Paris

this is for my darling neasa, at this very moment moving to Paris to have some spectacular adventures accompanied by red wine, amazing cheese and stylish people. It is also stolen shamelessly from the other newly minted Parisian.

I would like everybody to know that I have been working on being happy for you neas, since you blythely fired off an email which ended 'and Monday I move to Paris,' as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be doing. And, 4 days of battling paralyzing jealousy later, I have succeeded. I am happy for you that you are in Paris. However, more than that, I am happy you will be in Paris in the spring when I will come and sleep on your floor until you kick me out or just stop noticing that I am there, until I become so infused with Paris that I blend right in to the cafe curtains.

I love you so much my dear, and I am awaiting the stories...

"Is this simply the unique perversity of the human heart that it wants (and wants and wants) what it doesn't have--Italian food in Paris, American Jazz in Saint-Germain--and, only when it is about to lose it, returns to the things that drew it to the desire in the first place? Or was there a kind of peace in it too? We would now never be Parisians or integrate; we might not even stay in town more than another eight weeks. Loss, like distance, gives permission for romance. In a better-ordered Vienna, Romeo and Juliet would have grown up to be just another couple at dinner." --Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon