I realised sometime after my 7th visit to ole’ Paris that I don’t keep returning for the obvious; the architecture, the museums, the delightful neighborhoods, the world famous cuisine, or even the wine that so surprisingly fails at making the head fuzzy despite drinking abundant amounts of the stuff.
What is it really that makes me long to return to the City of Lights almost as immediately as I board the Eurostar for home at Gare du Nord?
It is a funny thing I suspect, for I’m a wanderer at my core, always seeking new places and experiences. The bug bit me long ago and I’ve yet to free myself from it’s firm, juicy, and ever so tantalizing bite. I rarely return to a place once traveled to as the world is wide time ticks on and I’ve not yet gazed upon the 80% of it that I’m realistically shooting for. Maybe 70. 60? There’s Latin America, Mongolia, and that funny little place next to Greenland, the Himalayas, Antarctica, Mt. Fuji, Bhutan. They’re all places I’d like to explore and time is of the essence. I’m a notorious non-returner. Yet I can’t seem to restrain myself from this neighbouring city of comically overpriced coffees and territorial locals, that calls out my name and pleads that I visit her again and again! “One more boeuf bourguignon” she says. “Just one more beaujolais!”
What is it that I find so annoyingly metaphysical about Paris? Why is it that when any morsel of money and time happen to simultaneously end up in my possession do I venture back to a place that’s been walked through, shopped through, ate, drank, and tipsily sang through almost a dozen times over?
The answer, I’ve found, is in the unique pleasure of nothingness.
The cafés and bars here are not places to eat and drink, they are places to REVIVE. The swirling smoke, the light chatter, the slow sipping of café au laits, the contrast of people hurrying by, the welcome uncertainty of time and of circumstance, the contentness that takes over the mind and body as soon as the act of sitting takes place. The café is a temple and I am its monk. Opening hours are from sit down to stand up. It is ok to seat oneself, to stare directionless, to enjoy the sweet nothings, to shut off the outside world. In the safety of a café you are one of the many taking a quiet timeout from life, from the memories of your yesterday and the plans of tomorrow. If life’s stresses are a poison then the Parisian café is my antidote. An outpatient therapy. My over-the-counter remedy.
I never knew I could contemplate the delicate flavour intricacies of a cup of coffee as painstakingly as I have in a Parisian café.
I never knew how long I could successfully stare off into an unspecified point in space before I sat in a Parisian café.
I never thought about nothing at all as much and for as long as I did in a Parisian café.
I suppose the frenzied movement that engulfs you on the streets of Paris is what makes reprieve so much sweeter, so much more gratifying to escape.
Either way it’s a gift and I accept it brazenly each time that I go. For there are few places more charming in the world to revel in the art of absolutely nothing.
(To view the full Paris image series head here.)
