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And here’s something I wrote: Paris October 2022Rue de Bretagne Paris October 2022 Rue de Bretagne Cigarettes. Scooters beep and rev their engines to beat the stop light. Jackhammers (how do you say that in French?) pound down the street. A man outside a coffee shop sips from a paper cup. When did paper cups, those signs of American expediency, come here? Isn’t the joy of fresh coffee drunk from a white porcelain cup what you dream of about Paris? To sit on a wicker chair sipping café from a real cup, to sit as if there was no rush, no need to run for bus, no other place to be. Not today – I’m late. I clatter down the hotel spiral staircase for a quick bonjour to the concierge, then dash onto a Parisian street. But I’m too hurried to appreciate this city I love. The city I romanticize: cafés, chic women, stone buildings with wrought iron railings. This morning a garbage truck churns. Car horns and grinding gears. Always horns. A breathing, modern city. People rush to work, endure the crush of metro cars, read newspapers filled with sad events of the day. I could be anywhere. But I am not. The stone and iron railings and café chairs tell me I am here in Paris, the City of Light. Why Light? In the morning when I open the curtains in my cramped hotel room, light barely seeps in. It is October, day reluctant to open. Now in this café window lets in more cigarette smoke and scooter noises, a few French words rising from the seats outside. Across the street a woman opens the tall narrow window behind her wrought iron railing to the sounds and smells of the street. I wish to be in that room which must be more elegant than my tiny hotel room. Certainly, the window is more elegant. I could be that woman opening my window over the rue de Bretagne in the City of Light, ready for whatever Paris brings me. I could stand on that small balcony and look down on the markets setting out their wares, the figs, and melons, fromage and terrines. Or I could be my thirty-year-old self on my first trip here when I tramped the Latin Quarter long before cell phones and Google. Back then, the day before New Year’s Eve, I searched for a hotel room -- cheaper than the one I have now – but heard over and over complet, complet, complet. The hotels full of revelers, smarter than me, who made reservations. All of them full until the last one with room for me. That room with faded, brown-sprigged wallpaper had tall windows overlooking Boulevard St. Michel. It was winter, and I was alone and newly single and sorry for myself. Nervous about sitting in cafés, I brought my notebook and pen to give me courage. Now I sit in this other café on rue de Bretagne. My hair has greyed, and I no longer need a cheap room. I still tramp the streets of Paris, watch the clouds drift over the stone apartment buildings, the wrought iron, the blue plaques on the corners showing street names. This morning on the street, late for my appointment, I didn’t think about any of that. I waited impatiently for the light to turn green, dashed across the street instead of sauntering. I didn’t remember it until I opened my notebook.
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