Right Now
Today
Tonight
53°F
FEELS LIKE 53°
56°
HIGH
44°
LOW
Partly Cloudy
Light Rain
Partly Cloudy
For eight years I wanted to go to Paris. I drew pictures of Paris and asked people what Paris rain smelled like. I searched the internet and learned all about Paris and then the places Parisian excursioners travelled after Paris.
Maybe Holland would have had prettier flowers and cleaner streets and kinder people, but I knew that before I ever went to Paris. Paris didn't need me the way it may have benefitted from Van Gogh, but I guess I needed Paris in the way I needed vitamin tablets. I needed Paris in the way I didn't know I needed.
I visited the Louvre, but I didn't paint there. I tried the baguettes and madelines, but my favorites were still the cupcakes and strawberries. I looked through the museums at the modern art and scoffed at the dots on the canvas. Browsing the guidebooks were a past time in the hotel room, but I never visited the expensive restaurants.
Paris wasn't about lectures or films or museums or the tourists. Paris was about left turns, rainy evenings, and the small apartments of the french. Paris was about cobbled streets and crowded streets. Paris was about the .0315 percent of the world's population who live there but never about the 2.8 percent who visit the Eiffel Tower. Paris was never about the eiffel tower.
Paris was not a city. Paris was a weather report of 54 degrees and slightly cloudy but looking up tomorrow. Paris was the "Désolé, nous somas firms" sign on the bakery that made me go to the next street over where I tried the best water I've ever had.
From the carrot and the water in the outskirts of the city, I wave salut to the city of Paris. Thank you.
This is fantastic and I'm using it next year as a guide to Paris, I mean my class, I mean Paris, I mean what Paris is supposed to be.
ReplyDeleteI think you won. I think the class won, or whatever that means... and I didn't realize it until it was gone.
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