boat in Chelsea, for Charlie’s sake! Who’s Charlie?

If I tripped, Paris, I want you to know that it wasn’t the kir royale, nor it was the old fashioned; it wasn’t the cobblestone streets where my Parisian home belongs; it was me straying from her, from our common ground, from everything that I want; it was me being distracted by things I don’t want and trying so hard to turn them into everything that I want.

Today, I understand why it didn’t take long to feel this way again—free, in love, clear. If anything, it should have been instantaneous, once I reached her within. It’s reaching her that I, perhaps, was out of practice at. Only slightly, fortunately.

Now bring in the morning coffee! With soy milk if you have, otherwise un double espresso ça marche merveilleusement! I have been running every single day come rain or shine for the last two days (and it’s been sunny everyday), even exceeding my goals of five minutes each time (woohoo!); I have finally finished translating all the poems in my old book published over 20 years ago for bilingual re-publication and I realised that I had written down this path with self a long time ago yet I can only understand it now; and I want you, Paris! I want her and I want you too, and I know I can have tout! You are part of what she’s become: Parisian partout!

I came back to you after years over a year ago, Paris, just before I turned 40. I came back to you with myself. I called it ‘walking down the old path with my new self’. I had left behind everything and everyone that had pulled me away from her over the years and I was so sure of myself I wasn’t looking for anything or anyone else. I was free. Approaching 40 and it was the first time that I felt that my life belonged to me and me only; that my life was in my hands—no! Closer! Closer than my neck veins: my life was within me. I was in love with myself, with all that I had become.

I’m grateful to have been exposed to things I don’t want that I felt a strong push toward everything that I want, Paris. That journey showed a further path that was still in the dark before, a broader landscape that I couldn’t see this clearly before: a new vantage point. That journey is done, and what a beautiful one it was—merci!

Today I feel free. I have changed the logo for Imagined Paris and Imagined Paris Podcast using an image of me in Paris from October last year, with a cigarette in hand for a cinematic effect, taken by an Indonesian friend with my daughter’s vintage digital camera for an untouched effect, and this is me succeeding in making this, instead of a bi-weekly, a weekly podcast.

I am in love, and this time it is unconditionally!

Let’s try again, shall we? Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire? C’est une reprise!

je suis toujours là, le 14 decembre 2025

je t’embrasse!

d.o.