Je rêve à Paris...

So.  I'm sitting at my desk, wrapped up in a thick purple scarf, the ubiquitous down vest, and wool ski socks.  The rich, dark (fair-trade, or commerce équitable, I might add!) liquid in my little coffee machine (who I have christened Geneviève in light of her refined Frenchiness) is seriously depleted.  I am supposed to be finishing my essay on Zola's La Bête humaine, but I am studiously ignoring the open word document and gazing, a bit dazed, at the scene outside my window.

Across the courtyard, a white-haired man is smoking out of his window and checking on his window boxes which are overflowing with some voluptuous species of vine.  He is also checking on the progress of the storm.  I too am glued to my window, typing blindly and smiling irrepressibly.  The morning broke sharp and clear; the horizon glowed orange and cool blue, and a chill wind crept in through the cracks at my window.  But a massive gray cloud was moving in, scooting over Paris like that spaceship over D.C. in Independence Day.  Slowly the horizon began to disappear into a vague white-gray.  The bells have begun to ring, and I have the distinct impression that they are announcing the arrival of (no, not Jesus) snow!!  It's now snowing in earnest; fat flakes are swimming up and down outside my window.  Sorry Zola, but for a girl who's been living in Southern California for a couple years, snow is WAY more exciting than Jacques Lantier and his beastly qualities.  Luckily for my essay, the snow has slowed and the flakes are looking dangerously similar to drizzle.  

...Later that day...

So I've just read something really interesting that reminded me of myself.  You'll have to excuse the egoism of that remark but this is, after all, a blog about me (I'll get to Paris in a minute).  Here's what Aimee Liu has to say about the enjoyment of pleasure:

I tend to think and see my way toward pleasure instead of touching or tasting it.  Also, my enjoyment comes less from taking in sensation than from producing reflections of it.  The milky light of winter, a man and his small child holding hands in silhouette against the ocean...such impressions excite me with the desire to turn them into something else: a phrase or picture or story...However, the constant need to capture and take control of experience interferes with the immediacy and scope of feeling.  I have to consciously remind myself to stop thinking; to absorb the light, shape, sound, texture, and smell of the moment; and let these sensations happen to me instead of trying to take possession of them.

Paris is a city of pleasures big and small; from the ravishing monuments and exquisite gardens to a perfectly frothed café crème and the coziest, miniscule bookstores, pleasure hangs on the eaves of this city and seeps from the stones like the juice of an overly-ripe fruit.  It's wonderful and intoxicating, but it can also be overwhelming.  Especially for a perfectionist.  I have mentioned, in a previous entry, the vague sense of nostalgia that comes over me when I see or smell or experience delightful moments that I know are about to disappear.  I want to capture them, bottle them up, and save them so I can pull them out later and smell them like an old perfume.  But it never struck me until I read the above passage this very desire might actually be interfering with my experience of the pleasure of Paris.  What if I accepted the transiency of my Parisian sojourn; what if, indeed, I learned to relish its ephemeral nature?

I have heard so many of my comrades, upon their return from studying in foreign countries, rave about how fabulous the experience was.  I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed when I found out that Paris wasn't going to be fabulous ALL the time (however unrealistic that expectation may have been).  I think part of the beauty of being temporarily expatriated is exactly that: it's temporary.  It's exciting and magical and totally bizarre.  It's dreamlike: you see everything through an altered lens, you can't figure out if it's real or not, you often feel more like an observer than a participant, and the closer you look, the less clear things become.  When you wake up, you're a bit dazed and confused, but you remember that the dream was really remarkable.

So, in conclusion...Well, franchement, I really have no conclusion.  Except that maybe Liu's advice to "stop thinking" and start to "absorb the light, shape, sound, texture, and smell of the moment" would be a GREAT excuse to curl up in my bed with a book (feel the fluffy down, the rectangular pillow, the soft glow of my lamp, the sweet warmth of my comforter) instead of doing homework (requires thinking).

Bisous & sweet dreams!