Sitting in a park in Paris, France

I don't know if you know the song, "California," by Joni Mitchell, but it's a really lovely song that captures the feeling of travelling the world, and having all sorts of new experiences, and yet still missing the idea of the loved one/place/thing you left behind in... California, which in the song is the synecdoche* of the idea of the person/place/thing you left behind, and to whom/which you are going home.
*don't make fun of the word. it's exactly what I mean, and I had to look it up.

Anyway, I like to sing the song to myself when I walk around in Paris, where I am this week on just one of my many vacations I will enjoy this year. I am staying in the 3rd arrondissment with my friend Jessica, and I have been celebrating my birthday, consuming art and doing lots of walking around through this city that makes me feel like I live in that Joni Mitchell song. I am here, in Paris, but "Paris" makes me remember that I am also there, in my own inner California (which just happens to be the real actual Califnornia for me).

For those of you who sent me birthday wishes, thank you so much. When I was little (um, even until three years ago), I thought if someone didn't give you a present for your birthday, then it didn't really "count." But now that I am 23, older and wiser, with no one telling me what to do, the "stuff" doesn't matter; and it's the best feeling when someone writes or calls with "Happy Birthday," because it doesn't just mean "Happy Birthday," it means, "I care about you." So, thank you.

And for those of you who are reading this sentence and didn't know it was my birthday, no worries; even the fact that you are reading this sentence (which is still going, my gosh), that fact ALSO says, "I care about you," and, also, "I have great taste in blogs." So, thank you.

Part of this Paris poignancy is not just coming back to my old haunts from the Stanford Program in Paris two years ago, but also this "country girl/ big city feeling." Avignon feels likes it's crowded, but that's just a quirk of spatial perception. The streets are much narrower, still in their medieval layout, and so if you have to navigate past 10 different people on a 4 foot wide street, it's like, whoah, where did all these people come from? But in Paris, there are wide streets, wide sidewalks, wide pedestrian thouroughfares, and these are all packed with people, teeming masses of people, and it's like, "no, seriously this time, WHERE are all these people coming from?"

I will write more from home and post pictures and whatnot, but for the moment, this: I always liked how the word "teeming," sounds like "steaming," so to me, teeming masses of people was always an idea of an urban cauldron, with everbody interacting and moving about in the twirly, hot, exphemeral way, clouds of steam rising out of a soup pot. Nice weather exurban sprawl cities like Los Angleles and Palo Alto cannot give you this sense. But Paris in the chilly fall, with puffs of breath crowned about the heads of rushing and loitering Parisians, is exactly the image, the id, even, of a steaming teeming city. I like it, it's exciting, but I also cannot wait to go back on Friday to my new California, Avignon.