vivre sa vie

Of white wine born and butter bred are you, dear lovely Paris. You are beautiful; so cultured and so very debonair. You are a magnificent thing to behold. And in my heart you compete only with New York City – though I think I have room enough for two.

I walk your tree lined Seine half in a daze – walking, as if, through a perfumerie, washed over by scent after subtle scent. And when I breathe in deeply my every vacancy is housed with the thought that here, on these streets, I could live and love – here in Paris I could finally understand poetry, as I clearly never understood it before.

There is a quiet, collected calm about you. If New York City is the adolescent charged with a static energy, blinded by idealism, hounded by hormone and fleeting identity – if NYC is the confused, the maturing boy then Paris is the man, sipping bourbon in a leather armchair, surrounded by the things he knows and loves. Closing his eyes and looking back on those exciting days when he didn’t know for sure, but glad to be where he is at long last.

I would like to know both men well.

And if I had my life to live, care-free and without consequence, then I would spend the afternoon of it in New York, while I have the energy and the drive – but the evening… the evening I would spend on the wide, the wonderful streets of Paris.