(167-170): Paris Epilogue

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So, I tried to do a Paris-sum-up entry once before. I even employed nonlinear storytelling to make it happen in real-time, if you’ll recall. Well, even if you don’t, that is what happened.

So, if I’ve already had my semester and I’ve already tried to have an entry of closure, how am I supposed to feel about being back in this city for a few more days? Let’s be precise: a few days without any of my VWPP pals (or Kirill or Kaysey or any of my other Paris friends)? How am I supposed to feel about living in a series of hostels instead of with my host family, and without anything more to do than handle some paperwork, pick up a suitcase, and make it to a train station on the morning of (171)? How am I supposed to feel about being alone with the city?

Like a ghost, I would say.

I had all these moments this week where I felt weird being in Paris and I said to myself that I was going to make notes of them here. But the facts are, one, I don’t remember them well enough to phrase them well and enrich this entry. Two, they don’t really add up to anything. Sitting on the train to Antibes, here’s what sticks out in my memory:

--On (169), which is 24 June, Going up to the roof of the shopping mall at Montparnasse — the one where everybody but me bought phones at the beginning of the semester — and watching a beautiful sunset sky before going to see the new movie by the guy who directed The Triplets of Belleville.

--Sitting in the Luxembourg Gardens and watching the tennis players one last time while eating a quiche and Montblanc from Bread & Roses.

--Walking around one day this week trying to answer the question Aaron put to me six weeks prior: my top five best and worst experiences in Paris. I came up with four good ones and two bad ones. And, by the way, after this semester, I now cannot think about top-fives without also thinking of High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.

--Feeling so glum about leaving Paris on the last night that I walked from Ile-St-Louis (where you’ll find Berthillon) almost all the way to Paris VII before realizing that, even if it’s one of the few places I knew really well in Paris, I didn’t really want to spend any part of my last evening there. I was perhaps three blocks away when I turned around and got on the metro to Rue Mouffetard.

--Singing on the quai along the Seine with Lucien, Max, Nathaniel, and the others back in April.

--The snow on the ground the first time I walked into my host family’s house, compared to the bright, perfumed white flowers lining the front gate as I left with the suitcase they'd been holding.

--The biggest and possibly most beautiful full moon I’ve ever seen as I walked back to my hostel on the last night.

--The night Liz’s sister came to visit and we (she, Liz, me, and Kirill) went out on the town.

--Walking home from the metro in maybe March and hearing someone use the past tense of a reflexive verb exactly the way I’d been taught and thinking, “Thank goodness—it’s true what they’ve taught me! These fifteen years have not been in vain!”

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I think at some point everybody just decided they love Paris and started passing that down. That’s the only explanation I can possibly give, because it’s a place that people love, but they can’t come up with any good reasons why. An email I got from a dear former teacher wished me the best, expressing “Ahh… Paris.” In later May, when I was still in Paris, I’d ask my VWPP pals what they missed about it. The answer I usually got was “everything.”

I can't think of many specific things to love about Paris. I found plenty of specific things not to love; it’s kind of dirty, expensive, French isn’t nearly the most useful language I could have learned, the buildings are nice but don’t catch twilight like Florence or Rome, and the food is great but leaves me hungry 90 minutes later.

And yet…

And yet, here I am writing a conclusion that is dancing its way around (and perhaps with) that very sentiment. And you know something? This conclusion is no Donald O’Connor.

So, here goes:

I love this city and I’m going to miss it. Everything about it. Even if I don’t have the damnedest clue why.