A Girl Defends Her City

Tupac and Biggie might have taken it a little far with their coast-y love but I get it. It’s important to represent your turf. It’s not easy living in a city. Living in a huge metropolis is not as simple and glamorous as Gossip Girl and Friends make it seem-it’s expensive, it’s cramped, it’s dirty and oftentimes, as one of thousands of people, you feel anonymous and unimportant. Still there’s a reason cities are so appealing and people from Sinatra to Kendrick sing their praises. People work hard to get the chance to move to big places like LA, New York, Paris, London, etc. (and they work even harder to stay). So when you do live in a dreamy city and you can still love it despite all the crap that comes with it, you can’t help but develop a certain sense of pride for your city.

I am so proud to live in New York. I am all about that concrete jungle where dreams are made of (or wet dream tomatoes, gotta work on that enunciation Alicia). I would wear those gaudy “I ❤ New York” t-shirts 24/7 if they didn’t make me look like a lame tourist. In short, New York is BAE (I hate myself for using that phrase, but it’s true). Now that I am living in Paris, and especially post-November 13^th attacks, I am also extremely proud to live in this city. I have to hold back from doing the t-shirt equivalent and constantly wear a beret. So when my mom came to visit me in Paris this past week, I was stoked to show her just how cool Paris is.

Of course while I planned a brilliant let-me-get-you-to-fall-in-love-with-Paris itinerary I kind of forgot that my mom isn’t a huge city fanatic like I am. In fact, she’s not a city person at all. She doesn’t like museums, she doesn’t care for architecture, she has no interest in history, she is anti-walking fast, and she most definitely is not down with rats (the nerve!). I planned to cram the 6 days my mom would be here with everything pretty and Parisian and she was having none of it. Notre Dame was meh. The top of the Eiffel Tower was too high for her. And the Louvre, oh the Louvre. She didn’t even want to take a picture with the damn pyramid like a normal tourist. She was more interested by the fact that straight men kiss each other on the cheek here than any of the world-famous pieces at the Louvre. I was frankly offended.

First of all I couldn’t believe how little interest my mom showed in any of the activities and places that are so quintessentially Parisian. As someone who loves to travel and see new cultures it baffled me that she didn’t really care to experience anything that makes Paris and its people unique,The world renowned museums that Paris is home to and the history that is contained in its walls meant absolutely nothing to her. The only thing that captivated her attention was shopping, which we did endlessly. What bothered me the most is how little she valued being in Paris. To a lot of people coming to Paris is a dream and to my mom it seemed more like something she just decided to do because, why not?

This isn’t the first time my mom dissed my city, she showed the same level of disinterest (and disgust) when she went to New York. All she did was complain the entire time she was there. Ay Sammy, why do you like to live in such a small room? Sammy it smells like urine everywhere. Sammy I don’t know why you like to ride the subway-it’s so dirty. Sammy why are you walking so fast? You would think I was living in the middle of a dump, not a large cosmopolitan city, from all the comments she made. I was so angry at how she reduced New York to nothing more than a dirty city. I mean she’s right, it does smell like urine everywhere, but it’s NEW YORK, I’ll take a little pee on the sidewalk over not living there any day.

The truth is, I love the cities that I live in and to me they are amazing so it’s always hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that other people don’t like my cities as much as I do. In fact, I can barely understand the concept of people not wanting to live in a city (where else are you supposed to live? The countryside?) I love big cities because they’re fast paced and exhilarating and there is always something to do. But I forget that those are precisely the reasons why people don’t like them. New York especially is a place that I’ve heard many Texans scoff at and dismiss as “somewhere they would never want to live.” It always takes everything in me because to not make some wise ass remark about how they couldn’t handle it anyway, because how dare they not value NYC as a place to live.

But the thing is, even though I love New York and Paris and all their big city pals, even I sometimes find myself thinking I may not want to be a city girl forever. I see articles about how married couples have to get roommates because their combined income just doesn’t cut it for rent. I watch as moms in the subway struggle to awkwardly get their strollers up the endless steps out onto the street. I work with kindergartners who don’t know the joy of running around in their own back yard and have to walk all the way to a local park to get the feel of some grass under their feet. Even worse, I see old people get bumped and pushed around as busy city dwellers fly off to their next appointment. I see all this and even I think sometimes, why would anyone want to live here? So I guess every once in a while I do have to put aside my tremendous pride of big cities and recognize that they aren’t exactly the warm homey places that some people need to live in and they are definitely not for everyone. I have to think that just like some people could never see themselves living in a big city, there is no way in hell I could ever live in a small town. A place where you actually know your neighbors (and they know everything about you)? Fuggedaboutit.

Who knows, maybe some day I’ll get tired of hopping along from big city to big city. Maybe some day I’ll move to a (slightly) smaller city and be ok with not having great museums and bars all over the place. But that’s not gonna happen for a looooonggg time. In the meantime I’ll keep repping the East side (and Paris) and you can be sure to find me at the Louvre.

Paris, France

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Never Again (?)

