Joie de Vivre

Back in Paris for my second weeklong writing retreat, I still haven’t managed to navigate Le Marais without occasionally getting disoriented. As a New Yorker, I am used to streets laid out in a grid, not the spokes of a wheel leading to this or that “place de something” that are so prevalent in Paris. 

It’s been two and a half years since my last stay here, years during which my focus changed from processing my husband’s death from cancer to recovering from my own bout with the exact same disease. Once again, Paris is the fulcrum, the pivot point between eating to live and living to eat, trying to survive and regaining joie de vivre.

Waking up yesterday morning to the election results in the States, particularly in the New York City mayoral race, I felt a glimmer of hope that I might be able to bear leaving the City of Light in a few days, once again returning to a world that makes me feel as lost as the Paris streets can sometimes do. 

Fighting autocracy is not a linear process, with progress marked on a grid. In my imagination I try to find the “You are Here” icon, the happy bespectacled smiley face who guides me on the City Mapper app. Paris is reminding me that I must learn to appreciate winding boulevards, dead end streets, “place de somethings” that confuse as I navigate my daily life without a handy roadmap. 

But before I go back to fight the good fight, I intend to fill my cup — with good wine, good food, brilliant company. There is such joy in travelling with a friend, in making new friends as we find common ground.  In a writing workshop and a cooking class I am honing my skills in two of the pursuits I love most: using the written word to feed the intellect and beautiful ingredients to feed not just the stomach but the soul. Both require alchemy, faith, love and the desire to share. 

So here’s a toast to Paris, to new friends, to my new mayor Zohran Mamdani, to hope that the future can be bright, to joie de vivre. A vôtre santé!