My Idea to Walk Every Street in Paris

I have decided to walk every street in Paris. I am obsessed with this idea I had while we were living in Chicago the third time. We broke our Chicago lease in May and, after the summer in Madrid, we are now living in Paris again. The story of Paris the first time is a story for another day. We left Paris a year ago, moved to Chicago to be near family when my second son was born, and are now living in Paris again. We had not planned to move back here so soon, but we love Paris and are here again.

My husband said, a year ago, we will live in Paris again, though I did not want to believe him. It was my idea to move back to Chicago, to discover what my country, my culture and my family meant to me, in this chase between living within the constructs of the life I was raised in and my desires, which have taken my husband and me, for some ten years, into foreign countries.

I am writing now because I am afraid. For the longest time, I have written, but I have been afraid to share my writing beyond with a close friend. I have always wanted to write non-fiction and I know it is in part of the fear of writing about the self. This form is, perhaps, one of the most intimate forms of humans expression. I am writing for someone to read these words. I am driven by the fear. I am afraid of the fear. What are you afraid of?

I have never wanted to walk every street in a city before and, even now, there are only three cities I would consider doing so and Paris is one of them. The others are Budapest and Bangkok. I have loved these cities for more than ten years. Someday I will live in each again and I will stay for some time. Paris does not come before them, only does she come before them at this time in my life.

I spent much of my twenties living out of a backpack and, if we didn’t have two children, some days, I think I still would live nomadically. I romanticize this life, though my romanticism has become less acute as I have become older.

Some days, I do not want to live without a home again. We are without a home now, waiting to sign a lease in Paris. We have been without a home since June and now it is September. I want a home again. For years, I have asked myself the definition of home. What is a home and how do you know it is your home? I am still not certain of my definition.

I do not know how long this endeavor, walking every rue in Paris, will take me. I imagine it will take at least a year or more. I am not in a hurry to complete this obsession of mine. Lately, I have been walking an average of nine miles a day, but my routes are often the same, to and from home, to the playground, to the store. I have only walked some two hundred and fifty new streets in the past month, but over 200 miles mostly along streets I have already been.

The longer this takes me, I am convinced I will learn more about Paris and myself, which is what I am chasing, to fall even more in love with the city, and to understand myself and this pull I and so many others have and have had to her. Why I am here? Why now?

In my adult life, I have never lived anywhere for more than two years and, those two years were defined by the pandemic and our first son's birth, and everywhere else I have lived only one year or less. I have lived in Thailand, Hungary, Romania, Denmark, India, Chicago, Seattle...

This is the beginning of my second year in Paris.

I have run both away from and to places too much. Years, ago, at a Southeast Asian dive bar, a friend once asked me, What are you running from?