When I was in third grade my teacher read a book to us called Number The Stars. It was about a Danish girl and her family who helped hide their jewish friends during WWII. I don’t really know what it was about that book,I can’t even recall any details now, but it drew me in to World War II and sparked my interest in the Holocaust specifically. I just couldn’t comprehend with my little 8 year old mind how something like that could happen. So I went through book after book and movie after movie-anything I could get my hands on that concerned the Holocaust in order to answer all my questions. How could someone be filled with so much hate towards another human being? How could something like this happen? How could the world just stand and watch?

Of course these are complex questions and I don’t think I will ever be able to find satisfactory answers. But I have continued my search and learned a lot about the Holocaust in the process. As part of this journey I have always wanted to go to Auschwitz, to see it for myself. This past Saturday November 14th I finally did it, I went to Auschwitz. Of course, my much anticipated journey to this nightmarish place happened to be the day after the Paris attacks and I couldn’t help but think of the terror that my fellow Parisians were experiencing as I stood in this place that not so long ago was terror incarnate for so many.

As I stood shivering in the biting Polish cold-sweater, parka, boots and all- I thought of the unbearable cold the prisoners of this camp must have felt in their barely-there striped jumpsuits. I also thought of the the bitter coldness that Parisians must be feeling in the wake of such a violent assault. As I walked from barrack to barrack and looked around at the vast field that once contained hundreds more, I thought of the thousands of people that had been forced to walk around here and that were held captive by these wooden planks, this grass, this barbed wire. I also thought of of how empty the streets of Paris must be, robbed by Fear of their usual inhabitants walking to and fro, living their lives. As I looked at the ruins of a gas chamber, now little more than piles of concrete teeming with moss. I thought about the thousands of innocent people who had been sacrificed to this concrete in the name of ideology. I also thought about the rubble lying on the Parisian sidewalks; pieces of walls, shards of glass, all lying defeatedly. I thought about the 130 people who had been sacrificed to these streets in the name of ideology.

One of the phrases you always hear when you go to Holocaust museums or exhibits, or in this case, Auschwitz, is some variation of the following: “We show you all of this so that something as horrible as this will never be allowed to happen again.” And yet, despite all this education and awareness and evidence of what can happen when we let hatred go to far, it still happens. There is still genocide, there are still religious wars, there are still acts of terror; there is still unnecessary loss of life.

I’m not trying to compare the Holocaust to the terrorist attacks on Paris-they’re two very different things. But in a way they are very similar at their core, or at least, in why they happened. Quite simply, hatred. Terroristic activity and the Holocaust are and were acts of hatred. Both victimize human beings because they are externally different from their attackers. Hitler killed Jews because they didn’t fit into his idea of perfection. ISIS and other extremist Islamic groups kill westerners because their lifestyle is so contrary to their own ideal lifestyle. In the end all of the rhetoric boils down to people’s hatred of things and people that are different from them.

The scarier thing is, Nazis and ISIS are extreme examples but there is so much more hatred in the world, in smaller forms but equally capable of reaching these immense levels. There are people like Donald Trump who  victimize immigrants and would do a lot of drastic things to make them disappear. There are so many instances of racism and hate crimes on college campuses and abuse of people of color amongst police forces. There are people who given the circumstances in France are already hating on Syrian refugees and using them as scapegoats (in the same way that Hitler blamed the woes of Germany on Jews), ignoring the fact that these people are themselves escaping terror at home. The only thing that differentiates these hateful ideologies from those of Nazis and ISIS is that they haven’t been acted upon on a wide scale. But what’s to say they won’t be?

As I looked around Auschwitz, at this immense piece of land, developed for the sole purpose of acting out the hatred of one man by working its slaves to their deaths, I couldn’t help but cry. I cried as I thought of all the human life that has been lost to hatred and ignorance. I cried for all the children who wont get to grow mentally and physically, for all the young people who won’t have the chance to create countless memories, for the mothers and fathers who probably worried about their loved ones until the last second, and for the elderly who didn’t get to live out their las years relishing in peace in all they had accomplished with their lives. I cried for French people, and Americans, and Syrians, and Nigerians, and Vietnamese people, and Mexicans and Haitians and for everyone because we are all humans and we all want to live-but some of us won’t get to because of the hatred of others.

I said a little prayer for humanity because we haven’t learned our lesson. Because we’re still killing each other senselessly.

After I said my prayer I wondered, what will our future be like? I wondered if we’ll ever learn to stop hating others. I wondered in what way hatred will manifest itself next and who will have to suffer for it. Will we let it happen? Will we just stand by and watch?

 

 Paris, France/Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland

 

La Douleur de Paris

Unlike a lot of my fellow Millenials I am not one to post about politics or show my solidarity with this or that cause on Facebook (except for Kony 2012 of course, but I was like 15 and stupid so I think I deserve a pass on that one). I do this for 3 reasons. 1. Facebook for me is a place to talk to family, post photos and occasionally rant about exciting things in my life. 2. I am not a fan of shoving my political/social/religious opinions in everyone’s faces. 3. As someone who eventually wants to be a journalist, I believe in keeping a bias-free image (of course, no one is truly bias-free, but I do my best). All that being said, I have been on Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media basically non stop since Friday to see what is being said about the attacks in Paris and this time I felt compelled to join in and show my support for Paris. That’s right, I changed my profile photo to look like the French flag.

