Ma vie m'appartient.

To appreciate freedom, one must first know constraint.

We all know constraint. The difference is only in degree—how heavy it is, and who imposes it. Some shackles I forge myself. Others I allow society, friends, or obligation to attach. Much of the weight I carry comes from an inflated sense of responsibility, born mostly of fear: fear that if I stop, my world will crumble. It might. And perhaps that would be a mercy.

To escape this prison — and yes, I'll use that word, however uncomfortable — I must first admit to being in one. It is a wonderfully comfortable prison, and yet I feel quietly confined. I live efficiently, not fully, moving through lists instead of moments. But I was not born to march to duty. I was born to dance, and to dance not for admiration, but because dancing itself is the point.

What would my life look like if I stepped away from it all? What might I discover if I lived another life, even briefly?

My worries carry only the weight I give them. I alone exaggerate or diminish them. The nearby always touches me more deeply than the far away. I cannot fully escape my concerns, but I can pause them.

I have come to believe that what might free me from these attachments is distance. An outer distance that, if embraced, could open an inner one. Because this farm does not ask for much. It simply asks for everything. It clings to me with a thousand small claws that begin their work before dawn, when the animals stir and the day's first duties rise like rocks in a receding tide. The fence along the back orchard, heaved in spots from the last frost, the barn hinge that's been patient longer than I deserve, the fallen trees along the path through the woods waiting to be sawn and stacked — each calls my name.

I built much of this with my own hands. That is perhaps the deepest claw of all. Many of the trees are ones I planted over the course of several seasons, days I remember as among the happiest on the farm. I carried five-gallon buckets of water from the pond to each newly planted sapling. Each tree carefully chosen, some apple and chestnut, grown from seeds. Each location thoughtfully considered and prepared with patience I rarely bring to anything else.

Those trees no longer need me. Some now stand fifty feet tall. They survive perfectly well on their own. Yet I cannot look at them without feeling the weight of what I've helped to grow and love. Leaving what you've built with your own hands carries a quiet moral discomfort, as if betraying something that once relied on you.

Now Spring has arrived with its usual urgency, bordering on impolite, with its quiet insistence that it owns you. The ground demands attention with the blind force of new life. There's no negotiating with a garden in April. If I intend to reap, I must prepare the ground and sow.

And yet, during the long stillness of this past hard winter, I realized that tending a life also requires stepping away from it. In that quiet, when the farm was hushed enough for me to hear myself think, a single word rose to the surface:

Paris.

Not as escape or abandonment, but as an honest question: what would this life look like from a distance?

The claws, I see now, are not cruel. They are proof of a life fully inhabited, of choices once freely made and still honored. But a life fully inhabited must also be fully examined. And true examination requires the one thing this place cannot give me: distance.

I am not leaving the farm. I am leaving long enough to see it clearly. And when I return — because I will return, the trees will see to that — I hope to arrive as someone who chooses to be here, not merely someone who never left.

My desire for transition does not arise from restlessness but from intimacy with this place and with myself. I know both well, and to discover more, I must experience life elsewhere. That elsewhere is Paris.

It's easy to mistake transition for loss. I am not losing anything by leaving; I am adding to my life. Paris has always made room for those who arrive with open hearts and curious minds—for the flâneur, the purposeful wanderer. And the best time to step away is when things are in good order, when much can care for itself. That moment is now.

Paris offers a movable feast of anonymity and inspiration. There, a single espresso buys three hours of residency at a small marble table. It's a city that welcomes the observer, someone free to watch without bearing responsibility. The perfect antidote to my overgrown sense of duty.

I'll arrive with open hands and an open heart, staying long enough to remember what it feels like to choose.

It is another chance to enjoy such dancing as I can.

Au revoir.

L'Homme qui Court. Paris., 1953 - Sabine Weiss