All alone in London. David left this morning for a plane home. It’s not as dramatic as I’m making it sound, he had always planned to leave a few days before me. He has a band coming to work with him this week. It’s just we have a habit of not wanting to deal with things until they are loud and glaring and tangible on the plates in front of us. So of course now that he has left, I am only just processing him leaving. And the great alone that is being in a country where you don’t have anyone of your own. It takes such immense bravery to be an immigrant. I guess, I’ve never really thought about that.
Especially a place where you aren’t a native speaker of the language. In Paris, we felt closer because we were united in the how isolated we were from other people, trying to distinguish which questions they were asking, or how to make the short and daunting French vowel sounds that were necessary to respond. I’m not complaining. Paris was wonderful. And we successfully made sight-seeing activities, which I find so cold and distant, intimate and individual and something we could call our own.
One of my favorite days of the trip was our last day. I was feeling sluggish and overwhelmed by being out of my shell for so long (I really am a cancer, a total homebody) and we stopped in Notre Dame (we’d also gone there our first full day). But instead of walking all around and marveling at the magnificent architecture and stained glass, we found a pew diagonal from some French children on a field trip and behind an old couple, and just sat in silence and prayed. With the small French voices, and the smell of old books, I felt completely at peace. It was nothing transcending or an epiphany of any sort, but I felt my muscles relax, my breath slow and my soul refresh. It was also the first and really only time I felt a physical connection to the city of Paris and its people.
Anyway, I’ll write more later. I’m off to the Tate Modern and then Oxford circus to shop!
