Learn about MUSE: Voyage De Reves
Your Invitation to Paris ~ August 12-17, 2014
A Love Letter to Paris
Mon Cherie
I can hardly wait to see you.
I count the days until our souls
touch again.
I have missed our hot loud nights.
The sound of your clinking glasses
and how we all stayed up until we
could smell the morning baguettes rising.
I have missed your many hands talking
at once in cafes where no one
holds a computer but instead,
each others hands.
I love the way your buildings shimmer
like wedding cakes ready for consumption.
I do. I do. I do.
When last I was with you
you called to me from open windows
with billowing red curtains
behind black wrought iron curls.
I answered you with poetry
and with the thing you love the most:
Obvious unbridled enjoyment of you.
Paris. You require that I notice you
while you act like you don’t care if I do.
There is a palpable mystery to your ways
that have caused so many sleepless nights
for poets and artists lured by your promise.
But what promise do we come to you for?
What is it about you, Paris?
Do you make me believe I am more than I am
by being the backdrop for MY beauty?
With your views and arches
spirals and spires and towers and turets
and the Arc De Triomphe right there
behind me – who would not be able to
see what a creative soul I am?
Is that your mystery, like the mystery
of any truly good lover – that you make
me feel more than I am when I am with you?
It is more than your stories. It is your energy.
Yes, you are modern and ancient.
Available, and just out of reach,
like the ones we fall in love with
but rarely get to keep hold of.
Don’t hold too tight or she will slip away
in the night leaving only lace petticoats
from Moulin Rouge as evidence.
This time, I heard your call my name
from across the sea. I am coming and…
I long to bring others with me,
to see what I see and what the others
have seen. Will you show us who you are?
My love and I are headed your way,
making plans to see you today.
I think you still love me because you know
what I know: that inside every single
human being is a desire to create,
and most especially to write poems
and to speak them aloud in crowded
cafes. To paint paintings and to show
them at salons with eccentric friends in berets.
And it is you, Paris, that creates the
very particles of access in which one
might find their stride into their
creative being-ness. You are the backdrop
for becoming more of ones self.
We use you for this purpose and
you allow us because Muses know
how to be used without being used up.
You cannot use up a true Muse.
It is in the using that she becomes.
So Paris, I am on my way to you again.
I cannot stay away. This is not news to you.
I try to make myself content without you.
Your stimulation invites my pleasure
since you respond most, when
I am brave enough to enjoy you,
to let you into my being.
We do not need to know your language
or your ways to know, that in your lights
we become beautiful in a way that
our soul so very much longs for.
I hope you don’t mind, I am coming
with friends. I want to show you to them
so they can see what I see.
For the restless creative hearts,
you give us both rest and scintillation.
We will be the ones with French Easels
parked upon the Pont Neuf. I don’t
mind looking like tourists if you don’t
mind us looking at you with such
mouth opened awe.
I love you because of many reasons
but most of all, it is because you let it
be about me which takes nothing away
from you. These kind of lovers are hard
to find. You cause pen to page and
paint to brush and song to break.
This is why you have so many loyal lovers
and why we keep coming back for more
On the first morning, I will meet you alone
in the piazza of MontMartre
for café crème and chocolate croissant.
I will bring my brushes.
As I close this letter I know you have
no need for my praises and fawning over you.
But I do. I need to know why I love you
and why you rarely ever leave my heart.
xoxo
Votre,
je t’aime mon cherie
Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris
This turning towards what you deeply love saves you. ~ Rumi
