city of lights.

okay.

finally getting around to setting this down before i forget it utterly:

i was in europe this summer. end-of-summer, actually. had a convention in london, another one in NYC, and a few days in between, which i spent in paris.

it was so much fun. all of it. i gotta do it again.

heh, london was like...i dunno. after you've been there, you have a better grasp on it. i guess this is true for any famous city, but somehow before going there london was sorta two-sided to me.

1. spice girls, beatles, british pop, union jack, big red buses.

2. that british reserve!

after i've been there, though, the picture's so much more complete.

dude. heh. british women are F'ING HOT. their accents, man, and god they're all so well dressed. maybe it's cuz i was in cosmopolitan west-end-of-london the whole time almost, but still. i looked around and all the brits were so sharply dressed. they all looked like they were wearing tailored clothes. no sloppiness, and no SLUTTISHNESS. even when they went casual they still looked good. and everyone seemed slender and tall.

if you saw a short, fat, sluttily dressed chick, it was probably an american tourist.

right, so i got distracted there. as i was saying - picture's much more complete. it's kinda weird. england's like...at once much more liberal and much more conservative than us. dude, i saw this chick with her boyfriend and she was like ELEVEN. i'm not even kidding. she was a CHILD. i thought maybe she was with her brother at first, but then he kissed her. i was like "UGH?!"

but a the same time, these are people who do not SMILE at all. in california, people smile all the time. when we pass each other and we accidentally do that thing where we both try to go the same way and then duck back and forth? we smile at each other. when we catch each other's eyes in our cars, we smile. when we bump into someone, we smile and apologize.

we just. SMILE. a lot.

now, in london?

NOT THE CASE.

i kept smiling, though. it was instinct! my eyes would meet someone else's on the street - and i'd smile.

and they'd get this really spooked look. it was funny as hell. like this total "omfg, is he nuts? is he gonna kill me? is he gonna hump my leg?" look before they smiled back - shakily - and hurried past.

BRITISH. RESERVE. THEY DO NOT SMILE.

(but they sure as HELL are hot.)

god! i just can't get over how well-dressed they were. i swear, every last chick i saw was gorgeously dressed. not fancy? just like - well, a little fancier than in america. you didn't see sweatshirts and short-shorts. i saw a lot of business suits, but they were all so well-fitted and, heh, damn, so sexy. those nice slacks and those jacket shells, and like...

...those accents. whew.

england itself, though, wasn't that great. it was dirty. all the buildings were huge. not tall? but HUGE. horizontally big. and grey. big and mighty, very... english. come hell or high water, we'll stand to the end-ish. not just the landmarks, either. everything was big and grey and mighty. it was an island watered by blood, and its history is nothing but war and conquest again and again and again, so i suppose it was fitting.

that was just london, though. when i got on the train to go across the chunnel, i went south across the countryside. and oh man, it was gorgeous. i was working on like 5 hrs of sleep and terribly sleepy, but i dragged myself up and wrote up this thing by hand. just sensations. memories. thoughts i was having at the time, because i knew once it had passed i'd never feel it so keenly again.

i'll post it up someday...too lazy to type it all right now.

anyway, so after london i went to paris.

and omfg.

everything everyone has EVER said about the city?

is probably true.

all the cliches, all the overused phrases and sayings - ALL TRUE. there's just... nowhere else on earth (that i've been to) quite like paris.

the city of lights, man. it's the truth. the whole city just ... glows.

remember how i said london was grey? well, paris was golden. i guess they had more sandstone or something, because all the buildings were this sundusted shade of cream-golden. it was raining when i was there, too - this lovely, gentle september rain - and it didn't dim the glow a single bit.

also, instead of some big swanky UCSF-paid hotel that was faceless and identical to every other big swanky hotel in the world, i was in this tiny little french inn. i was up on the top floor, and the ceiling was slanted. the bedsprings creaked. there was no shower. there was only a bathtub. and despite there being no shower, there was a bidet.

yeah, i was in france, all right.

and when i put my head out the (french) windows, i could turn to the left and see the eiffel tower rearing out of the distance behind the buildings. when i looked down i saw the tiny narrow french street with the crappy tiny french cars and the storefronts selling fruits and produce. when i came out and walked around, it was 10 minutes to the tower and 5 to the arc de triomphe.

and just! even walking down the streets was an experience. in london you always felt harried and rushed somehow; in paris you felt like you had all the time in the world. there were trees everywhere. the sky was bright, even when it was overcast. the sidewalks were broad. the people were friendly. the snobbish french thing is apparently a myth, because i never met a single snob.

they SMILED when i smiled at them.

and just...well, like i said, walking the streets was an experience. everywhere you went, you'd turn a corner and suddenly you'd be looking at some fantastic view, or some gorgeous work of art just sitting there in the middle of the street.

the first day i got there - the afternoon after i'd taken the chunnel over - i went out and walked the length of the rue de champs-elysee from the arc to the place de la concorde. the WHOLE way. didn't feel tired at all.

i stared up at the arc. it's fucking huge, man. pictures deceive. you think it's like 2 stories high? it's more like... i don't know. 10? 20? it's fucking ENORMOUS. i don't even remember how big it is now, but i just remember being shocked that it was that. huge.