Of course, to me it made sense to change my picture. I live in Paris; this tragedy affected the place I am calling home at the moment and my personal sense of safety. It affected my friends, some of which live right by Le Bataclan and Le Petit Cambodge and had to stay in a hotel that night because they were too afraid to go home. Some of which were sitting at restaurants close to the cafes that were attacked and had to watch as people ran away from the chaos and tried to hide in these establishments. Some of which are flying back to the states early because they can’t stop thinking “what if I get shot today?” So yes, I changed my picture as did my fellow NYU students and people from New York, Austin, and all over the world to show our support of France. It felt nice, really, to see so many people’s pictures changed to the beautiful red white an blue stripes of the French flag. It felt nice that people cared and wanted to show they cared. But of course, people can’t let a good deed go unpunished.

Almost as soon as people started changing their profile pictures and writing a few words of support a whole other group of people started bashing their actions. Without missing a beat, Social Justice Warriors felt the need to demonize support for Paris given that so many other places were also being tormented by violence. You couldn’t even finish typing out the word Paris before statuses of people admonishing the lack of support for Beirut, Japan, and Mexico flooded your newsfeed. At one point people even started posting an article about a massacre in Kenya claiming that Paris was stealing the spotlight from this horrific event, which actually happened to take place in April (but you know, we should stop focusing on Paris). Perhaps the worst part is that people made this about race (because of course everything is about race) and started saying that people who showed solidarity with France were actually racist because they only cared about white pain. Give me a break.

I was embarrassed for humanity. Not only are we screwed because we keep killing each other left and right (that’s right Social Justice Warriors, I’m acknowledging death of all colors) but you know there is something disturbingly wrong when we can’t even let someone mourn without feeling the need to one up them on their misery. It’s honestly fucking ridiculous that in the world we live in, a country and its allies aren’t even allowed to mourn for one day, or even a few hours before someone feels the need to point out all the other death that is being “ignored”. In this day and age you’re a monster if you have an actual connection to just one place. That won’t do. You have to be constantly supporting every death of every country of every day-or you’re an insensitive racist fuck.

I wasn’t shocked by this reaction from the general Facebook populace. This happens all the time, every tragedy is automatically turned into a commodity or thwarted to fit the rhetoric of every political movement on the face of the planet. It’s not new, but it doesn’t make it right. I don’t understand what people get from hijacking a tragedy to fit their agenda, it generally doesn’t do anything to help their cause and it just makes them look like jerks. The whole “my horrible suicide bombing is worse than your horrible suicide bombing” argument is unproductive, idiotic, and such a slap in the face to the people that actually die in these events and their families. All terrorism is horrible and tragic and it doesn’t need to be made worse by people trying to fit it onto some imaginary scale to get their point across.

What’s more, all this arguing over what country has it worse and how racist white people are for “not caring” about death in other countries is distracting from the one thing people should be able to do without judgment-mourn the loss of life.   People should be allowed to mourn or simply to respond to something that shocks them without fearing that by doing so they’ll be insensitive to someone else. Everyone has their own tragedies and their own ways to deal with them and having someone yelling over their Facebook loudspeaker “but do you cry over the children in Africa?!” is robbing people of their freedom to feel their grief. There is nothing more disgusting to me than someone forbidding someone their own emotions.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Beirut, Japan or Kenya (and I definitely don’t have anything against Mexico). I don’t think that the deaths that happened there are deserved. I don’t think that any death is deserved, especially deaths caused by ignorance and hatred. When I pray at night I pray for everyone in this world because we’re all living in an awful place. But I don’t live in Beirut, I live in Paris. I’ve always wanted to live in Paris, I have French host parents, I have been struggling to learn French for years-I have a relationship with Paris. I can’t say the same thing about Beirut. So when a terrorist attack happens in Beirut around the same time that one happens in Paris, I’m going to be sadder about Paris, not even sadder, just more attentive, because I have a connection with Paris. And you know what? That’s ok. Or at least, it should be. I should be able to write poems and cry and pray and do whatever it is that is comforting to me and be sad about whomever I am sad about because these are all natural responses to loss. I shouldn’t have to apologize for the way I grieve or who I grieve for.

I know that changing my profile picture on an online social network does nothing to end terrorism or return the killed to their families or end all wars but reminding people of this fact also does nothing to better the world. It gives me comfort to go on Facebook and scroll through a sea of tri-colored photos and if that doesn’t give someone else comfort that’s fine too. You don’t have to care about the attacks on Paris, you can be racist yourself and not care about the loss of white lives, you can think what I am doing to grieve for something that is important to me is stupid-that’s ok too. But don’t you dare make me feel bad for doing what gives me comfort. Don’t you dare qualify my own grief against the grief of others. Most of all, don’t you dare make me apologize for mourning over something that is dear to me.

Paris, France

Vendredi 13/11/15.

 

When you live in a big city, there are certain things that come with it. For one, you should probably be ready to shell out loads of cash constantly for everything from your organic Trader Joe’s groceries to your exorbitant rent that you don’t even know how you afford. You can also kiss that whole big yard with a white picket fence pipe dream goodbye because that crazy rent money will barely be enough to get you a shoebox of an apartment. On the bright side, you can count on some pretty wild public transportation stories to wow your non-city friends (have I told you about the time I saw a dude poop on the subway bench?). But one thing that comes with living in a big place with a concentrated population is the one that most people generally overlook, or like to forget, and that is the potential for terrorism.

