"Free [WO]Man in Paris"

I WAS A FREE MAN IN PARIS

 I FELT UNFETTERED AND ALIVE 

THERE WAS NOBODY CALLING ME UP FOR FAVORS

AND NO ONE'S FUTURE TO DECIDE

YOU KNOW I'D GO BACK THERE TOMORROW... 

...BUT I'M IN NASHVILLE, WAITIN' TABLES WHILE WAITIN' TO HEAR BACK FROM THE FRENCH EMBASSY.

THERE ARE A LOT OF SONGS ABOUT PARIS, BUT THIS BY JONI MITCHELL REALLY GETS TO ME. BEFORE I EVER WENT TO PARIS, I LOVED THIS SONG. Now I RELATE to it. This time last year, I was in Paris. Guess what? I DIDN'T like it, until a week an a half before I left. It had to do with many expectations, difficult French courses, NO AIR CONDITIONING. Well, then, I fell in love with it... Crazy Love. I know saying Paris, je t'aime is kinda like saying you love puppies, but oh well.

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This summer, a friend is there studying @ the Sorbonne, and it got me to thinkin' how much I  CRAVE to go there. Then I saw the photo up top on Garance Doré's website. And it stirred me up. Close to tears. 

Weird, eh?

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Here are pictures of Parisians by The Sartorialist:

And pictures of folks in Paris from Jak & Jil:

And from Pandora...here in the Marais...my favorite arrondissement.

I love Paris for the..hmmmm.... I really don't know why or how to express my sentiments. It's something I can't put into words...I don't love it for all the kitschy reasons you'd think. It's the (pardon the expression) je ne sais quoi.  Really, it's because I feel FREE there. Is this feeling of liberation ONLY because of Paris? Probably not. It has a lot to do with where I was in my life last year, but I had never felt so free since I was a child. 

All that to say, here I am...my last time in Paris, April 2010; a picture à la Garance Doré:

Oui, Paris me manque.

"Ew, baby, baby, It's a wild world"

Because of this truth below, I will explain my thoughts through songs.

For years, my dream was to live in Europe. Europe (not even a specific country) back then was a monolith representing all that was good and cultured in the world. Over time, my image of it subconsicously developed into a unrealistic fairy tale land where I had to go.

   I felt like the song "American Girl" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Well she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn't help thinkin' that there
Was a little more to life
Somewhere else
After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to
Yeah, and if she had to die
Tryin' she
Had one little promise she was gonna keep

Eventually, I looked to Europe as an escape.

Then, about 5 years ago, one of my friends felt the same way. He shared with me his father's response to his desire to go abroad. His father said it wasn't a good idea to go with a motivation of escape instead of adventure, because when one has that motivation, disappointment is always an inevitable outcome of the experience.

It is necessary to find contentment where you are, and not feel like some place else or someone else will give you that contentment. Ask lottery winners; after 6 months, the newness fades, and you return to who you were before winning. If you are a miserable SOB, then you will be a miserable, well-traveled SOB in Europe.And as Kelly Mackin put it, "[A]t the end of the day, there are still bitches in Tahiti."

 Cat Stevens "Wild World" explains this in other words:

But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

                                        The Avett Brothers "Weight of Lies" also sums it up:

The weight of lies will bring you down

And follow you to every town

Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there

So when you run make sure you run

To something and not away from

Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere

This concept struck my 19-year-old mind so greatly, and now @ 24, I know this is a fact of life. Fo' Sho'. Thankfully, acts of fate prevented me from traveling abroad when escape was a motivation. However, once arriving in Paris, I was disappointed, still grappling with my fairy tale images.

A quarter-life crisis ensued (and, yes, I just quoted John Mayer). My parade was rained on.

Then I had to listen to the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore to cheer me up.