Day begins with my walk alone out of the flat into the sunshine and traffic of Monday morning in Paris. There is a rush around me, but I am not rushing away or toward anything here. I have no destination in mind - who needs one, in Paris? Every step, you look around, this is where you wanted to go and exactly what you wanted to see. Look, the river. Look, the cathedral, the clouds, the geraniums, pink blooms decorating an iron barred window of a brick wall. 

My husband is playing tennis, my girls are fast asleep. Where will I go? As it turns out, my feet head across the river. I walk up the right bank and find myself crossing the garden of the ambassasors; the gardeners are at work, watering, trimming, everything must be just so.

Soon, I am in the Place de la Concorde, enjoying the gush and trickle and spray, the sculpted beauty of the Fontaine des Mers. And then, I am in the Tuileries, with the gigantic Allium and the trees and the merry go round at rest, and there is no crowd, it's early, there's peace and quiet. Oh! My phone buzzes. A text. My daughter wonders if I will be bringing something for breakfast. And I am hungry myself, and happy to do so. Now I pick up my pace, cross back to the left bank, head toward home swiftly, toward the neighborhood patisserie, with energy, appetite and enthusiasm down the Quay D'Orsay, wondering what adventure we will all tackle together today, after croissants. It won't be a writing day, except for this, my blog, which is enough, if that's all there is. Because if I am not writing, I am thinking about writing. And I find this quote in an article in the New Yorker, by Henri Cole, walking along the Seine, and it gives me a metaphor, a mouthful, to think about: a gull catching a fish that is too big to swallow:

All photos and text by Kelly DuMar 2018 unless otherwise attributed