Yes, that big T word that makes everyone tremble is very much a real thing when you live in a city. New york is the blatant example, 9/11 happened there and it’s not because it’s a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Even Austin experienced its five minutes of fear when North Korea placed it on a list of American cities that should be expecting some major Kim Jong-Un wrath (he must just hate good music and BBQ). I have to admit, when I moved to Paris I was a little worried. I’m not any more exposed to the threat of terrorism in Paris than I am in NYC, but 9/11 was 14 years ago and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo still loomed in the public consciousness. So yeah, I was well aware that Paris being a large city and a hotbed for controversy had that terrorism-target potential, so I was scared. And then, this past Friday, my worst fears came true.

I was luckily not in France; I was in he middle of a solo trip in Poland. But my friends were not. They were right in the middle of all the chaos; some of them even lived within walking distance of the concert venue where a hostage situation took place. Of course Social Media being the monster that it is immediately released a torrent of panic-tinged live coverage by my friends. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that I was miles way, protected by the relative safety of Poland, I was immediately sucked in.

You see, it’s called terrorism for a reason; quite simply acts of terrorism are terrifying. They are not scary, scary things are the potential monsters under your 5-year-old bed. They are not worrisome, worry is something your mother feels when you haven’t texted her to tell her you arrived safely at your destination. They are fucking terrifying. Terror has an awful power that transcends borders and races and ages, in a most cliché way, it knows no bounds.

So this past Friday I was terrorized. Even though I was miles and miles away from what happened I was scared shitless. I could feel the terror transmitted by my friends who were still in Paris. I could feel the terror as I got message after message from endless family and friends asking if I was ok. I could feel the terror emanating from my parents eyes when we had the chance to Facetime and they kept murmuring over and over again how relieved they were that I wasn’t in Paris. I could feel the terror as I wrote this post, trying to hold back tears to save myself some curious polish stares. I can feel the terror as I type this now.

In a way I feel bad for feeling so affected by this attack. Because I wasn’t attacked, I wasn’t there to feel the actual life threatening terror of having a gun pointed at me or a bomb going off near me. I wasn’t even in Paris. But it did affect me, because I could have been there. I live in Paris. I was in Republique just last Wednesday, what if it happened then? I pass by Les Halles every day on my way to and from school. What if it had happened on one of those many occasions? I live in Paris, I am a part of Paris and it could have happened to me. One of my biggest fears about living in a city happened in a city that I lived in, so yes, it did terrorize me.

I cried as I talked to my parents. I cried the next day. I’ve basically been crying non-stop. I wanted out. Out of Poland, out of Paris, out of Europe. I wanted to be back home surrounded by the relative comfort of my parents and my dog Rocket, and Chipotle (of course). But even the idea of home wasn’t completely comforting because Austin is still a city, New York is definitely a city, and this awful thing that happened Friday night could just as easily have happened there. That is the most terrifying thing. I no longer felt safe because this could have happened just about anywhere I live.

Regardless, Austin, though not 100% terror-proof seemed like my best bet and I was about to book a ticket to the states and say au revoir to NYU Paris. I was literally about to give up my amazing study abroad opportunity (and $30,000 worth in tuition) to go crawl into the illusory safety of my cozy Texan bed. Then my dad did the most dad thing he could have possibly done and used my own words against me (good to know you’re listening dad).

“Remember Sama, you are the one who always says scary things happen, but you can’t live all your life in fear. You have to do what you want to do.”

Of course he (but really, me) was right. That is what I always say when my parents are apprehensive about me doing something, and it’s true. This extremely agonizing event is unfortunately not unique to Paris; it can happen anywhere. It can also happen nowhere. The thing is we’ll never know when/where/if anything like this will happen. So we can’t live life in fear that it will happen. Living in a city, especially a large city, arguably increases the chance of being a victim to terrorism. But I love cities, and I can’t give up that love because of something that may or may not happen. Not living in a vibrant, amazing, generally enthralling city out of fear of things that are not in my control is letting the bad guys win, and I’m not about to do that.

Yes, I am scared and no I don’t feel safe and I probably will be hyper vigilant at least for the rest of my time in Europe (I may even break down on the metro, it’s all possible). But now I am back in Paris and eventually I will be back in New York and I hope to eventually feel more at ease and regain the ability to enjoy these cities to their fullest extent. Because yes, cities are major targets for terror but most of the time they’re not terrifying at all- they’re just fucking awesome. These cities are resilient; they have been targeted and suffered time and time again but they always bounce back. Paris, New York, all of these cities stand for creativity, and opportunity, and freedom and rather than cower in fear and give up these important ideals like the terrorists want me to do, I’m going to put my Chucks on with Saint Laurent and live it up in the city.

Krakow, Poland /Paris, France

The Eyes of Paris Are Upon You

When I first came to Paris I expected it to be much like New York, except maybe prettier. I’ve always seen the two cities compared to each other. They’re both large, they both have world-renowned museums, they’ve both been breeding grounds for great artists and revolutionary art movements, they both have incredible shopping, they both have great public transportation… the list goes on and on. In my mind Paris was the prim and proper cosmopolitan city while New York was its gritty boho counterpart. But the longer I’ve been in Paris, the more I’ve realized how different the two cities are.

