Fluctuat nec mergitur
The motto of the city of Paris is a, to me, nearly unpronouncable Latin phrase that means something like "it is buffeted by the waves without being submerged." That is my literal, half-past-midnight translation from the French I found on the French wikipedia site. I prefer the way my husband translates it, "Et portant, elle flotte." And despite it all, she floats.
Paris is a city, and thus a feminine entity in French. I think that's why I prefer this last translation, which keeps the feminine pronoun, since I often feel I could adopt the motto as my own. Wikipedia also informs me that this motto comes from the Scilicet, the ship represented on the city's seal and symbol of a merchant's guild in the middle ages. The ship is almost unrecognizable as such on the city's modern logo, but it nevertheless has at least a half dozen centuries of history.
As of August 24th, 2006 I have three years of history as a resident of Paris. I don't even live in the city itself so I'm somewhat of a faux parisian, but more on that later. It's been almost eight years since I first visited here, in late 1998. Perhaps I've not much to tell yet.
Et portant, elle flotte. Not a bad place to start.