nathalie shushan

You mean to walk a straight path but, comme d’habitude, you’re distracted by the splendor of this magical city that you’re lucky enough to call home. The quiet, unassuming side streets call to you, one after another, until suddenly you notice that you’ve lost your way. Your eyes are open wide in an attempt to see every city layered upon one another because you know that if you look hard enough, you can see Napoleon’s city, too. Tucked away behind everything that the eye can see lie the dreamers, the poets, and the painters that came before. You realize that you are no longer walking with any real destination in mind. Instead, you’re wandering aimlessly along winding roads that seem to twist and turn more with each step you take. 

Moving slowly through the city, you allow your senses to guide you. You hear the clatter of cafes filled with people lingering long after they’ve finished their coffee.  Tables of friends smoking cigarettes or solitary readers folding back the front cover of their book overflow onto the sidewalk. The city is animated, alive, and you absorb its energy with every breath that fills your lungs. You continue past boulangeries, art galleries and parks lined with manicured trees. You watch the shadows and reflections change as the sun arcs across the sky. You lean over Pont Neuf to watch specs of light dance along the Seine and, mesmerized, you recognize a lightness within you that you’ve never felt.

It’s love: the real love that makes your heart swell until its breaking point. Pulse racing and pupils dilated at the very sight of your love that has you enamored. Enchanted, you walk out of the métro to greet Notre Dame. It’s your breathtaking “am-i-really-here?” aha moment. It’s the realization of a dream come true, depuis longtemps que j’ai rêvé de toi, mon amour. It’s a love that shakes you to your core and breaks you down until you are reduced to nothing but a heart whose beats sing the song of the accordion player in front of Sacré Coeur. It plays a tune that resonates throughout your body until you can feel it in your bones and it fills you in places you didn’t even know were hollow. You have been transformed in the way that Monet was transformed when he laid his hands on a paintbrush for the very first time. Complete.

And there is nothing better than when the stars align and it’s that perfect time: à l’heure. Isn’t she brilliant? She shines brighter than all of the stars in the sky, every hour on the hour. Her majesty. This real love that you feel for the first time and that you’ve dreamed of for your whole life. When you see her, it’s everything you feel when you fall in love condensed into one eternal moment. Time stands still, or maybe it ceases to exist altogether because it’s only a concept and, now, love is a fact. More objective than 2pm, this love is so real that it surrounds you, becomes the air you breathe and the music you hear and all you see is your love. Your love has changed you and turned you into everything you’ve ever wanted to be. You are the best version of yourself, grace à ton amour. 

Once more, you look up at the city of your dreams and realize that, although you’ve wandered so far and you’ve lost your way and you don’t know where you’re going, in this moment, you are exactly where you were always meant to be. And it is this certainty, which creeps up on you quietly while you’re trying to find your way in a foreign city, that sets your soul on fire. You breathe deep, content with the knowledge that the night has never made you feel so alive and you realize what you might have always known: that not all those who wander are lost.