One of the biggest and perhaps most striking differences is the way people treat each other in Paris. New York has a reputation for being touchy and not entirely friendly, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that people in New York are rude, but they certainly do appreciate their personal space and anonymity. Before I came to Paris I was told that I shouldn’t expect much better from Parisians. Most people said Parisians are snobs and just as unkind to strangers as New Yorkers. But I’ve actually found that this is not true. People in Paris have largely been friendly and welcoming. As soon as they hear me struggle with my French they instantly try to respond in English in an attempt to help me out all the while praising my shitty French and bashing their own shitty English-often justifying it by saying they “speak English like a true Parisian,” (i.e. very poorly).

But what’s even more striking is that people actually acknowledge other people here. My little southern heart glowed the first time I walked into a Parisian café and was instantly greeted with a warm bonjour (in Texas smiling at and greeting strangers is just a sign of good ole’ southern hospitality). It still flutters a little every time this happens, and it does a whole backflip when someone wishes me a good day on my way out. When I run into my neighbors as I’m walking out of my apartment, they always smile kindly at me, even though I’m the weird American girl who always wears too much makeup (by Parisian standards at least). People smile at you on the streets just because and I have to admit, it’s very refreshing.

Even the way people act on the metro is worlds away from the behavior you see on the subway in NYC. Here people actually wait for people to get off the metro before they try to hop on (a concept that is lost on New Yorkers). If you’re trying to get off the subway, good friggin’ luck not getting crushed by the mob of people crowding in that doesn’t give a damn if you have the right of way. And you can fuhgeddabout people caring if they bump into you (even if they actually knock you down, they’re not taking the time out of their day to say something). In the Parisian metro however, if the metro comes to a sudden halt and someone lightly taps you because physics do not cease to apply in Paris, they will turn, look at you, and actually apologize. What’s more, people are courteous; they give up their seats without having to be told (in New York, much to my amusement, there are stickers on the subway describing the situations in which you should give up a seat-because the MTA feels the need to imbue some manners on the lost lambs that are New Yorkers). Men give up their seats to women, young give up their seats to old, friend groups give up their seats to family groups, it’s a big old game of musical chairs-and its fantastic.

The most astonishing thing about Paris is that here, you can look at people. People watching is normal, in fact it seems almost encouraged. There are so many places to do it, parks, wide streets, etc. Parisian cafes seem built for people watching with their sidewalk seating outfitted with strictly street facing chairs. In fact, the waiters always get perplexed if you turn the chairs to look at whomever you’re sitting with. You don’t get attacked with a hostile “whaddayewlookinat?!” when you watch someone go about his or her daily life like you would in New York. You don’t look like a deranged person when your mind wanders off as you look at someone. People don’t mind if you look at them because they’re most likely looking at you-especially if you look particularly touristy. What’s more, people make eye contact in Paris. I never thought I would write about people making eye contact, but the comparison with the little eye contact in New York is so striking, I had to mention it. If you’re looking at someone in the metro, they’ll eventually look at you until you both look at each other’s eyes, and guess what? It’s not awkward. They don’t look at you brows furrowed, lips frowning, wondering what the hell you want from them. They just go on doing their thing.

Sometimes I do find myself reverting to my New York ways and cursing all the friendliness and hellos and watching of me. But as a little short girl who sometimes gets bounced around the metro like a pinball, it’s nice for people to apologize when they’ve almost just elbowed me in the face for a change.

Paris, France

The Town Best Organized For A Writer to Write In

Paris is iconic. As an icon it has many smaller icons, petites images that the mind automatically gravitates towards when you think of the famous city. Many people hear Paris and bring to mind the Eiffel tower, berets, croissants and macarons and the Mona Lisa (which I find ironic given that the lady hails from Italy). But for more literary minds, Paris may just conjure up chic little cafés filled with posh wine-drinking-cigarette-smoking people.

To the people who were lucky enough to be exposed to the equally iconic characters of The Lost Generation, Paris is a symbolic space for creation and one of the most important places where this creation takes place is in cafés. No author makes the case for cafés as beacons of creativity as much as Hemingway. His books are packed with vivid scenes of cafés; his memoirs make clear that these are the places where some his most memorable works took their first breath.

It should come as no surprise then that as a lover of words, I expected Paris to become for me that creative space that was so coveted by Hemingway and company. I expected to be driven almost as if by some otherworldly force to the perfect café that would let the pen from my ink flow and deliver line after line of pure, brilliant writing. This of course, is asking too much of a city and its rather mundane cafés but I did at least expect to find a café that would provide an adequate space to work and so far no café has provided what I need. Hemingway set the bar high for cafés and Paris has not backed up his claims. Maybe Paris has stopped catering to creativity and begun catering to tourists instead (seems reasonable given the overpriced menu that no Parisian in their right mind would dare to waste money on). Regardless, cafés and creativity are two things that do not seem to exist in harmony in this city.

