I don’t know where the time went. Oh wait, I do know… It got away from me. But I managed to get away from time too and escaped to Paris for a few days. I didn’t have a plan really, and not having one turned out to be the best plan of all. Visiting friends, listening to beautiful French, walking through street markets, and remembering what it was like to live there.

It’s weird to feel emotional attachment to a city that can be soulless many days of the year. But it happens and I seem to get this feeling every time I’m in Paris. The buildings are beautiful, yes, and the monuments, majestic; but it’s really about all the details that couldn’t happen anywhere else. The sound the leaves make when the wind drags them through stone streets, the smell of rising dough and butter and cream; the rolling, fluttering rhythm of French words, and the crisp yet soft light that radiates even when it rains. There’s the glow that comes from the space heaters on cafe terraces, under those royal red tarps where servers are rude and curt and tell you that if you want a cafe Americano, you have to say “café” Americano. Or knowing that art is endless and eternal and that you will die before discovering all the art Paris holds. And then there is the imagination that comes with thinking of what once was: the history that has passed through this city; the writers, artists, musicians and philosophers who walked the same streets, thinking about life and its meaning; Paris influencing the way they saw and interpreted the world.