“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”
-Anita Desai

I never knew how much I wanted to see the world until I actually saw some of it. Now that I’ve seen what the world looks like beyond the periphery of my homeland, seeing every corner of it is one of my heart’s most earnest desires. 

Anaïs Nin said that writers get to experience life twice: once when they actually live it, and again when they write about it. So, consider this my way of experiencing the world twice. Last year I had the marvelous blessing of seeing some of Europe for the very first time. It was truly the most expansive experience of my life, to date. Even if I could cull all the most exquisite words in the English language and arrange them in the most beautiful patterns known to man, they wouldn’t be able to adequately convey the work of art that that little portion of my life was, but I will most certainly try.

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May 2, 2014, Midnight: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA to New York City, New York, USA

I am realizing that stars are not so very far away. I gaze out my airplane window, and there they are, greeting me, seemingly just as close to me as if I was lying underneath a tree, wondering how close I could get to its leaves. By all stretch of my feeble (in)capacity for reason, I can understand that these sentinels of the night, “silent and sure”, are still fathoms beyond my reach. But, tonight, I am closer to them than I have ever been and that is an awareness most defining. I have never before now really appreciated the allegedly inspiring adage, “Reach for the stars”. But lately so many beautiful things have fallen freely in my favor, that I have started to align myself with their workings. Being in their company tonight, being carried among them on my way to another beautiful expression of what it means to live expansively, I can now see why stars are so often used as the metaphorical conduit for our most impossible yearnings. I love that they are the first to witness me on this exciting little adventure.

Oh, the wonderful workings of the universe. I revel in nothing more than when trivialities in no way connected to one another find their way into my awareness and come together to form a delicate reminder that I can create my own happiness. When this trip was indeed something less tentative and more a very real, tickets-are-booked-and-passport-is-awaiting-its-stamps kind of thing, I breathed deeply and closed my eyes and what came to me in that brief reverie was this: “I am going to just blossom there.” Today, as I traverse over seas and among stars, the Dictionary.com Word of the Day just happens to be effloresce: to burst into bloom; to blossom. And that is not all. My love for things and words Anaïs Nin is no remarkable secret. She said: “The day came when the risk to remain in a tight bud was greater than the risk it took to bloom.” That I unearthed my own little revelation and that the Word of the Day would be chosen on the very day my bud begins to blossom… It is this very kind of serendipity that has me enamored with the clockwork of the universe. As childish or naïve as it may sound, when these little maneuverings work their way into my sphere of existence, I can’t help but renew belief that it is a very simple kind of magic.

May 2, 2014: New York City, New York, USA to Paris, France

Today’s word: sally: an excursion or trip, usually off the main course. I’m two for two!

I am here! Bonjour! I just took the most delicious shower with scandalously hot water and lavender soap (how very French of me). I opened the bathroom window to let a little bit of Paris in and sang along to Edith Piaf and Nina Simone. I don’t even care if the neighbors saw me naked. French people love naked women, don’t they? Now I am tucked away in bed with a little alone time; I am writing. I am writing in Paris;  just like Anaïs, and Sylvia, and maybe even Edith. The plumbing in this little hotel makes a sound like rain and I quite like it. There are fewer things more romantic than rain and even fewer places more romantic to hear plumbing that sounds like rain than in Paris. I can feel my heart slowly peeling open, reverently anxious to greet all the new things it is surely going to fall in love with here. There is a beautiful little Tiffany lamp on a table next to the stairs, perched right beside a framed picture of Ernest Hemingway. I wonder if he ever stayed here…

My eyelids are so heavy. I have never been on a plane for so long. And how wonderful, all the other “never haves” I am going to experience while I am here. Like for instance, waking up in Paris, which I will do first thing in the morning.

Bonne nuit! (That means “goodnight” in le French.)

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Come back and visit next Tuesday when I wake up.

Peace and Love.