Midnight in Paris

I dropped my second semester of French in college because I was already taking Spanish and just didn't see the benefit. "If I want to learn it, I'll end up there one day," I said. I think that's still true. Languages are more of a commitment than we give credit for and the only way you learn is by going. Arriving in Paris perhaps a year later, lost via Charles de Gaulle, I thought about my decision with a faint sense of regret. It is a difficult place to be and not speak, indeed it is a place that makes you want to speak, but that is that and I was there for 12 hours, so I didn't make much a fuss and made my first European things happen.

I must say I thought I knew man-made things that took your breath away. I have been around some big colorful skylines and stood atop some very tall buildings at dusk and seen lots of those things people call, "a marvel of engineering," but something about the Eiffel Tower in Paris takes this to a different place. It, and buildings like it, have stood through castle sieges and military coups and sparkling romances. They have watched cities grow around them, and in this case, German tanks role up on its doorstep. I may not be much qualified to say so, but Paris must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, rich in most things, and I can see why people love it and dream about it when they are far away.


My night there was simple and obvious: walk the streets Hemingway and Fitzgerald walked once upon a time, down to the Eiffel Tower, and make my way back. Across the Seine I went, shivering in the cold, until I rounded a corner and saw what my first friend in Europe dubbed, "the most romantic building ever built." It is one of those places you hear about and see on film everywhere, but it's not until you see it right there in front of you lighting up the night that you realize it actually does exist, and that is a special moment you remember.


At around midnight in Paris I sat in bed listening to the rhythmic breathing of a few hostel flatmates, and the sounds of a French side street below. There were two girls from New Zealand, one guy from Spain, and an Irishman. I always marvel at how hostels bring the world together, but perhaps force is a better term. These people took so many little paths to get there at that exact moment. Then I thought about my own path, and the people I know far away, the sense of awe that began that morning and continued that night, the realization something happened that for a long time was unsure, and the sun that was just now setting in Texas. Life is strange in Paris and it will be strange tomorrow in Seville. Life is always a strange sort of thing.