If cafés were ever the places for the free flow of ideas, that is no longer the case. Cafés are much too social here. Even if you sit inside to stay away from the temptation of people watching that is so natural on a sidewalk table, you cannot work. Cafés have become meeting points where people get together, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine accompanied by some mediocre food (which is really the same in just about any café you walk into) and exchange a few words to catch each other up on every day topics. Of course, Hemingway never described his cafés, as being devoid of food and conversation but this all seemed to be more an afterthought in his cafés, secondary to work and drinks. I don’t have a problem with food in cafés-even starving artists have to eat- but it is so hard to actually get any work done when everyone around you is having such an effortless time. Which brings me to my next point, doing work in cafés is the perfect way to ostracize yourself.

People don’t work in Parisian cafés, they just don’t. The person sitting off in a corner scribbling away on a little notebook is the focal point of everyone’s stares. They are not friendly stares either; people watch you contemptuously, they whisper about you, they purse their lips at you, probably in an attempt to hold back some bitter comments. And don’t even think about whipping out a laptop, you might as well just walk yourself to a guillotine because computers in café s are the ultimate act of heresy. Not only that but wifi in a Parisian café is a luxury, not a given. If you need to type anything or research anything, you might as well just stay home. Computers and wifi of course were not concerns for Hemingway but given the way our world works, to writers they are almost on the same level of importance as a pen and paper and barred access to these necessities is really stifling.

At first I thought I was just not finding the right cafés. I thought by some sad tourist intuition I kept wandering into cafés aimed to please passerby whose loftiest goal is to have a croque monsieur to get the full “Parisian experience.” But I have searched far and wide. I’ve toured the 5^th and the 6^th and the 9^th and the 13^th and even the 17^th and every café has been the same, its only distinguishing feature being the color of its awning. I’ve even wandered into Hemingway’s old haunts but of course they’re nothing but commodities now. The Closerie des Lilas is a bourgeois bore and Les Deux Magots is nothing more than an overpriced restaurant where the cheapest dish is 14 €. Now a day you can’t even count on Hemingway’s personal recommendations.

Ironically the only café’s that I’ve found which are conducive to producing actual work have been cafés that seem ripped straight out of a SoHo or Williamsburg street. These cafés are so American that they generally come equipped with a full English speaking staff and even serve such New York delicacies as bagels and gluten free/vegan snacks. Of course, I’ll take whatever I can get as far as a good workspace where I don’t look like a freak with my laptop out. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel cheated. I figured that café culture would exist here just as much as it does in New York but in a more romantic Parisian fashion. I imagined myself sitting on a sidewalk table, the warm sun on my face, beautiful Parisian people passing by with baguettes in their bags, the sound of clinking cups in the background-but the reality does not include sun and baguettes and clinking cups. My reality does include writing, but in a place far less reminiscent of the romantic Parisian café Hemingway created for me.

*Title taken from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Paris, France

An Irrevocable Condition

It’s funny how it always starts with Facebook. It’s really just another sign that I should delete it.

Once again I was innocently perusing my Facebook newsfeed, trying to kill time and avoid my work when I scrolled right up to it. Amidst cat videos and social justice posts, there it was, another picture of him and his new girlfriend. I use the term “new” as a euphemism for my own sake; they’ve been together for a while now, probably just about as long as we were together before the break up. I’ve known about her, speculated about her, but to me she’s new, because she’s the new me. I realize I probably sound offputtingly bitter and psychotic over this. But it’s justified, I promise. I won’t get into specifics; not today anyway, it’s a long and complicated story. It needs to be told, but not right now.

Long story short he and I fell in love, deeply in love. It was one of those loves that matured and moved past infatuation and through all of the stages that psychologists have devised to explain this crazy phenomenon. It was an intense love, so written for the screen you won’t believe me when I actually tell you about it. And it ended as abruptly as it began. He fell out of love, and I still haven’t.

I’ve tried to move on. In fact I am so intent on moving on that I don’t just do it mentally, I do it physically. I move from city to city in the hopes that each new urban landscape will offer respite from him. I’ve moved from Austin to New York to Austin back again each time leaving my city feeling sick of it and ready for a new place that isn’t imbued with memories of him. This time I’ve gone so far as to move to a new continent, to Paris.

You see, Paris was my latest fresh start. I was ecstatic to move here. Here I would speak better French. Here I would write better stories. Here I would make more vivid memories. Here I would get the hell away from him.

But today seeing those pictures it didn’t feel like I’ve gotten away from him at all. I felt like I’d been suffocated. Like I was lying on the floor and someone was placing rocks on my chest, starting with little tiny pebbles, then brick sized stones, until I had huge boulders stacked up on top of me pinning me down leaving me with no energy to cry and no air left to muster even a pitiful sigh of resignation. It felt like all I could do was look painfully at the picture before me and hate myself. I didn’t feel in control at all.

That’s the thing; we believe that by changing something about our hair, our style, our favorite restaurants, our zipcode, that by changing our circumstances we are in control and we can escape our problems and ourselves. But after moving from city to city in the hope of leaving him behind somewhere with my forgotten sock under the bed I’ve realized that no matter how much we think we control our lives, our problems have a mind of their own.

