Owl is my word for the year. She chose me. Soulstrolling the streets of Paris last week, Owl appeared often: hanging as a backpack in the shop window on Rue Mouffetard, on a magnet in a tourist shop, at the Brocante Antique fair outside Paris (Foire de Chatou), and peering out through an art gallery window.

 

 

 

Here’s my process when these synchronous noticings appear: I strike up a conversation. It’s one of the ways I “bring home the boon” as Phil Cousineau writes in The Art of Pilgrimage. It’s part of my process of integrating the grace and gifts passed to me while soulstrolling. “Something shifted and came to consciousness.”

 

 

 

It seems quite fitting that my conversation with these Parisian owls is in French. And, I suppose, one can read the conversation below either way: am I speaking, is she? Is it either/or?  Your choice dear reader.

 

 

 

 

Ma chouettes,

My owl

 

Je me demande –

I’m pondering.

En flagrant délit de bonheur,

Caught in the act of happiness;

Ouvrez grand vos yeux

Open wide your eyes,

Tes yeux dis ent oui

Your eyes say yes.

T’arrives on ne sait jamais quand…

One never knows when.

J’ai pensé à toi,

I thought of you.

Tu m’as vidée de tous mes mots,

You have emptied me of all my words.

 

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