While Paris lies under a flooded Seine, I remember the time spent there over so many years. My favorite city, a city for love, but one in which I’ve often been happiest alone.
Why is that, in the midst of the City of Light, would I feel most part of her love when sitting solo at a café table?
I go back…order a Leffe (because there is no good French beer, and I’m too thirsty for wine)…open a pack of Gaulois Légères (the blue ones; I rarely smoke anywhere else)…and turn my notebook to a blank page. I sip the golden bubbles and take a draw…and I write.
At some point during one of those extended sessions, I wrote, “…surrounded by people, yet alone.” But in Paris I don’t remember lonely. So many other places, cold hotel rooms, combined with a yearning heart: yes. But never here in her neighborhoods, which I felt free to discover, free-form, without itinerary or plan–or even a map, sometimes. The soft haze I felt in the city’s embrace kept me whole.
Though I’ve been there in love, several times over, I’ve loved Paris best toute seule.
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- A Leffe in Paris and an open notebook
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- View from Aux Deux Magots in St. Germain
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- The evening light on the 17th arrondissement