delirious on the train from Florence to Rome

When I wrote my pathetic woe-is-me homesick-in-the-most-beautiful-city-in-the-world post, I asked at the end, “How weird is that?” Turns out, according to my newfound hero Adam Gopnik, it’s not weird at all. (By the way, when I read the bit I’m about to quote, I had one of those deeply satisfying “yes” moments you’re supposed to reserve for writers like Sartre, when you realize that hell really is other people. This may be sacrilegious, but then, isn’t all hero-worship?) In his book Paris to the Moon, Adam, who despairs when his son displays an agonizing Frenchness in his approach to playing soccer, recounts how he began crafting a bedtime story for the three-year-old about baseball. The story, he hopes, will both tie his Parisian-bred son to America (and to New York; the star player pitches for the Giants) and soothe his own homesickness. Of the latter, he writes,

“The things an American who is abroad for a very long time misses – or at least the things I missed – I was discovering, weren’t the things you were supposed to miss. …The things Americans miss tend to involve that kind of formlessness, small, casual, and solitary pleasures. A psychoanalyst misses walking up Lafayette Street in her tracksuit, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup with the little plastic piece that pops up. My wife, having been sent the carrot cake that she missed from New York, discovered that what she really missed was standing up at the counter and eating carrot cake in the company of strangers at the Bon Vivant coffee shop. I thought I missed reading Phil Mushnick in the sports pages of the Post; when I read him online, I discovered that what I really missed was reading Phil Mushnick on the number 6 uptown train on a Monday morning around 10.” (Paris to the Moon, 206-207)

Yes. Deeply, satisfyingly, yes. I only got it right when I wrote about needing to walk down Broadway at dusk and wanting to drive to the Cathedral in the morning, but I realize now that the other bits are just covers for what I really miss. My Columbia boys – sure, I suppose I must miss them somewhere, somehow, but what I actually miss is delicately shoveling Ethiopian food into my mouth with my fingertips at Awash alongside Amar and Josh. Snickers – of course I miss him, but what I actually miss, morbid as it is, is walking into an otherwise empty house, checking that the comatose dog is breathing, and then waking him up because, each time, I’m so overjoyed he’s still alive that I can’t help but jump on him.

Anyway, I tried, about two months ago, to recreate the walking-down-Broadway-at-dusk feeling. I had just been completely and utterly rejected romantically (French butchers, if you request it, will hack a thick slice from a chunk of beef that is so red and vivant that you can imagine it having mooed several days ago, thunk it down on the counter, where it will resignedly ooze a little blood, and then pound it with a mallet until it has been relieved of any semblance it once had to something you might find at the Tanner farm; this, I theatrically imagined, was a perfect metaphor for my heart), and couldn’t bear being around my flatmates’ silent sympathy. I fled my apartment into the drizzle of a February evening, setting off north down the rue Saint Jacques, towards the Seine. I crossed at the Pont de Notre Dame, lapped the Ile de la Cité, and then headed further north into the Right Bank. I wandered past the Hôtel de Ville into the Marais, up rue de Temple. It was a perfect night for my dramatic moonings: the mist of an almost-rain turned the evening sky a bruised purple, and the streets were, for once, practically devoid of tourists.

The problem was, while it’s easy to get lost in Paris, you never quite get lost the way you mean to. Parisian loneliness is unique to Paris in a way that, I suppose, New York loneliness is unique to New York. Adam calls New York’s brand “a scuffed-up soulfulness.” In New York, this can be accessed simply by stepping out your front door, no matter what the weather. In Paris, it is a state that, much like nirvana, must be achieved, and very rarely – if ever – is. Adam continues, “In Paris, no relationship, even one with a postman or a dry cleaner, is abstract or anonymous.” I agree, but would like to take it one step further. A character in another book I just finished, Arthur and George, by J. Barnes, mentioned his desire to be married in general, rather than in particular. I think that this distinction can be transferred to New York relationships versus those in Paris. In New York, you are allowed to disappear if you want because people look at you generally; a waiter smiles while taking your order in general, a man waking his dog grunts good morning in general, the girl sitting next to you in class asks if you’re prepared for the test in general. In Paris, this anonymity is nearly impossible to find. The waiter smiles at you (or not) in particular, the man grunts (or not) in particular, and, like as not, the girl in class doesn’t even look at you – however, she is not looking at you in particular. The same, I think, can be said for things and places. In New York, it’s easy to let everything be obscured in a blanket of oblivion: yes, this is the corner where I fell and scraped my knee in those painful new heels Carmen convinced me to buy, but it’s also just a corner in general. Pont Neuf, where I was once kissed in the rain (a dream come true, incidentally; what girl doesn’t long to be kissed in the rain on the Seine in Paris?), will never be a bridge in general. I had an amazing dinner with friends last spring at the Blue Water Grill in Union Square, but it isn’t really a restaurant in particular, whereas the café with 1.50€ espressos on rue Sufflot will never be a café in general.

Thanks to this, it is impossible to be abstract or anonymous – the people around you forbid anonymity, the crêpe stands and sidewalks conspire to keep you from abstraction. I found no consolation in my failed attempt to recreate the Broadway-at-dusk feeling, in my failed search for scuffed-up soulfulness, but I take refuge in the fact that I remember Broadway walks in general, while I will always remember that walk in particular. I find that it’s impossible to have the formless pleasures we enjoy in New York and long for in Paris when everything – everything! – in Paris has a form.