Paris, city of my roots
Paris, I hated you without even knowing you.
Paris, I had heard terrible things about you. I imagined you stacking your residents in tall, cold buildings. The sad little girl I was left her suburban house and her residential neighborhood shouting out to her parents “I will never live in these rabbit cages!“. Paris, I misjudged you.
Paris, you taught me freedom.
The road to school jammed with people, the streets teeming with life, frightened me less than the overflowing buses in which I could hardly see what stop we were at. By walk, I learned to examine you slowly, to tame you at my own pace. You taught me autonomy, self-confidence, and the pleasure of taking detours after class. Then, one day, even to transgress my Mom’s rules. To skip class, to get back home late, to go beyond the limits, because nearby was the cinema and the park.
Paris, you showed me the color palette of the world.
The multitude. The cultures, the faces, the languages, the horizons that intermingle, mingle, and disentangle. In your body have settled citizens of the globe. They have shaped you with their flavors, their music, and their differences. They have nourished you with their hopes, their stories, and their cooking. They have enlightened you with their knowledge and their history. Paris, cradle of all hopes.
Paris, you frighten me.
I’m never totally peaceful when I walk down your streets. Sometimes, I feel suffocated, fragile, very small; even worse, I feel in danger, watched, or followed. Paris, you are one of the least reassuring towns in which I’ve lived. It hurts me to say it. It makes me angry too. How is it possible not to feel safe as a woman in my own country, in my own city? Paris, I gripped onto my bag, I hid my phone, I pulled on my skirt, I cried for wandering hands, and I fled under insults.
Paris, with your thousand marvels.
You lighten up and seduce me. Pretentious. Graceful. Impertinent. You shine thanks to many beauties built in your honor by the hands of men. The whole world is watching you sparkle. Paris, the talents of the world, the splendors of old time, and those of today. Your lighthouse, attired in its metal dress, illuminates the path while replacing the stars in the sky that you hide away. Paris, city of light.
Paris, imperfect, contrasted, savage, insolent.
Paris, your pain, your darkness, and your violence. Paris, you mostly lack harmony. You have to be well grounded to live within you without getting caught up by your polarities. Finding balance inside while life tilts, backs off, and disarticulates. Paris, bipolar. Either too much, or too little. Your revolutions have left blood on the pavement and the bitter taste of a pernicious daily life.
Paris, the incredible people who swarm in your belly, and which the rest of the world doesn’t seems to recognize.
Paris, tinged with prejudice, we have to meet your children to be able to accept you. These children — young and old — have kept their inner light that your gildings reflect. You make me vibrate with love and pride, because quite unexpectedly, it’s in your arms that I met most of my soul mates. Paris inhabited by heat.
Paris, you’ve seen me grow up.
You saw me beat the asphalt with my angry feet. Paris, you gave me a hard time, you tarnished me, and you lost me. You’ve seen me cry, and love. You didn’t really help me find myself. Paris, I miss you each time I go live somewhere else. Paris, you are my child, amazed and revolted. You are the pain that lodges in my adolescent’s heart. You are the courage and audacity of this young woman I became who has decided to leave you, like a lover who has been loved and hated. Paris, you are my pillar, you are my family, you are my friends, those who stayed, those who are gone.
Paris, you have carved me out of your ambition, your madness, and your aspiration for greatness.
Paris, you taught me elegance, taste for good and beautiful things, tortuous thoughts, and convoluted words. You gave me these visions from elsewhere to reach out and get everything you couldn’t teach me. Gratefully, the modesty of Lyon, the altruism of Byron Bay, the mind-opening of Melbourne, the harmony of Wanaka, the friendliness of Quebec, the let go of Ubud, the simplicity of Noumea, came in my life to help me become a better person.
Paris, thanks for everything you gave me. Paris, the roots that grow in my bowels. My starting point.
Globe trotter and author of the book “Hémisphères en mouvement”, traveling is for me a meaning and identity journey, an initiation to awareness and transformation. Go for an inner trip !
I also create and animate workshops that combine collective and emotional intelligences in order to discover different aspects of your potential.
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