I’ve realized that moving to a new location with no lingering ghosts definitely helps us forget. But this escape is momentary, because in the end, people mark us more than places. In Paris I don’t have to walk through the park where we liked to go on walks after dinner. But I do walk outside on a sunny day and find myself thinking, “I bet he would have enjoyed feeling this sun on his skin.” The truth is people have a way of impacting us that is almost frightening. What am I saying? It is frightening. People have so many tools to build neural pathways in your brain that always-lead back to them. With their bodies alone, people have 5 different means to produce millions of ways to become a part of you. Their touch, their voice, their smell, the music they listened to, these little snippets of the people that you meet and that you care about become little snippets of you. You can run from city to city but you can’t run away from you.

As humans, we feel this torturous need to have control of our lives. We feel that we can actually do things that will create outcomes, favorable or otherwise. This is true in some cases. But in the sense of escaping our problems, of escaping those very things that become ingrained in us, of escaping ourselves we are completely impotent. We can’t escape ourselves because we are feelings and experiences wrapped in skin and bones that can only really be escaped once we die. We are permanent and portable spaces and moving to a new location does not disintegrate our space. So what can we do? I’m not sure anyone knows.

I’m tired of trying to escape, because I never will. Fate is a curious thing, and it’s something I believe in. So fate will decide what will happen to me. Then I can decide what I’ll make out of what I’ve been dealt. I’ve decided I can’t move away and forget. Because no city no matter how big and how beautiful will ever really offer an out. So instead, I’m trying to appreciate the city around me. I’m trying to appreciate the people on the street, the quiet flow of the Seine, the charming old buildings. I’m trying to appreciate Paris just like I will try to appreciate New York when I move back. Of course, he still pops into my mind. My greatest problem is always there, and I don’t exactly know when he will disappear. But I’ve accepted this, and I’ve made my peace with it. Having accepted the futility of getting rid of my problems diminishes their ache and instead allows me to appreciate my city as for itself and not as place to escape myself.

*Title taken from Giovanni’s Room  by: James Baldwin

Paris, France

Internship Applications: 21st Century Torture Devices

New York is the land of possibility. As the song says, “if [you] can make it here, [you’ll] make it anywhere. But the whole point is that you actually have to make it, and that’s not an easy task, am I right Sinatra? If you’re a student, you have to work 1000x as hard because you don’t even have a solid tie to the city yet. Sure, you have four guaranteed years in the big city (if you don’t get defeated in the process), but you have to start putting down some roots otherwise eventually your four years are up and come graduation you’ll be shuffling back to whatever not-New York place you’re from. You have to work to live in New York. I’m not even back yet and I’m doing more New york things than I am Paris things because let’s face it, Paris hasn’t changed in the last 100 years and New York waits for no one.

One of the things you can do as a student to establish yourself, is to build professional experience, in other words, internships. Internships are a necessity in New York (and most large cities really), equivalent to the latest must have accessory. Except this accessory can make or break you. Most people I know have at least one internship every semester; others (who might be slightly insane) have multiple internships per semester. The pressure to have an internship attacks from every angle-parents, classmates, your university-everyone is wondering what you’re doing to get ahead in life. But I think some of these people lack awareness on just how stressful internship applications are.

First of all, you have to make time to apply to internships, contrary to popular belief, internships don’t just materialize out of nowhere (shocking, I know), That means that on top of going to class, studying, going to work, going to the museum exhibit your professor wants you to see, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, finishing your 12 page paper, cooking, doing homework, going outside and getting some sun, sleeping, working out, getting from point A to point B, not dying-on top of all that, you have to make time to sit down and actually apply to an internship. If you’ve managed to set aside a morsel of time for this purpose, you are definitely lucky, but so painfully far from being done.

Internship applications take time for a reason, There’s the actual application of course, which can be as simple as uploading a few forms or as complex as requiring several different essays, but then there are all the supplementary documents. A resume is a given and the easiest thing to have at the ready. But many times you also need to turn in letters of recommendation. It would seem that this would be simple, given that all you really need to do is reach out to people to recommend you, but when it’s November 1^st and your application is due November 2^nd and you’ve yet to receive your anticipated letter of recommendation, that’s when it gets personal. The sense of injustice that accompanies a completed application waiting only on letters of recommendation is indescribable.

Work samples are also generally required (at least for journalism internships) and of course these don’t come about over night. Work samples mean that your application does not even begin when you sit down to put everything together, it begins months (or years) in advance before it even occurs to you to apply to write for any actual publication. If you ‘ve been proactive and been getting published (in a school newspaper for example), this part of the application process should be a breeze. You can feel like a boss uploading you published work without breaking a sweat. But if this is your first internship or you simply haven’t been published, this is the moment when you feel like you might as well hitch a ride back home-because you’re basically screwed. You can put off the application and try to get magically published before you turn it in (and have to find time to do that work on top of everything else) or you can hope that your personality is more magnetic than it actually is and will shine through your application to attract internship offers. Either way, your confidence is very vulnerable to taking huge hits during the work sample stage. Even if you are a lucky soul and have work samples at the ready, it’s always terrifying to submit your work, and you’ll probably have a little nervous break down. Submitting your work to a mediocre school paper is absolutely no preparation for submitting it to heavyweights like the Times or the Journal.

