Paris, France

In Which I Mostly Talk About Squares

Le sigh.



I am sitting beside one of the circular ponds outside the Louvre at an almost preternaturally late sunset. A few minutes past 11, neon rose firelight begins to fade from the three spotted clouds resting low on the horizon, and darkness begins its very brief reign over the City of Light. As though following some celestial encore, the crowd around me gathers and departs with only a quiet murmur.

I sit there a while longer, waiting to see what tiny starlight dares peek through the dark curtain on this summer solstice.



Wandering Paris has been a peculiar undertaking - none of its notable landmarks are constructed with any sense of human scale, and most of them rest along perfect linear paths. Paris becomes a city of endless walkways and Platonic solids.



From atop the Arc de Triomphe, I let my gaze wander northwest into the dim of distant low-contrast, where all lines converge and details fade to the faintest shimmer. I'm a bit surprised to find that there is a small square in that spot - a curiously distinct cube on an otherwise featureless jumble of buildings, all washed with the colors of dust.

It seems worth checking out.



Thirty minutes later, I've made no apparent progress toward this enigmatic box. It just hangs on the distant sky, ever constant and never closer. I begin to consider the possibility of a trickster mirage, and decide to stop for lunch.

(Well, in this case, lunch = an éclair fresh from the oven. In retrospect, it would have done very little to dissuade a hallucinatory state. All the same, it was damned good.)



An hour passes, and while I never actually get the impression that I am drawing nearer to my cubic goal, the object itself begins to grow larger. And larger still. Staggeringly greater in height. Inconceivably greater. Maddeningly greater. Before I even arrive at its base, my perceptions are reeling at the sheer size of this thing. It dwarfs neighboring skyscrapers, and it's quite some time before I realize that the little specks beneath it are people.

I am soon one of those specks. A very dizzy speck, craning upwards at the defiant climb of the Parisian Hypercube, amazed and ready to stop walking for a while.



I wander my afternoons through busy marketplaces, taking in the chaotic exchange of both currency and language. Tantalizing aromas pour out of each pâtisserie I pass, winding their way through strangely planned streets that follow the contours of preposterous hills, reminding me sharply of San Francisco. I intentionally get off at the wrong metro stop, because I'm good at finding my way in this place. I stroll through cemeteries that may be called cities in their own right. I spend way too much money on sushi.

What can I say - I'm a sucker for food on a conveyor belt.



Paris is very difficult to depart.

Life here seems really, really good.