adieu.

keats wrote a poem called “ode to melancholy"”:

she dwells with beauty—beauty that must die;

  and joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

bidding adieu; and aching pleasure nigh,

  turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

ay, in the very temple of delight

  veil’d melancholy has her sovran shrine,

though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

  can burst joy’s grape against his palate fine;

his soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

  and be among her cloudy trophies hung.

My state of being these last few days has been nothing short of melancholic. Beauty that must die. i keep telling myself that feeling this way means i've truly loved, have truly lived. i hold onto that as leaving Paris is even more brutal than i'd ever imagined. 

When i applied for the program in Paris, i wrote my entry essay about the connections we humans make to places (ap human geography anyone?). i wrote about how each individual gains a unique sense of place and how that sense of place shapes their life. 

i returned to thinking over this topic today, as i spent the afternoon alone visiting all of my favorite places, trying hard to soak in every sight, sound, touch, and smell of the city. How has my sense of place, of Paris, shaped my life? 

While in Paris, i carried around a petit cahier to jot down whatever whenever. On one of the pages i wrote down "subtle change". That's all, subtle change. The thought came to me that my subtle change, gained from my sense of Paris, is my range of emotion, of feeling more alive than ever.

melancholy -- an emotion of strangely sweet sadness upon realizing (or, i might add, feeling) the state of something very truly beautiful.

i feel as though i have burst  joy’s grape against my palate fine;

and now my soul tastes the sadness of melancholy's might.

i have felt such intense joy here,

la joie de vivre,

she dwells with beauty.

Perhaps not such a subtle change after all.