He said “tell me about Paris in the spring”. I had just woken up from a bad dream and the question was supposed to calm me. To stop my racing thoughts and quell the anxiety causing them.

Paris in the spring. Paris in the spring. Paris in the spring is cliche. Paris in the spring is rain and balls of ice so big they sound the end of the world as they hit the nickel roofs.

It’s funny because her weather is like clockwork. She’s moody, and inconsistent. Paris in the summer is miserable because it’s like living in an oven. But there is a small window where she is quite beautiful. Sure you have to wear a jacket everywhere just in case you end up on the wrong side of the street but really, Paris in early June, that’s the sweet spot.

My favorite meal image of Paris at that time is the way the light hits the water at the fountain at the end of Jardin Marco Polo. Jardin Marco Polo is this long grassy area that juts off Luxembourg gardens. It’s in the middle of avenue de l'Observatoire, and at the very end where Observatoire and St. Michel meet at Port Royale. there’s a fountain with horses rising up from the water. Horses and turtles, it’s weird, why turtles? But the water juts out, and catches the light, and it is a spray of rainbow and gold. And when you look up the path, that makes its way straight to the palace, in the distance is the month that Sacre Cœur sits on. It’s beauty, and symmetry, and all the things the French are good at, and no one knows this view exists because no one ever look up. You’re just trying not get run over by cars as you fight your way through all of these streets that annoyingly converge at this very busy intersection of Notre dame des champs, Observatoire, St. Michel, and blvd Montparnasse.

I guess that’s Paris right? Chaos and beauty. She’s a fighter, she’s scrappy, every century she’s existed in was some terrible trouble that befell her.

I hated her for many years because I always felt she was working against me; low paying work, moving apartments every few weeks because Americans can’t rent long term contracts easily, running around Bastille trying to open a French bank account so I could cash my paycheck and eat, walking from rue Laborde down blvd Haussmann to Puteaux each morning because I couldn’t afford the metro and the checkers were always at La Defense.

But then Covid happened, and I suddenly had money, and could work remote, and I went back. She’s not as mean when you can afford her.

But my life also became more cloistered. Before I used to travel all over the city going to my kid gigs, seeing all of these random parts of the city, watching French families interact and being very integrated into French society. Now I ride in Ubers instead of the metro, and spend my time inside my apartment because I have to be on the computer for work in American time. Being poor sucked but I saw so much more.

“She sounds a lot like you actually. Scrappy. A fighter. More beautiful than the label on the outside suggests. And best understood by the people willing to actually walk her streets instead of just passing through.”

It’s actually funny Paris got her reputation because nowhere in her history has she ever been “romantic”. Not when the Prussians seized her, not when the Communes caused fighting in the streets, the bullet holes still evident in some buildings, not when the Massacre at Grenelle happened and the Champ de Mars got its name.

Yeah I guess she is like me. I never really gave her that. She’s always been my adversary. I never recognized we are a lot alike.

Except I’ve become like her through her. I may have had an easier life had I never moved in 2014.