Paris on the mind

Today I awake to thoughts of the proximity of Paris, the steaming Gare du Nord and nearby Hauptbahnhoffs, choquettes in a bag each morning, Baden-Baden just a day trip, running along the Seine & the Thames, the novel pregnant for want of being in the places of my Oma, the sounds of Christ Church, British accents like honey in my earl grey, and seeing the look in the eyes of all the people I'm about to meet or sit across from or walk past or overhear.

Today  I awake and feel my first rush of what is about to be.  I am ready to go to Europe as of now.  & can't even believe this moment that I get to just be there embedded in it for the entirety of winter.  Eleven short days.  It's a bit like coming home.  That is, I feel like I'm packing to go home.  Clearing off old photos from the camera's memory sticks I gazed at photos of the last trip with Naya in Hechingen, Baden-Baden, Paris, Innsbruck, Rome, Sicily.  The stuff in the suitcases is making me starry-eyed to realize it is my stuff--Brunhild's watercolor sets from Berlin, the red leather journal from last time with half the pages left for this trip, six Woolf books with her apathetically passionate face staring out from my suitcase & Hardy beneath her, my umbrella with the Paris metro map printed across it (found at the Whitefish thrift store of all things), train tickets to Oxford, pillow cases, fineries, wool, passports, heels, my German & French study books...

I am many things, but this morning I feel like Brunhild's granddaughter coming home.  She never wanted to leave, but it seemed her best option at the time.  & now, going back to that ever-tugging continent seems  my best option at this very time.  & my sense of place shifts yet again.  Sigh.  This is a very beautiful life, wouldn't you say?