There are hundreds of postcards I’ve made of Paris in my mind.  I’ll stop, clear my head of whatever I was thinking of, and be truly and appreciatively, in the moment.

A soft sunset on Île de la Cité seen from the Pont des Arts.

Sunshine down a narrow medieval street in the Marais.

Birdsong in the trees of Buttes-Chaumont.

This is my sixth year in Paris and I’ll still be caught randomly in moments of disbelief: “Do I really live here, here in Paris?”  As humans we have a remarkable ability to adjust to circumstances and take what was once all-consuming and relegate it to background noise.  Part of this is helpful — it can help you change the Métro three times without really looking where you’re going, because you’re avidly listening to an audiobook or occasionally walk-reading with a dead-tree book.  Part of this is harmful — we can fail to look up and see those beautiful moments that are just waiting for us if we aren’t living by our smartphones.

I was waiting for some friends last weekend outside a Senegalese restaurant in the 11th.  A couple of friends had arrived early and we chatted and people-watched.  I noticed a girl taking a photo of…my eyes followed the trajectory of her phone to a second-floor window where a cat, paws imperiously perched on the window sill, calmly surveyed the street below.  The girl snapped the picture, laughingly looking around her to see if anyone else had seen the moment of feline curiosity.  Our eyes met and my smile acknowledged the joint secret.  We then turned back to the window where the cat had briefly retired only to once again emerge, missing only a cigarette dangling from its mouth to mark him (or her?) out as the casual Saturday evening street-watcher in the neighborhood.

Something else which slowly, then suddenly happens is the march of French into your ear.  As my French skills have progressed, what used to be background noise — the French slowly and quickly spoken around me — is now contending with my own thoughts.  The casual confessions in the métro, the heated disagreements in the street, the chatter in cafes.  I never feel like an eavesdropper in my native language, but when I’m in an English-speaking country, I feel like everyone is talking all the time because I don’t have to pay attention in order to understand English.  But as my French gets better, the volume around me is turning up.  Often times I’ll surreptitiously write down a word or expression I haven’t heard in order to look it up later.

For non-EU citizens, immigration occupies such an unreasonable portion of our mental real estate in the early years of living here that we sometimes miss the special elements of the city we are fighting to stay in.  One of the biggest benefits of a four-year card is the disappearance of the immigration question from your mind entirely.  That frees up room for all those moments that you’ll still need to fight to appreciate, not allowing yourself to take this dream city for granted.

Photo taken by me on a not-crowded day at Buttes Chaumont, which will be less and less attainable as the weather warms up. 🙂

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