then i strolled down past the huge stores whose names i see all the time all over the world, but then i'd suddenly realize, holy fuck, this isn't just chanel's showroom, this is THE CHANEL SHOWROOM, in paris. had dinner at this italian place (it was ironic - my whole time there, i had all of one french meal. they seemed to like foreign food as much as we do), which was odd because it was such a LIGHT meal, when i think of really heavy cheeses and shit when i think italian.

anyway, afterwards i went down into the place de la concorde. stared in utter awe at these gilt sculptures and zillion-year-old artifacts they just had set out, just WAITING. tried to go into the louvre area, but they closed at sunset so i came back out.

i was all disappointed, but then i wasn't. because it had gotten dark enough then that the lights were coming on.

and see, paris - that part of it at least - had a master planner. so unlike other big cities were nothing's symmetrical and everything's crowded and a mess, this thing was just...laid out to please the eye. there was a balance to everything. a symmetry. you stood at the gates to the concorde and you looked down the champs-elysee and you could see the arc in the distance. on either corner of the concorde were statues; off to your left was the eiffel tower. the twilight would be fading from the sky, and the lights?

they came on not all at once, but one by one.

first the arc lit up. then the louvre. then the length of the champs-elysee. the obelisk on the place. the bridges over the seine - the tower - and then around 9pm, everything was lit up, and the eiffel tower starts FLASHING.

i know that sounds gaudy. but it wasn't. somehow, it just wasn't. you have to understand everything were just normal streetlights. ochre-hued, you know? but somehow because of the symmetry and the gradual lighting, they seemed golden. the whole city seemed golden, somehow, lit up like a handful of stars under this darkening sky. and there was such anticipation as you waited for the lights to come on, and finally when they were all on you thought it was over - but it wasn't.

the tower starts flashing. it does that every hour on the hour for about ten minutes - brilliant white lights. it was like diamonds on gold, man. all these flashes everywhere returned it: every last tourist with a camcorder or a camera was shooting like mad. but then when you go back and look at the pictures, it's static, not moving, and you can't feel the wind in your hair, the smell of paris, the very feel of it permeating the air, and it's not the same.

it's just not the same when i look at the pictures i took. it's not the same magic i felt, the utter awe and joy of being alive in this city of cities.

that's what i felt when i was there. joy. happy. i was just so happy to be there, even though i wasn't doing anything other than walking around. a little lonely, too, because i didn't take my gf and i kept thinking to myself when i saw something pretty - wow. i'll take brianna here and show her this. and that. and that. and this.

the seine was utterly beautiful. everything was utterly beautiful. of course, the major landmarks were amazing - the louvre: there's no describing its size. it's the museum to end all museums. i only had a day in there and i walked my feet into blisters trying to see it all. the building ITSELF is an art museum, which sounds stupid, but i mean: the building itself is so beautiful, it deserves like a placard of its own describing it.

i'm getting distracted again.

the point is, the landmarks were amazing, but it was the entire equation summed up that was just unforgettable. it wasn't just the louvre, or the cathedral of notre-dame, or the arc, or the pont-neuf over the seine. it was everything.

it's like how san francisco isn't its cable cars or its bridges. it's the very feel in the ground and in the air when you walk about.

it was just... the simple pleasure of being there. i just remember these two moments so vividly:

strolling the right bank of the seine looking across at the eiffel tower and its scattered reflection on the water at night, about 10pm. the smell of the air, the sound of the city which was somehow different from the sound of every other city - softer? - and the wind in the leaves of the trees. the random monuments i'd come across just walking. the sense of history that ran so deep in the blood of the city, but didn't threaten to overbear and overwhelm the way london's bloody history seemed to. it was just this feeling of culture of beauty, quiet and patient, that lay beneath every stone of the city and gave rise to the beautiful monuments scattered everywhere, the gilt-topped bridges, the vast plazas and perfect symmetry of it all.

sitting on the vast green belt behind the eiffel tower eating a hot dog (which was three thin sausages stuffed into a baguette, believe it or not) while the sun set. and the sky was just lit up into these incredible colors, pastels, pink and orange and flaming red, and then silhouetted and also lit up against it was the tower, and all around me were people, lovers, friends, families, and there was just this sense of wholeness and wellness that seeped into every fiber of my being.

i was so. perfectly. happy at that moment. i was so damned happy in paris. i only had like 4 days there, and it wasn't enough. not even close. it's one of those cities you fall in love with immediately, and then it gets into your blood and calls to you. it's not as though i think about it every day, but i do still think about it often. and every so often i flip open yahoo travel and look up plane tickets so i can go back and stay there for a week. two weeks.

i wouldn't want to live there, though. familiarity and contempt, and all. plus i don't want it to be my city. i like san francisco fine for that. by the time i got to NYC (which felt like a bigger, dirtier version of SF), i was missing san francisco like hell. my white city by the bay. it's where i live and where i belong.

but paris...

see, i want it to always be that city of lights i remember from the late summer of 2003. that's how it is in my mind, and it's perfect. it's nothing but easy strolls, the placid river, the leaves in the trees and the beauty that you could breathe in like you breathed air. and if i were to live there, i'd learn to hate parts of it - the traffic, the tourists, etc. more so than that, it'd just become the place i lived, and become mundane. i'd work there. i'd shop for groceries there. i'd probably be too busy to stroll the seine's banks.

i'd forget the magic of a perfect summer's evening with the lights coming on all around me, reflecting into the seine.

i'd forget.