summer has broken

i’m ready to go home.

the university campus has emptied, my co-workers are vacationing and even the city of Paris itself seems to be away on break. there are less people on the metro at any time of day. the streets are calm. the people who remain are dragging because it seems they’d rather be elsewhere, perhaps Marseille, enjoying their parasols on the beach.

this trip has been everything that cannot be expressed in one or two sentences. i am  extremely grateful for everything that has taken place since january. for every traveling opportunity that i had, for the people i met along the way, from restaurant servers to that American student i met at a housewarming party one evening and spoke to for a grand total of 49 minutes about gender roles in the shifting world of academic standards.

i keep wanting to write a post that summarizes what this has all meant to me, how i’ve changed and what i will carry forward. but i feel this, in actuality, will take months to unravel and years to really process, just as it did when i went abroad in highschool and came back and began to understand its impact.

i anticipate a culture shock of some kind. i welcome the political climate i am about to wade into. i am looking forward to returning to new york and confronting those things that used to agrivate and confound me, sometimes even frighten me and this time to talk with them, to sort out my former issues and to carve a new path wielding the blade of the experiences i’ve been granted.

i have 3 days left in Paris, 7 days left in France, 8 until i go home for the first time in a year, 18 until i see my beloved… and i guess you could say i’m counting down. it feels tedious to do this, but this is what people do when they can no longer wait. they make the wait a little bit more bearable by sectioning it into perfect, succinct units that are rational and logical and that are indisputable. every morning i wake up and those numbers get smaller and i feel if that is my only accomplishment for the day, i have achieved something.

until i return, i am giving thanks for the time i’ve spent with the beautiful people i’ve met in this city. i am indulging in coffee dates and picnics in the park listening to ethno-jazz and drinking champagne to my last week in the country of wine and cheese, knowing full well it has offered me so much more than just that.

i want to identify just what that is, but it’s all a mess of hues and shading and two-toned dialogues and sloppy mornings and luscious nights and feasting and living and loving and being.

for now, i take notes in scrawl so tiny and loopy, it may only be distinguisable to me. soon, i will translate those scrawls and weave them into a tale. if that tale takes a year to spin, so be it. perspective frees the chaotic mind.