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Bonjour Paris,

Everything is beautiful today. I arrived back in the city the other night and everything has been beautiful to me. Yes, you welcomed me with three stems of summer flowers crushed on the steps at Chatelet metro station as if to remind me of everyone who walked all over my heart, but I’ve been feeling free and in love it actually made me smile in my pursuit to embrace the idea of every broken heart in the world mending itself through the world’s capacity to love – oneself and each other. In any case, you’re gonna need more than three stems for a more accurate depiction.

In any case, my heart isn’t a summer flower – how could it be when it’s so soft that it doesn’t break anymore? A river, it must be a river. My heart is a river, or at least a body of water, constantly flowing yet steady through changes, with new ripples subtly amplifying the joy of not only freedom but also love across it.

A subtle kind of touch yet constant, which creates these capillary waves inside my heart, has happened; an interaction with the wind, the subtle yet constant wind, has happened. No splash as when a rock is thrown like a punch, which my heart was used to; this is a dance, ou bien a kiss, between water and air. I’m not talking about astrology here – or am I? Venus in Scorpio here – does that explain how I romance?

Straight to working on the files of six Indonesian artists to be sent to the gallery for the next collective exhibition of DésFig (Déstructuralisme Figuratif) in October, I dragged Sandy out to the local bar last Friday night, after late supper at home, until even the patron who clearly adores me looked restless but could not get rid of us. We might have said a word or two to reassure him that we’d leave soon – as in by two am, but I wasn’t about to even shut my computer until all six artist folders were filled with the correct files. Unfortunately for that man, all six artists decided to be “creative” with the strict form format when filling in the forms with the details of their artworks so I had to recreate them one by one. Didn’t they know the exhibition is for their actual artworks and not their forms?

In any case, I was full of joy with sleepy Sandy and her sharp mind at my side and two Kiev mules – both mine – on my table. Instead of feeling the stress from the last-minute and strict deadline, I was smiling and even laughing about the cause for the extra work, unpaid work. Hang on, that’s obviously not true; the joy is the reward. I felt free and in love. I’ve been feeling free and in love and I’ve been feeling free to do what I love and these are pretty much the definition of wealth to me.

These feelings are everything, the means are irrelevant though I appreciate each and every one of it, like the summer evening’s walk and drinks along the river from Les Nautes to Notre Dame with my best friend Katie last night. Wait, how on earth did we end up arriving back at hers at three in the morning? Three bottles of crémant between the two of us could not explain it!

These feelings as the new ripples inside my heart have in turn touched my inner river over and over again and keep on creating new ripples of the same joy. My heart, my inner river, or at the very least my inner body of water, has been multiplying and amplifying the joy of freedom and love caused by the recent subtle yet constant touch, by the dance, ou bien the kiss, between my deep water and the air that is moving at the right speed.

My overthinking mind is pretty sure my analogy is pretty flawed, beautifully so, but what does it matter when I’m feeling free and in love, Paris? Anyway, off to rehearse my poetry reading – en français – with the pianist for tomorrow evening now.

May the kiss be long and the ripples constant.

paris, le 14 juin 2026

je t’embrasse !

d.o.