Weak of Love - Day One: Paris

Although this week, for me, has the air of something much more akin to sucking on a rotten egg than one of lofty ideas of romance, I don't see why I should spread the negativity. Because the truth is aside from my terrible awful no good luck with dating my life is quite wonderful. So, I'm sharing the love instead by blogging about some things that make me truly happy (even when love stinks.)

(I stole this directly from my fabulous bloggy friend in Australia, Master of the curly crown, perveyor of Timtams, Decoybetty.)

I don't know if I ever told you the story, but I often - especially recently (in interviews) - get asked what brought me to Paris. Yes, there was The Frenchman. He played a major role in that move, but it started a lot longer ago than that.

When I was somewhere around the age of eight, my mother used to take me with her when she went yard saling. I hated it. I hated driving around in our un-air conditioned cars and I hated sifting through peoples old clothes for what would be my new ones. But for my (im)patience my mother often rewarded me with a trinket of some kind - a used purse or some costume jewelery; a book or a neat toy.

One day I stumbled on it. I didn't know much about it at all, except that it was so unusual and I'd seen it in movies before but I knew I wanted it. I approached my mother with the little metal figure of the Eiffel Tower and asked if I could get it. She said yes.

This decoration - sold by the thousands each year by street vendors and souvenir shops throughout Paris - became somewhat of an obsession for me. I didn't know why, exactly, but I knew that I wanted to go there - to the place where the Eiffel Tower lived. I became the owner of Paris sweat shirts and posters and books. Any movie that featured Paris, I had to see. My notebooks were littered with sketches of the only monument I knew existed in the city of my dreams.

In high school I began taking French - much to the dismay of my Spanish mother - but after a year I gave it up, quipping that I would most likely never go there anyway so why bother learning the language.

At twenty one, after reading Shutterbabe (Deborah Copaken Kogan) - the personal account of an American photo journalist who is based out of Paris and her adventures in love and war - I decided I would move to Paris. My family thought I was nuts but I researched jobs, looked for hours a day at apartments, plotting. Ultimately I didn't know the first thing about how to move to another country. And so I didn't. I let my dream die.

Flash forward seven years to last Sunday. It was bitter cold when as I crossed the bridge from the Louvre. The wind was merciful, though, and a thin haze hung over the darkening city as the lights began it illuminate one by one.



I paused and took a couple of photographs, laughing to myself that this visit - on free museum Sunday (first Sunday of every month) - was only my second visit to the Louvre. I recalled a time when I swore to myself that, if I ever lived in Paris, I would visit the Louvre once a week at least.

Sometimes Paris is just a city to me. That is how it happens that incredible national monuments lie just inches away from me at any given moment, completely unnoticed. It's just a city, like any other big city, where people struggle to live, people come to visit, people come to work.


But then there are moments like Sunday when I the simple act of crossing a centuries old bridge gives me pause and takes me aback. This is Paris. And it's My City. And the light of the Eiffel Tower circles in the sky above the Musee d'Orsay reflecting on the Seine and my heart flutters and tickles. I live a life that many people dream about - one that I once dreamed about - And I've fallen head over heels in love with it.

(Blurry self portrait, it's the best I could do.)