Oh darling

It was warm and wet and it smelled like Russia yesterday. I was happy. I went out at 4pm for a run in the park across the street from my apartment. It was 15 degrees Celcius so I did not even wear a sweatshirt, and children were taking off coats and hats after running around the playground. There was a couple taking wedding photos by the Roman “ruins,” and a man carrying an enormous bouquet of flowers, presumably to a loved one, with a nervous smile spread across his face. And mothers chasing after their rowdy four-year-olds. I saw people carrying groceries home, laden with enough bags for the upcoming week. And birds floating in the lake. And couples, young and old, cuddling up on benches, intertwining limbs, crossing legs, laughing after exchanged whispers. And a girl screaming into her Mac because she was using the free Internet to speak to someone and had neither headphones nor a microphone. And groups of French men sitting the aforementioned benches, “oohing” and “ahhing” at the spandex-clad women, myself included, that ran by [slightly disturbing, but simultaneously innocently French]. In short, the park was buzzing with people, all of them happy for a warm Saturday in the middle of January. This was my very own slice of tourist-free Heaven, of what a legitimate life in this city is like. And I, listening to Gavin Degraw on my ipod, felt the intense pleasure of being lost in the crowd, of being stripped of all individuality in the mass of moving Parisians, of delicious ambiguity…

Later last night, I had a farewell dinner with the girls across from the Pantheon. The guests were: Chine (French, my roommate when she took a year off at Harvard), Asia (Polish, Harvard student on a year abroad), Sinead (Welsh/Irish, friend from work), Goga (Polish, my roommate), Helena (Brazilian, Asia’s friend), Neike and Nina (both German, part of the group I lived with when I first got to Paris). It was a wonderful evening of brining people who had never met each other together, of meshing some of the different worlds I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of in this city, of putting together people from such varied backgrounds and calling them, both individually and as a whole, “friends.”

I had been saving the Ticket Restaurant (free lunch tickets) that I had left over from work for this particular night because I knew I needed, and deserved, an epicurean splurge. I had red and white wine, shared escargot with Sinead [still in the shell, yes], an almost completely raw Tartare de Saumon (salmon) with delicious potatoes and a salad, and a rather large dessert. In the middle of this, I also ate Chine’s left over potatoes and salad. In short, I ate more than anyone else, which prompted “She’s an American” jokes around the table.

Laughter [of which there was a lot] aside, it was a great dinner and a great way to spend one of my last nights in the city.