Echoes of Paris I

the first installment in a series of vignettes

crisp air hits my lungs as i shake out my limbs and slip on my gloves then i push off, arms swinging in rhythm with my legs, the sun rising over the seine keeping me company, drawing me to keep going even as the freezing air stabs into my lungs every other leap and my feet grapple with the slick cobblestones.

as you step out the door, you prepare yourself for the hardest 12 minutes to come – but you step with a determined step on to the water-slick cobblestones, flat shoe hitting the ground with a soft satisfying slap – not a hundred similar steps later, your first obstacle hits you in the face with a heavenly mouth watering scent but you grit your teeth and keep going for a couple hundred more steps until you see the award winning baguettes shining golden and fresh through the store window but you avert your eyes and keep going and here comes M. Kayser on the right so you cross the street and keep going and now you know there isn’t another opponent for a bit so you take a deep breath and enjoy the colourful fronts of the travel agency when all of a sudden there are pastries trying to lure you in but you hold your breath and keep going to cross the street but you see the orange sign of your last enemy peeking out from around the corner into the corner of your eye so you quicken your step and don’t make eye contact until you’re past the security guards and through the gates of school when you take a deep sigh of relief because you just made it through a landmine-laden field of French patisseries without succumbing to the temptation of soft flaky melt-in-your-mouth still-warm pastry until you realize you’ll have to do it all again after class … well, i guess you always deserve a treat after surviving class.

warm summer evening on the rooftop / a bottle of wine, a round of cheese, a bag of grapes / the animated murmur of friends talking and good company / parisian blue rooftops stretched out for as far as the eye can see / punctuated by the eiffel tower glittering as if it were trying to outshine the sun setting / that same sunset caressing the clouds, staining them with its pinkpeachcoral watercolours

you slip out into the darkened streets and fall into the streams of people chattering and laughing around you, their frosty puffs of breath intermingle in the night air – other revelers out for an evening of art and exploration. you weave through the crowds gathered around the frozen lake in front of the hotel de ville. you swing around to the back of square and stare mesmerized at the eerie faces and bodies morphing in the windows. there’s something reassuring about being alone in a sea of people as you move through the streets as if sleepwalking, getting lost in turns and curves only to stumble across an ethereal arrangement of glasses, a whirlpool swirling in the middle of the seine, a house plastered top to bottom, nook to cranny with art, the seine lit up in ghostly green accompanied by spectral sounds. and when you finally you stumble home into bed in the early hours of the morning, feet aching, it feels more like waking from a dream than falling asleep.