Paris, continued

I've started reading Ruth Reichl's "Comfort Me with Apples," which Wendy gave me. I'll have to also check out her other book, called "Not Becoming My Mother," but I digress.

And I'll backtrack. I'm wondering whether what really starting this yearning, this nostalgia for Paris was reading Mark Bittman's dispatches, which I think started in April. Eating fresh food, shopping at farmers' markets. When I was in Paris, there was a farmers' market between my Metro stop and school building. I loved getting lost in it.

Ruth Reichl writes,

"My Paris was uncomfortable pensions on the outskirts of town, cheap meals that started with watery soup and ended with watery flan. It was always being cold. It was hours peering through the gloom of the badly lighted Louvre.

Colman's Paris was not mine.

I love how she articulated the concept that everyone has her own Paris-- her own everyplace, really. As for my Paris, I actually have several. There was the Paris of the six-week stint, full of classes, exploration, getting to know the neighborhoods, walking everywhere I could, anytime I could. Sitting at cafes with my friends, browsing in bookstores, reading Simone de Beauvoir and imagining her Paris. Pretty much every night after dinner, I'd go for a walk along the river. I love that city.

Then there was the Paris I kept passing through. Even though, after living there for those weeks, I was ready to move on, whenever I returned, I missed living there. There was also the insane World Cup 1998, which France one, and I was in the capital, watching it from the megatrons in a Square whose name I can't recall, which amazes me. I can still see it. I remember, after the game, moving with the crowd so as not to get trampled. The spectators were going wild; at one point, someone picked me up and sat me on their shoulders. Next thing I knew, I was back on my own feet, walking, looking at other people on other people's shoulders.

My last visit to Paris was in March, I think, of 2000. It wasn't really so much a visit as a stopover. Anne was driving down to Clermont from London, invited me to join her (I was living in Wales at the time). I think that's when I first read "Bridget Jones' Diary;" Anne loaned me her copy, I couldn't put it down. Afterward, I returned to London by train--and don't get me started about London--and changed trains, and train stations in Paris. I had barely enough time to go for a walk and still get to the Gare du Nord, and I knew I was pushing it but I just had to go for a walk by the river, and I did.

Then, London. I don't think I stayed overnight. I mean, I did, at Anne's, before the trip down, but when I got back, I headed straight to Victoria's Station and caught a bus to Cardiff. More buses, more stories for another time. London's another place that I made the most of whenever I passed through. Also a city of neighborhoods, a city you have to live in--which I never have, really--to fully appreciate. I love it, but I don't miss it as much as Paris.