Paris je t'aime

My boss sent me a Powerpoint of Paris. Pictures in the dusk, in the morning, at night under the rain - in every picture, a piece of the city that invariably looks beautiful, nostalgic, quaint, calm, inviting, warm. To go along with the pictures is a song by Charles Aznavour singing about youth and friends and being a carefree twenty-year-old. So for a moment I am taken back to the city's statuesque monuments, its energy and aesthetic that is so gorgeous it almost hurts.

And then I realize that the City of Lights is also grimy, and the heat in the subway in the summertime is stifling, and it's full of tourists and peddlers and people who will rip you off, and there is graffiti and lots of cigarette smoke and rude people and smelly people (yes it's true), and it is overpriced and the Seine is dirty, and the weather is rarely nice in the fall-winter-spring seasons like it is in DC. There are very ugly parts of Paris, too: next time you're there, take the RER train to the Charles de Gaulle airport through the northern suburbs (the "American Dream" in Suburbia is definitely an American phenomenon...).

But in my mind's eye Paris will still and always be a place that actually lives up to its reputation, where even the streetlamps and the trash cans are pretty; where the Eiffel Tower, as cliché as it sounds, lit up at night looks like a concoction of golden lace, a woman's corset, a bizarre champagne glass...where birds in Victorian cages adorn windowsills looking over trees and cafés, where people sit for hours watching other people.

Perhaps this idealistic view of Paris is because of my childhood: I am very lucky to have spent all of my childhood summers in France, and we usually spent a few days in Paris. I think it was in 1989, when I was six, I roller-skated around the city with my mom and dad while we were there for the summer. I had hot pink rollerskates with purple and silver stars on them. That year was the bicentennial for the French Revolution and so on July 14th it seemed like the entire city was out in the streets. I remember being on my dad's shoulders and being so scared when people were throwing firecrackers onto the sidewalk. We walked home for two hours because the subways were full. But I loved it.

One of my dreams for a few years now has been to live in Paris - for at least a short while. I know that if I do ever live there, my idealistic vision of the city - already a bit tainted - will truly be dashed to pieces. My family who lives in Paris never actually go to the monuments (just like I, as a "Washingtonian," have rarely been to the monuments in DC either). I would probably live in a shoebox attic apartment somewhere and complain all the time - as the French do - about any and everything. I would use my weekends to get out of the city and go to the countryside. I know this.

But at least I might get this Paris bug out of my system.