Taxi Ride

In the taxi this evening, I experienced a moment of anger towards Paris. In the calm of a Monday night/Tuesday morning, the silent taximan and I drove through the streets. Down the boulevards and up the cobblestones, past the shops and over the river. At every turn, I thought to myself how beautiful Paris is. How the guidebooks don't lie. How everbody should get one free taxi ride in Paris at night, just to feel its magic.

It was at that moment I came up with the perfect word for what has happened: this city has bewitched me. I am under its spell. I know that in order to grow I will one day need to break free of it, but for now I am content to wrap myself up in this place and allow it to captivate me entirely.

We drove along the rue de Rivoli, along the lit up arcade and through the Louvre's arches. Our taxi was the only vehicle passing through the majestic place, and I suddenly felt so small in the big city. The nostalgia was bothering me. Where was this feeling coming from?

It might have just been the evening itself that got me thinking. Earlier, I had watched Kathypath through the window from the sidewalk outside a neighborhood cafe. She was inside, talking to friends we had happened to notice walking by earlier. We had eaten dinner at the attached cafe next door, where I had eyed the smoke curling up around the waiter's face as he brought a diner two tables over his coffee. I had gotten mad at myself for overindulging in the cheesy romanticism of it all: a small Parisian cafe, a waiter, a coffee, curling smoke, Brassens on the radio.

Later, watching through the nextdoor window as Kathypath said her farewells to our unexpected friendly run-in, C, V and I stood outside on the sidewalk, rubbing our hands together, phasing out the spring chill. It was past midnight, and Paris was quiet except our complaints and laughter. I couldn't help but think how odd it is that here, of all places, is the place I have come to call home. As if in response to my thought, my friend blew me a kiss from the other side of the caf� window, from within the hazy, yellow-lit caf� where I once spent several hours playing cards and drinking cheap red wine.

The four of us split. C and V headed home while Kathypath and I went to get a glass of wine down the street. Just one. Just enough time to get in some necessary talking. Just enough to inhale the final breaths of the evening. The place shut its doors just a little after we ordered our glasses, and we felt the evening closing in on itself once the waiter started blowing out candles around us.

So we finished and I jumped into the cab to let the city drive past me.

A friend of mine once compared London to Paris in saying that London is actually a city whereas Paris is more of a living museum. But what I love so much about this place is that it's a city before being a museum. It's only at special moments - like this evening when I was allowed a few minutes alone in my head in a taxi cab - that you can see this place as only monuments and good lighting and strategically placed benches. Otherwise, it's drunks and punks and Prada girls and hip hoppers and false intellectuals and artists and checkout girls all living closely together, stuck in historical buildings with bad plumbing but beautiful ceilings.

I know one day I'll have to leave this place. It's nights like this that I realize how hard that is going to be. I am positively in love with this intoxicating city.