Île de la Cité from the Pont des Arts

[From my journal, in the end of May, in response to this]
Well, here I am, listening to the river. I'm on the Pont des Arts because, whether or not it's cliche, it's my favorite bridge in Paris. (Then again, loving Paris itself can be a cliche, can't it? So it's alright.)
It's definitely the most welcoming bridge in this old town of mine.

I like that no matter when you come here, someone will be playing the guitar and someone else will be drinking wine in glasses with their friends, and Japanese tourists will be waving up at you from below as they spend their first day in Paris on an "informative boat ride."
I like the ugly padlocks that cover the grilles, fiercely affirming that Claire and Jerome will equal <3 4 ever, because it is clamped publicly,
just within view of the Eiffel Tower (if the Eiffel Tower stands on its tip-toes).
I like that I can see the Seine just as it decides to fork, making way for the Île de la Cité, and giving a peak of Notre Dame at Paris' heart.
I like the memories I have on this bridge, like Wednesday night drinks and smokes (them, not me) with nice but insistent french men, or the guy who knelt in front of me, politely said "vous êtes magnifique,"and then went on his merry French way without a backward glance.
But what is the river telling me, you ask? Well, that's between me and the river. But I'll tell you some of what I hear:

Stilettos, church bells, and a whistle.

Garbage bag rustling.

Oh no, now I'm distracted by how good the sun feels on my legs.

French, German. (The sun feels amazing!)

Little kids laughing, Arabic, stroller.

Americans (they're loud).

Rollerskates... a sort of late afternoon hum...

Bus.
Boat.
French.
Wind.
Vent.

So how does this translate? It's telling me that I came here with a heavy heart and some desperate hopes of escape and reinvention. But I'm not Sabrina.

No, no. I'm trying to grow my hair out and my french still isn't that good.

I haven't acquired a poodle or much of a lilting, monochrome walk, and I still look very much like me, with a few more zits and maybe a few extra pastry pounds. Maybe I'm even starting to look a little bit like a pastry. (I am what I eat...or I eat, therefore I am. Something like that)

But I feel the effects of dipping my toes in a culture steeped in a love of beauty and a complicated past; something a little like myself, but foreign enough that I've been so confused and uncomfortable on so many occasions that I've had to get to know myself better as a means of survival.

The river is telling me that I can run away to Paris but not from myself, and when it's time to leave it will be possible (it must be) to find beauty and healing and myself elsewhere. In Adam Gopnik's delightful Paris to the Moon (I highly recommend, even if you know/ care nothing about France), his wife Martha says as it's time to go home,

"In Paris we have a beautiful existence but not a full life, and in New York we have a full life but an unbeautiful existence."

I find comfort in this, realizing that my sun on the Pont des Arts is fast setting, and my time in Paris is waning like that moon it takes you to. But this beautiful existence has helped me begin to tentatively cross the bridge to the full life I want to have when reality picks me up at the airport.
And I'll never be able to repay the river for that.