Pensive=entertaining (?)

On Saturday night, at a bar in St. Michel, a man asked me, following the requisite small talk formula, if I like Paris. I said yes, and explained why in a few pre-scripted words. Then he asked me what I don’t like about Paris. I laughed and said something about it being too expensive. I’m feeling reflective, so please indulge me while I try to articulate some precise answers to both of the above questions.

I like Paris because there is so much to see in such a concentrated area—as if a giant picked up the city in the palm of his hand, and carefully plucked out all of the boring stuff, all the eyesores, all the strip malls and highways and gas stations and junkyards and Walmart’s and Target’s and any store exceeding 20x20 feet, then squeezed all the remaining interesting stuff together into one tight mass, and plopped it back down on earth. It is impossible to walk for more than five minutes without seeing something incredibly beautiful or historic or famous. I meet friends in front of Notre Dame just because it’s an easy place to convene; I drank wine by the pyramid of the Louvre because that was where the nearest benches were; every day, I walk by the very spot where the Bastille was taken over and the French Revolution turned around. Everything is smaller here, but so packed with something. Tiny boulangeries overflowing with morning or noontime crowds, everyone peering at the tiny, tiny pastries, each one displaying its own world of intricate icing designs or fruit arrangements or glazes or meticulously drizzled chocolate. Tiny Smart Cars with six people inside. Apartments—mine included—with seven rooms and as many inhabitants. Restaurants where strangers share tables for lack of space. I already mentioned the shrunken old ladies and the microscopic dogs. St. Chapel nestled inside the Palais de Justice, which is watched by the gargoyles of Notre Dame not 100 meters away. Narrow cobblestone streets, so narrow that they make the 5-story apartment buildings lining them look like skyscrapers. There are, by the way, no skyscrapers in Paris. Well one, in Montparnasse, and that’s a pretty big deal. Laurent, my host mother’s friend, told me that, after visiting New York City, she realized that she couldn’t live “dans une ville avec autant de verticalité.” Paris, I realized, is not very vertically orientated, and it’s wonderful. Everything rests at eye level or close to it, such that the world actually surrounding you is what catches your attention. Unless you happen to glance up for a moment, in which case the lack of verticality allows you to see the top of the Eiffel Tower peeking out over some apartment buildings or, if you’re lucky, the crisp outline of Sacre Coeur, pale and porcelain, way up on the highest hill on Montmartre. I’m getting very poetic right now, but that’s how Paris makes me.

That might be another reason I like Paris. It affords me a romantic backdrop against which I can brood and ponder and wander and gaze and, to the greatest degree I’ve ever experienced, make my life into a novel. And that is, it must be said, my ultimate goal. Most places, in reality, do not live up to their stereotyped and idealized archetypes. Paris does. I actually pass old men sitting alone on benches drinking wine and wearing berets. People actually walk down the street with baguettes poking out of their bags. Couples kiss under the Eiffel Tower. Men wear tight pants, women are tall and beautiful and nonchalant, everyone age 9 and up has a smoldering cigarette between their fingers, every face bears the same expression of disinterested, aloof poise. I actually heard a little boy on the metro yell “Sacre bleu!”

So, there you have it, a circuitous and partial explanation of why I like Paris.

Now I’ve lost energy to try to identify what I don’t like about Paris. I’ll try, in 100 words or less, to do a brief overview:

Everything is expensive. Parisian people always look put together and fabulous—this can be lovely, but also a bit exhausting and intimidating. There is too much to do. Small inconveniences—Paris doesn’t have the toothpaste I like, or Red Bull, or Target (I know that I praised the lack of Target above; it’s a double-edged sword), or coffee to-go (another thing that I truly love as an idea, but in practice can be irritating). French people love their friends and go out with their friends and aren’t looking to make new ones in cafés or parks or bars, so I always have to make an extra effort to meet people, except, bien sûr, for the scary, sleazy, old drunk men, who are extremely friendly. French people don’t put the heat on and love open windows (ha!ha! just try to imagine how I’m dealing with that). And of course, most importantly, I miss YOOOOOU!!!!!! (that is directed specifically at you, not the other people reading this blog)

Ok. Brief, brief update on goings-on: France won the rugby quarter-finals on Saturday, when they were expected to lose. Paris went CRAZZZZY—naked people and screaming and beeping and debauchery. I met a bunch of African guys at a bar who all spoke like 5 languages but worked as gardeners or mechanics. Go figure. I went to the Centre Pompidou with Hugo and his amazing, extremely French friend P.H. Hugo is fabulous. He teaches me all the cool French swears. He is going to take me out in Montmartre. On Friday, I went to my Paris VIII class in St. Denis, which is located, for those of you who don’t know, really fucking far away. And when I got there, j’ai rendu compte que, premièrement, it is the ugliest university ever created, et secondement, the administration had decided to change my class from Fridays to Mondays, which I can’t do because it conflicts with another course. It took me about 15 minutes to figure it out, because the secretary was out to the longest lunch in the entire world and literally every wall was covered with posters explaining something about the classes, many displaying contradictory information. Anyway, long story short—I’m now enrolled in two courses at Paris IV—the Sorbonne—instead of one at Paris IV and one at Paris VIII. I had those two classes today. Mondays will be busy. The classes, I think, should be an interesting experience. Enormous, in an amphitheater, I’ll explain more about them later because there are lots of interesting things to describe about the French university system and its students and professors, but I’m even testing my own patience so I’ll leave that for later. One brief thing—one of my professors at the Sorbonne stood behind a table, leaning forward, with his palms spread out on the table in front of him, staring straight ahead, and stood like that for the entire hour while he lectured. And the first three minutes of the lecture was him telling all of us that, if we just do our work “normalement,” we probably won’t fail. I was entertained.

Saluuuut