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A bientôt, Paris! I made it back to the pier in Chelsea this morning feeling drowsy yet happy and with clarity. Yes, I had to run from my last Parisian abode in Montmartre to Gare du Nord with a massive suitcase, a heavy backpack, a handbag, a stick umbrella and a box of gallete de roi less than an hour before my Eurostar departure, having tried to get an Uber a few times to no avail, thanks to some running competition on my route, but I was so certain things were going to be alright, more than alright.

Things have been more than alright, Paris; things have been magical! My generous hosts and friends in Nation looked after me wonderfully while I was staying there—I was not only taken care of, with delicious homemade food and fulfilling conversations in their beautiful Haussmannian apartment, but also allowed the space so I could write and the freedom to go out until late so that I had something to write. For this, I am most grateful and enormously moved.

In the end, I got to go to La Coupole’s monthly Paris Follies night and dressed up as a single princess and wearing a crown again (this time Russian for the Slavic night); see a burlesque performance with my beautiful and quirky show girls; sit at cafés with old and new friends for a couple of drinks; go to friends’ Indonesian restaurants for specially-reserved meals; infiltrate a furniture brand cocktail party in Saint Germain des Près; pretend to be an interior designer for a few hours at Maison & Objet exhibition in Villepinte to get shiny catalogues and totes and practice my acting; and enjoy a jazz show at Le Bal Blomet as a special invite by my talented pianist friend Bastien. I even got recognised—as a poet not a millionaire, yet—by an Indonesian bookshop owner, who is currently studying at La Sorbonne, while I went to a restaurant by myself.

In the end, I got to drink red wine—I’m fussier with white—alone, making notes on my smart Moleskine papers, or reading in the middle of people-watching. In the end, I got to walk Parisian streets, a lot of Parisian streets, alone, in the heart-warmingly mild January weather that I didn’t get a chance to wear tights under my skirts and dresses when I wasn’t wearing my baggy jeans, breathing in the love and stories available to me, exhaling my doubts, sometimes buying second hand books and always catching flash invaders. In the end, I didn’t skip a single running day, or writing day.

A decade has passed since Imagined Paris’ first love letter, yet some people still ask ‘why Paris?’ and I could never respond with more than ‘because I was reborn in Paris’, ‘because I feel at home in Paris’ or ‘because most of my friends are in Paris’, but as salty water went upstream into my eyes from inhaling traces of my soul back in my solitary Parisian walks, I can now say: in the end, I have a physical place I can call home. And that is huge because, though it was noble and all to call my heart a home, my heart doesn’t mind letting her hair down every so often; my heart doesn’t mind simply existing, without the burden of providing freedom and joy, because freedom and joy are given when she’s in Paris. Because in Paris, she is fully open.

I now feel so embraced while embracing all my Parisian phases—the ‘young and abandoned’ Dina, the ‘unhappily-married’ Dina, the ‘reborn and rebellious’ Dina, the ‘single and not on the dating apps’ Dina, the ‘insatiable Londoner girlfriend’ Dina, and the current phase I haven’t got a label for yet.

The ‘current phase’ Dina is untethered, free. She is so free she isn’t afraid of opening the old band-aid slowly, airing the wounds and redressing and healing them by giving them a voice, a few hundred words at a time. She is so free she gives herself permission to be soft and to breathe and walk slowly as if not having a purpose, because the purpose is to be free—the purpose is done and it’s time to live it and keep on becoming because of it. To the ‘current phase’ Dina, home is where freedom is, and she feels most free in Paris. She can call Paris her home—a physical, emotional and metaphysical home. I’m home, at last!

londres, le 18 janvier 2026

je t’embrasse!

d.o.