Connection Across Cultures and Languages at an Esperanto-style Dinner Party in Paris

I’m flying home to St. Louis today, heart filled with the Southwest. I’ve been able to visit dear friends from New Mexico days, spend time with my 96-year-old Cousin Lyle, and travel to a new part of New Mexico (Mountainaire) and make new friends as part of the poetry workshop and the Poets & Writers picnic performance last Saturday. More to come later in the week.

The time in Mountainaire was so cozy, it took me back to theme of “Automy with Connection in Relationship” in my August 13th post in which I told about a wonderful long weekend I spent in Barcelona, Spain. I was on my way home from a three-month meditation retreat and stopped to visit friends I’d made on retreat…the physical and emotional set-up couldn’t have been more sympatico, with connection across cultures and languages.

On another European visit, a Parisian friend through a dinner party for me that included such a mix of nationalities that during the evening we spoke such a mix of languages, and a chain of translations from French to Spanish to German to English and back again—with laughter and patience—that it was as if we were speaking Esperanto.

And afterwards, I walked back to my hotel room in the Marais district, perfectly replete with food and companionship. And, I swear the 70-year-old doorman winked at me. Vive la France! (Perhaps I even winked back.)