Paris

So many friends of mine have studied in Paris.  When they return, Paris is always at the center of their heart.  I have never been infatuated with Paris.  My brief visit was unpleasantly rainy and hurried, so I brushed it off as a place that simply didn't suit me.

However, since my last visit to Paris I have entered a world of art history.  It takes just a few lessons to discover that almost everything is in Paris.  Paris and Rome surely have magnetic fields that draw art into those cities.  In spite of my general disinterest in Paris as a city, I decided to make the trek for the art.

But now I understand Paris, although I find it difficult to describe.  Rome stands strong and stable, like the monstrous stone blocks from which the buildings are made.  It is unmoveable, unshakeable.  Paris, on the other hand, bends like a willow tree.  The city does not stand through time because nothing can affect it, but because everything does.  Paris is all things simultaneously.  It is caution and recklessness, class and crudeness.  Paris is self-assured and self-conscious.  Everything has always happened in Paris, and everything always will.  To visit Paris is to witness history as it overlaps itself.