Rare are the capitals that summarize their country as Paris knows how to do. With its ever-renewed beauty, Paris evolves with you. Sometimes you see her in a young woman’s outfit, in jeans and a white T-shirt, sometimes in a lady’s outfit, with a Channel suit, sometimes as if she were a beautiful revolutionary friend of Che Guevara. Other times, you just see it as a reflection of your own state of mind.
Paris taught me to rejoice in big and small things alike, and not to tire of the beauty of certain details: an endless queue to see a movie or to attend a concert, the hard wooden chairs of a a small restaurant that serves delicious food, a sidewalk café or a second-hand bookseller that sells old books for next to nothing.
I never thought I had any sympathy for dogs. Until I became the next door neighbor of a middle-aged French woman who owned a dog and one day found myself in the elevator with them.
Petrified at the idea that he might bite me, I did not move. To try to put on a good face, I sketched a smile: “You are lucky to have this sweet dog.” Since then, my aristocratic neighbor considers me the cream of men.
Everyone can find what they are looking for
There is nothing more pleasant than spending autumn in Paris and enjoying the rustle of dead, yellowing leaves falling from the trees under the effect of a small cool breeze that makes us shiver. Leave me there, with a coffee on a terrace to welcome what happens. Contemplative pleasure. sufi pleasure [mystique de l’islam].
But the first thing I do when I arrive in Paris is go to L’Entrecôte, at the end of the Champs-Élysées, to taste this simple dish – the only one offered by the establishment – with a taste so particular that you can’t find it anywhere else. Then, I like to walk and guess the sound of an accordion in a deserted alley, or the sighs of a saxophone in the evening in the Latin Quarter.
And waking up the next morning to have the famous “breakfast” facing the Seine, and being served by a young country woman, a little strong and proud in a flowery dress where the wind rushes as if to tell her “You’re pretty”.
In a city as exceptional as Paris, everyone can find what they are looking for: heroes of novels, statues of poets, painters who brought their colors to the walls and who left us leaving the imprint of their history, of their joys and sorrows.
The quest for total freedom
I also remember this trip during which Paris appeared to us in a harsh and biting winter, the snow swirling and attacking us. We were happy.
Paris knows how to attract everyone, newcomers as well as its unconditional admirers, in places that overflow with culture, art and architectural beauty.
But the city also leaves so much misery in its streets. A misery sometimes chosen, like the price of a total freedom of the human being, able to free itself from the four walls of a house. And other times suffered, due to the harshness of living conditions.
But under the wings of poets and in the footsteps of novelists, we abandon ourselves to wonder, while a saxophone resounds under a nocturnal rain and the voice of Edith Piaf escapes from the door of a café which feels as welcoming and warm as a friend’s house.