An Old Friend

Chloe and I held each other’s gaze for a moment when she opened the large wooden door into her apartment building. It wasn’t the same Parisian apartment she was living in when I last saw her, three years ago. Three years can change many things in your life, especially as you transition from a teenager to a young adult, as I had in the time since we last said goodbye. It was immediately apparent from that fleeting second of silent eyecontact that neither of us were the same person the other had last conversed with, but it didn’t matter; we embraced each other and I followed her inside.

In this way, Chloe is much like Paris in my psyche. While Paris is my favorite foreign city in the world, and Chloe is one of my closest foreign friends, I do not get to lay eyes on either of them nearly as much as I would like. Each time I return to Paris, and each time I see Chloe, I am a different person, yet I embrace both her and the city with unrequited love, because they shaped who I am.

When we visited the Musée d'Orsay, I spent a long-time pondering Monet's series of Rouen Cathedral paintings. I found myself less focused on the cathedral than on the space between each painting. The subject never changed once, however, everything else did. Light, weather, and the passing of time
transformed the same facade into something entirely different. My feelings washed over me on that top floor as I realized my relationship with Paris worked much the same way. The city hadn't become a different place since I was seventeen. I had become a different person looking at it.

I kept thinking about Paris as I wandered the streets after departing the museum. While I wandered, I came to a conclusion. Paris doesn't reveal itself to those who are moving quickly through its veins they refer to as streets. Naturally, its famous landmarks announce themselves, towering against the sky as they intertwine human-engineered beauty with natural beauty, but everything else whispers. The true Paris is revealed when you depart the crowd and slow down, noticing the beauty in the otherwise mundane. The beauty in the rusted balconies. The beauty in the hundreds of chimney pots standing shoulder to shoulder. The beauty of the uneven stone street beneath my shoes. The beauty of reflections caught in café windows. I have since begun walking slower, not because the city demands it, but because I'm afraid that if I don't, I'll miss what it's has been trying to say all along.

Perhaps that's why Paris reminds me so much of Chloe. It isn’t simply because she lives here. It isn't because either has changed beyond recognition. It's because every reunion reveals a different version of myself.