Paris. I always dreamed of it, I think. Even before I knew what it was, it was a picture: age-old colonnades in washed stone by the Louvre, cyclists at dawn crossing the Seine, newspaper stands, cobblestone pavement, round tables and tiny cappuccino cups. Somewhere in some jazz club down the street lit by gas lanterns, soft piano music, the kind they play at open-air restaurants served by waiters in white aprons, plays to each of our beats. For some of us it’s La Vie En Rose. For others it’s Je ne Regrette Rien, but it’s almost always Edith Piaf, and if it’s not it’s Les Champs Elysées. No other song exists outside of these three. No other Paris can exist.
I cannot say much about the city; I have only been there once, for three days, and they were the three most beautiful days of my life. I can try to describe it in so many words, but ‘beautiful’ is the only one I use because that is how I prized and valued places. As if a city was a framed picture behind glass at le Louvre, l’Orangerie. Ranked number one on my list was architecture: palaces, well-worn brick, Grecian columns, glass domes and pyramids, houses painted like candy. Second was food: hole-in-the-walls, harsh and caustic shouts in another language, servers who throw plates five-dollar paradise like a gladiator disc at your placemat. Third was perhaps nature, but only the kind that stops you for a minute and a half and makes you temporarily forget things like buildings and cars exist. Still lakes, sunsets and the smell of earth after a rainfall earned extra points.
This was how I scoured the world for the next Great Place to Be. I didn’t know what being was; it just had to be somewhere beautiful, and somewhere new. Those were the only two qualifications. If I could step outside and take pleasure in what I saw, I would be happy.
In Paris, there is the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower. There is also depression, racial homogeny, and too many cigarettes. There is an expectation of dreams fulfilled, artistic genius discovered, aesthetic pleasures met—and a reality of long lines and overpriced apartments. You can find a good pain au croissant or cappuccino on any block, but you’ll have to learn to live without Korean Barbecue or a Trader Joe’s. No one (really, please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), I mean no one, can live on a baguette all day. That is just a false image. It is a charming one, and it belongs on a Van Gogh, but it does not belong on the streets of Paris. Give the baguette to the man begging for quarters on the side of the street.
Paris is the unconscious dream. It is the stuff of movies and postcards and first images conjured up by travel agency advertisements. My conscious dream was Los Angeles. The city of Hollywood, movie stars, and Disneyland. (I went to Anaheim twice and thought I knew California.) I begged my mom to let me apply to a UC. Instead I arrived in a suburb in Orange County, an hour’s nightmare away from downtown L.A. I spent four years religiously avoiding the Five and learning that “You’re good” actually means that they’re good. I graduated with a major I should have taken in New England. I moved into a neighborhood five minutes from school. Its greatest comforts are strip malls and ninety-nine cent taco Wednesdays.
They’re not wrong about the sunsets. The sunsets almost remind me of why I picked up my entire life (worth about two large suitcases) and moved to California. They almost make it worth it. Eating an In n Out burger in the sunset earns extra points. Park on a hill, climb onto the hood, stretch out those bare legs in denim cutoffs, and you’ve reached maximum Southern Californian. You don't even have to be within a kilometer (sorry mile) of L.A. You can be anywhere.
I think by now I’ve had my fair share of L.A. It is not an old gas lamp dream. It is a dream I did not bother picturing, because I assumed I already knew what it would look like. It’s, it’s, you know—palm trees. I should have done more research—it’s easy nowadays. Google Maps and Images is your best friend: search a few words like “L.A. freeway” or “downtown Los Angeles” and you should have plenty of good ideas. I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t even bother visiting. Paris outshined its pictures at least. L.A. was the invisible dream, a flickering thought in my head: “L.A. People talk about it. That sounds nice. I think I’ll live there.”
Los Angeles, the lost city of dreams outgrown, champagne fizzed out flat. It’s lit by solar panels and energy-efficient LED lamps, but the city is a gas lamp of its own. The American Dream is no longer everyone’s favorite nine o’clock channel. It’s being replaced by Europe, Asia, something new, something else. We drive past Tent City, loop fifty times around one block, pay ten dollars for parking and finally walk onto the streets to find that our Yelp-wishlisted restaurant is closed on Mondays. You wander for a few minutes, return to your sauna of a car, and drive out, saying sayonara, auf wiedersehen, so long. We have spent too long here, and we have seen enough. There are other cities now to visit. You were good to us for a few snapshot memories, a location tag on Instagram, a check off the old bucket list. Someone will come and love you again soon. It won’t be long. It just won’t be us.
The last gas lanterns are burning out. We may be the ones doing it. We may have to let them.