Wanderings

I wish I had pictures that could actually capture the sunrise of that first morning, with the red, pink and orange glimmers shimmering over the water like an Impressionist painting on one side of the bridge, and the light blue dusk on the other... a full moon hanging straight above the Eiffel Tower. 

I was jubilant and buzzing to be literally in my favorite place in the Universe, a place of so many memories... the hotel where my mother and I stayed for two weeks when I was nine years old, the park we visited every day... Pont Neuf, where the Seine splits into two directions, where the cafes of St. Germain, the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Pompidou, all the best of Paris waiting within walking distance. Of course, now, a week later, I am already jaded, and cold, and tired, and feel somewhat patronizing toward that self who was so bursting at the seams with childish excitement. 

But it was so satisfying to feel, for a moment, that feeling we have when we cross a border within ourselves, when we stumble upon a new frontier, when there has been a seismic shift in the day to day and there is the opportunity to go farther into, or from, the self we thought we were. I have been craving that feeling for a long time now; it's why I want to go to India, Mongolia, why I'm sad I already used up the wild card that was shaving my head. 

I felt that wonder for a fleeting moment at 5:30 am on Pont Neuf, with the sun on one side and the moon on the other, and me the only person on the bridge to see it. I hope it's not fully lost yet, even as I tread the paths I've walked before... and that it will find new ways to grow and blossom along my travels.