by Sandra Sheridan

Created on: March 23, 2009   Last Updated: January 17, 2010

Paris plays with you, changes you, makes you peer beneath your concept of self.  She lifts you to  a world of history and culture, of intimacy and charm, of little neighborhoods knitted together by dog-walking matrons and sidewalk-sweeping concierges.  I arrive, perhaps, as a semi-worldly traveler who has seen some of the world, and quickly discover a city the ripples gently through the metropolis and changes my view of life.

Paris offers so many unique experiences, it is impossible to remember without calling to mind little vignettes, sensory snapshot scenes of people and cafes, sun-filled parks and riverside strolls.  The Seine.  She weaves through the heart of Paris  past cobbled quays and massive stone walls, nurturing a thousand secrets, hopes, love affairs and tragedies.  I walk and look and sit and watch and hold each moment dear, memorizing each scene, as if this one trip will be my only chance to embrace Paris.

Tango dancers lock eyes and precise steps.  Partiers and picnickers gather on the banks in the dying summer sun (a particularly slow death in the summer at 10:30 p.m.!)  Revelers on river boats exchange bon vivant greetings with the father and son fishing from the river wall, the lovers on the steps who are not afraid to embrace or kiss in public.  Of course I smile.  Of course I wave back.  In this grand cosmopolitian capitol, I feel a part of the city, a part of the surprising warmth and welcome.  I take them in like a student of art, studying each stroke in the paintng - dog walkers, elder friends and the lone man in the tilted beret share the quays that seem to draw the entire city down to its storied roots.

The "clochards", the homeless who choose the Seine as their back yard, set up housekeeping beneath the bridges, their few belongings placed against the stone arches. I will not make their poverty my poetry, but they greet you with polite bonjours and seem sadly gentle, even accepting, of their plight.

One early evening, my friend and I carry our basket with wine and cheese down to the quay on Ile Saint-Louis. A student has marked his spot by the river's edge to read. Others sat as couples or in small groups to talk or play chess or simply to enjoy the setting sun. We noticed a man to our right, almost beneath the bridge. He sat in a chair with a plate in his lap. Soon, he entered a doorway we hadn't noticed and returned in a moment to toss water from a bowl into the river.

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