Reflections on Days in Paris

On the eve of my departure from Paris, I am disturbed to realize that I feel that melancholy feeling that all writers have described about Paris. For all its demoralizing and unpleasant features, this is a place that wrenches its way into your heart. This is the city of love, of light, of magic in the face of bureaucracy (a word that in its very nature seems French) and language barriers and never-ending queues. This is the city to which all those who can return do--if not for habitation, than for that small sensation, that uncomfortable fluttering that occupies one's depths when saying goodbye to this city.

Yet for all its hate-to-love-but-do, Paris is not for me. The view of Paris from the 59th floor of Tour Montparnasse did not rouse any feelings of excitement or even interest in me. My city is New York--from the 110th floor of a city building I could spend hours peering over familiar neighborhoods from a new perspective or spotting gaps in the novel my feet have stomped out in 13 years of being in New York shoes. To Paris I have no connection. A view of all of Paris is nearly the same to me as a view of Seattle or Berlin or Seoul. It is an image, a fascination from the novelty of an aerial view, a moment to enjoy but quickly forget the specificities of. On the ground, Paris continues to be a new frontier to explore--this will never cease. Yet the Paris frontier, unlike New York or London for me, evokes anxieties that are prohibitive to true absorbtion of this city. My calmest moments here, those during which I can mimic most fully the sensations and habits of Parisian life, are silent and solitary. On a park bench in Jardin de Luxembourg, beside the pyramid of the Louvre, on the metro or strolling down a tiny rue, engaging in peaceful, coordinated coexistence, I am most in tune with Paris. Yet these moments are few, and are abruptly burst by a confused, flustered exchange of inadequate words with a Parisian, angered by my French-less intrusion on their city. No, Paris is not for me--I'll keep my quiet, distasteful love of this city close to my heart, as I pass through this place on my way to somewhere else.