The City of Life

“…and everyone was drunk off Paris, high off ignorance, and hoping, praying, for indulgence to lead down a path of gold to the city of life.”

–anonymous Sharpie message on a bathroom tile in The Fifth Bar, rue Mouffetard

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     My desk is covered in half-open, overturned books and baguette crumbs. My kitchen is coffee-stained from my erupting espresso maker. My refrigerator is bare, except for jars of salsa with no tortilla chip partners and milk that is almost certainly expired. It's so late that the Eiffel Tower is invisible in the night except for two red lights glowing faintly like eyes suspended a thousand feet in the air. I’m in the throes of a new semester. My last semester.

     I’ve been in school something like twenty straight years at this point and boy, can I feel the weight of each and every one of them. In my fourth week of the semester, I’m decidedly lost, confused, challenged and feeling like I did back in swimming lessons when they tried teaching me how to tread water and all I ended up being capable of was not drowning. So maybe that’s all that matters at this point in my master’s degree. I may not be doing extraordinarily well or understanding much at all (What is translation theory?), but hey, I’m not drowning. I’m getting just enough oxygen to not need CPR!

     The weather is being a tease here. One minute, it’s sunny and I can hear kids playing in the park, and by the time I get outside, it’s overcast, I can feel freckles of raindrops on my face and the wind shoves my hair onto my lipstick. Today I found myself agreeing with someone that it’s cold outside. It was 54 degrees. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I must be becoming Parisian.

     Instead of my usual weekend routine of waking up after lunch and getting dressed around sunset, I decided to get some cultural things done this weekend and put my titre de séjour to work. Being under 26 and a resident of the European Union, I can, in short, get into any museum for free. To be honest, I feel exceptionally cool whenever I skip the ticket counter and just flash my passport at the ticket-taker like I’m kind of a big deal.

    I spent Sunday at the Louvre. I was determined to ignore the signs that direct everyone to the Mona Lisa as if to say, Okay, this way to your f-ing painting that you just paid twelve euros to get a selfie in front of before you high-tail to the Orsay. I wanted to wander through the more than 35,000 pieces of art and do some marveling. Or pretend-marveling. Because let’s be honest, it sometimes just feels good to look at art and pretend to be ultra-cultured. There's an art exhibition featuring Lady Gaga right now that I avoided because I can't handle the pretentiousness after I read that she cried over it. I followed up my meandering with some Tuileries-meandering where I called my dad for a long chat in those wonderful green metal recliner chairs (They’re so comfortable, I swear!).

The Mona Lisa's paparazzi

Oh, hey! It's like a horrible bathroom pic.. in the Louvre.

'MERICA

     Monday, my unofficial third weekend day this semester, was spent staring at completely different art at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Let it be known that I have never, ever been inside the Pompidou. Ever. It’s essentially the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis’ bigger French cousin. As one of Paris’s most-visited and well-known museums—and certainly its ugliest on the outside—it’s really strange that I’d never set foot inside before. Maybe it’s because I’m a huge complainer when it comes to modern art. It really gets under my skin and makes me say things I don’t mean, like "It’s not even art!" It makes me feel something—annoyance, frustration and an overwhelming urge to slap someone who paints a canvas all one color—so that is probably proof in itself that it’s art. 

     I don’t really want to get into it, but I can say that after plucking up the energy and thankfully going solo to spare others of my ranting, I...I liked it. 

     I liked the view it has from the top floor. I liked the escalator ride on the outside of the building. I even liked some of the art. Some of it. Baby steps here, people.

     I walked all the way home that night. I watched ice-skaters zip around on the temporary rink in front of the sparkling Hôtel de Ville backdrop. I crossed the Seine to the Île de la Cité at dusk to the tune of a man playing the saxophone on a bench. I smirked at the tourists sitting on the benches next to the hedges on the Parvis du Notre-Dame that I know for a fact are riddled with hidden rats. I bought a ham-and-egg crêpe on the rue de la Harpe and veered behind the Musée de Cluny to stuff my face because I guess it’s not really the thing to do, eating while walking.  

     I read a quote by Hemingway recently that goes: “Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.” I don’t know what I’m hungry for in America—Art? Crêpes?—but I know that when I’m here, in Paris, it is so very beautiful and that I am satisfied.

Love,

Rachel

P.S. Here's part 2 of my January video.