Finally, the most feared of all internship application components, the cover letter. Good cover letters are mythical beasts like big foot, people claim they exist but no one really knows what they look like. There is so much conflicting evidence on how to write a good cover letter, it’s kind of amazing that anyone has ever gotten hired. I’ve done ample research on the qualities of a good cover letter and every time I end up confused and nauseous and ready to just crawl back in to bed and live with my parents the rest of my life. Some people say it should be creative and stand out among the stacks of black and white pages that hiring managers have to look at. Others think there is a formal business memo approach and any deviation from it is a one-way ticket to land your cover letter in the trash. Don’t even get me started on the debate about varying the structure by using bullet points. Every time internship application season rolls around, without fail, I take a good long look at my cover letter outline and immediately freak out at its possible inadequacy.

Recently I asked one of my friends who has had many flashy internships (including a very successful one with the White House) to see his cover letter so I could get a glimpse at the glorious wording and enlightened structure that landed him so many sweet gigs. It was honestly, a flop. I mean it was nice but it was the most unoriginal, run of the mill cover letter I have ever seen. I even asked him if he just gave a template or something so I wouldn’t steal his powers but he swore that this was it. So if anything, now I am quivering with fear because I’ve filled out a bunch of different applications with witty, non basic cover letters, and I’m afraid there’s someone in the BBC hiring department having a good laugh over my attempt to get a job with them.

At the end of the day, I think getting an internship is more of a luck thing than anything so I try to keep my anxiety over the process to a minimum (an 8 out of 10 on a normal person’s scale). Sure, you may be a great candidate, but when it comes down to it great candidates are everywhere and if the company you’re imploring to hire you isn’t feeling it, they’ll just move on to the next person. There’s really nothing that you can do about it, unless you happen to have a creepy ability to know what a specific hiring manager is looking for. So the only real solution is to keep sending applications until your fingers bleed from typing, and just pray to the hiring gods that someone will give you a chance.

Paris, France

La Joconde, Much Coveted

Today I saw the Mona Lisa. But I didn’t actually see her. What I really mean to say is, today I was in the presence of the Mona Lisa. That’s all you can do really, be in the presence of it. There’s no such thing as actually seeing the Mona Lisa, not when there’s tourists involved-and in this city there always are. Let me describe what a trip to see that famous gal really entails.

I walked into the room where she is housed, by chance really, thank God I didn’t set aside time specifically to see her. It was a stunning room, not as lavish as some of the showstoppers in the Louvre but stunningly dressed with luxurious paintings by this and that famous painter (not that anyone in the room actually cared). I walked slowly around the room, stopping every now and then to admire the works that really caught my eye. I read a few plaques here and there while mentally preparing to dive into the obnoxious glob of tourists crowding Mona. After seeing basically everything else there was to see, I decided to finally play tourist.

One: good thing about going to see the Mona Lisa, you literally cannot miss her. Mona, she’s a petite little beauty, but the huge swarm of buzzing tourists crowding around her like a hoard of famished animals ready to pounce is kinda hard to miss. People are squeezed into this small roped off section, which just exacerbates the whole animalistic feel of the visit and makes you wonder if you’re at a world-renowned museum or a zoo. Tourists push, shove, and fight to make their way to the front as if Lisa could at any point materialize into a real person, grow some legs, and walk off somewhere less hellish. I honestly wouldn’t blame her.

Anyway, after being bumped, bruised and elbowed in the boobs a few times (being 5’3” has many disadvantages), I finally made my way up to the front. And for what?

Once I made my way up to “the front” -the front being the little crevice between the heads of two different Asian tourists taking various peace-signed selfies- I wasn’t anywhere near enough to actually appreciate this thing that everyone calls a masterpiece. Even if I had been at the front there would have been no way to appreciate the painting. Mona was barricaded behind a wooden barrier protecting her from peasant paws by keeping them a safe three feet away. A sad and murky sheet of bulletproof glass veiled the painting itself. This massive protective shield ironically made Mona seem insignificant. To tell you the truth, Mona looked like nothing but a blur, a little hiccup of history overshadowed by camera happy tourists, screaming unamused kids, and general chaos

After about two minutes, I had to get out.

I wondered how long it had actually been since someone had actually looked at the Mona Lisa, not snapped a selfie, not glanced for five seconds, not fought other people to get to the front of the line and claim the empty honor of having seen the Mona Lisa but actually looked at her and appreciated her for what she really is. I wondered when the last time was that someone had stood in front of her and had a thought other than “my friends will be so jealous” or “can’t wait to put this on Instagram.”

This inability to actually look at famous works of art is not new to me; it’s one of the struggles of living in a city with a lot of tourists and really important works. The inability to see the Mona Lisa in Paris is the same as the inability to see Van Gogh’s Starry night in New York. It’s sad that these works have such a celerity status that people who actually value art can’t look at what is considered to be some of the best art. I would like to go to The Louvre and have a good look at the Mona Lisa. I would like to have the ability to scrutinize her and decide for myself if I actually think this is a masterpiece rather than just believe it because people say it is so and because of all her groupies. I’m sure it’s been too long since any one could look at her and wonder about her ambiguous face and what she was thinking. But I think this is the sad fate that these bright stars have been condemned to, a superficial level of admiration. I doubt the barricades and bulletproof glass will ever disappear.

Paris, France