Finding the Past in Paris

"The Artist in Paris" Acrylics on Canvas 16x10 2016

10 years ago I was 21 years old and doing a study abroad across the street from the Luxembourg Gardens in the middle of summer. 10 years ago I had about 2 semesters to go before graduation. I was young and naïve, full of ambition and anxiety about what was to happen next in life. I was single in a seductive city with a class full of pretty girls. It was a beautiful time to be young.

I am visiting the city again as an adult. There is a pull to the city and something I have left behind. I am looking for a piece of my past, something to make sense of my present. There was a mother traveling alone with her infant in the seat in front of me on the flight there. I barely sleep for more than an hour on the flight getting into Paris. I land and take a taxi to my apartment for the week. I meet some friends for lunch and don’t find my way back into bed until 5am. I wake up at 4pm the next day and curse myself for wasting so much time.

High moral values wouldn’t be the way you would have described me as a young man. I believed that I wouldn’t ever marry, wouldn’t have a family, and as age creeps up, the reality of things becomes a bit more clear. I was not a good son or human being for a long time. I blew off my family for things I deemed more important, things which were quite fleeting in retrospect. I negated a lot of those closest to me for my own wants and desires. I felt a need for individualism and to break away from my own innate background.

I step outside of the apartment and it is biting cold with a light snow falling from the sky. I have no phone and want to know that I am able to find ­­­my way back to the past. I am hoping that my memory will serve me well enough to navigate the streets. I feel very lonely in the city knowing that the only goal is a destination to a time in my life that had long ago slipped away. Like picking up a book and rereading it a decade later, the meanings change.

I had classes in the mornings and would spend the rest of the day at the garden or exploring the city. My classmates and I would buy out the entire 4 Euro stock of cheap red wine from the local corner market and smoke hash we scored from North African immigrants in the park. I didn’t think much about the class or our assignments and was mostly checked out of college and classes in general. It was my one last hurrah before I was to move away from the safety of my little college town and into the work force, away from the friends I’d met and the unscrupulous abandon of my college life.  

I make my way down Rue du Renard towards the River and the Notre Dame. I walk past the people hurrying about their way home through the growing evening. There are large crowds of tourists taking pictures at the Hotel de Ville. I stop on the Seine and watch the sun set and the water sparkle and shine with the city. Lovers huddled close together as they make their way across the bustling cobbled streets. The city is romantic and very lonely at the same time.

I remember B______. She was a girl from my class that I liked and we would hold hands down unfamiliar streets and discuss our dreams and desires for the future. We talked about our class and friends back home. She had eyes like a cat, and would always smile slyly at me like she knew a secret that I didn’t. She had a boyfriend at the time so nothing ever got too serious even though I did try to persuade her otherwise.

"Another Time, Another Place" 28x22 Acrylics on Canvas 2016

I get to St. Michel and the streets become familiar. The storefronts new, but the same. In college I had very romantic notions of becoming a writer and painter; I would have never thought I would be where I am today. I was not hungry enough as a young man and was chasing the wrong things. Life was a series of meaningless achievements lined up on a forgotten mantelpiece back home. There is an oceans distance between stability and chasing a dream. My present still seems uncertain, so I search in the past. I know I will find nothing there, but truth and destiny seem to be always right around the corner.

As a young person I didn’t really think about life or time. I mostly chased women, knowing that I would pass my classes through wit, cheating, and charm. It was the way that I had mostly gone through life and it was a horrible way to go about things. I know that I’ve made some bad choices, but life is a series of mistakes until you find the truth, or at least your own truth.

The crowd thins as I take a right on Medicis which turns into Vaugirard. The streets are now quiet except for the occasional pedestrian. I panic a bit as I realize that I am not quite sure of where I am, and that maybe I’ve lost my way. I cross back and forth a few times but find the Rue de Fleurus and take a right on Jean Bart. I finally find the old Hotel, which sits adjacent to a police station in a quiet neighborhood. I peer inside and the place still looks the same. A small quiet waiting area and a front desk which the old front desk man takes his night shifts. My roommates and I would stay up late in bed smoking cigarettes and talk about what we wanted to have accomplished by the time we were 30.
Would who I was back then be proud of who I'd become?

It makes me sad a little bit to think that this hotel has not changed at all. And I think that maybe that’s the case with most things and that only people change. I don’t know why I had to make it all the way across town to look at this place from my past, but I knew that I wanted to see it. I look at my watch and it is already 9pm. I grab a sandwich and soda from a convenience store and eat it on the way back across the river. I am content knowing that I have found what I was looking for even though there was no answer.

I am in my 30s. My parents are getting older, women have come and gone, and sometimes people just say good bye. The man I was in my 20s is not the man I am today. People change, thoughts change, and beliefs change. I went looking for my past in some old landmark and there was nothing there. I am just another cynical, broken man with a string of bad relationships and a half-realized dream. Life is made up of memories and I certainly don’t want to spend the rest of my 30s in meaningless pursuits. I went looking for an answer, but those things never come easy. The answer was never in the past, but is a nebulous beacon somewhere ahead, like Gatsby looking out across the bay.

I make my way home out of the chill and the darkness to the quiet and solitude of my clean, well lit apartment. The world is silent besides the late night drunks wandering the streets. Everything I know is half the world away, but I find solace in knowing that I am the same person here as I am anywhere else. I have a moment of doubt and feel like I have not yet done anything with my life, but it passes. I am free, I am young, and I can yet achieve anything. I have all the potential in the world, it’s just a matter of moving forward and into the unknown.