Paris is a Stale Dream

Many Americans who relocate to Paris cling to the idea of it being a romantic city where they will find love and happiness. They have dreamy, romantic notions of living in a city that ceased to exist long ago. They arrive in Paris with visions of themselves sitting in sidewalk cafés while wearing berets. They have the delusion they are unique, unusual, or exceptional because they live in Paris and go to well-known museums. These people don't understand they are not blazing new trails. They are walking the well-trodden paths laid out by many Americans for decades before them.

Most Americans who live in Paris have one thing in common. After being exposed to the French language, they became attracted to Paris to scraps of French life and culture when they were young. Ask an American living in Paris why they moved there, and you will receive incoherent answers replete with the usual buzzwords. The responses received are designed to lead the questioner to view the respondents as superior to others. Americans living in Paris rarely can put together a string of coherent sentences to explain why they live in Paris. They all default to comments about "art" or "culture" and expect others to view them as sophisticated, intelligent individuals.

The truth is they can't provide a convincing response to the question. The sad truth is most Americans living in Paris are self-absorbed bores who want others to believe they are something they are not. They are people who fell in love with the idealized notion of life in the city (for most, it is visions of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s) and then fell in love with the city. The problem with falling in love with a city is that a city does not love you back. Unbeknownst to those people, Paris is a stale dream, and they are walking clichés. Sadly, they are too self-absorbed to realize it.

Marla's relocation and eventual settlement in Paris was not the result of any great desire to be in Paris. She and Franca ended up in Paris, not due to any great love for the city. It was the result of a combination of a career move and personal choice.

After graduating from New York University law school, Marla had spent a few years as an Associate at one of New York's premier corporate law firms. When the firm offered her the posting to the Paris office, she and Franca did not hesitate to relocate. Paris offered Marla and Franca the opportunity to live out their love for each other, free from the prying eyes of judgmental friends and intolerant family. Two young professionals in their twenties, they settled into Paris life in an apartment on Rue Saint Séverin in the Fifth Arrondissement. Being culture vultures who prided themselves on being at the forefront of fashion and trends, the only logical choice was to settle in the trendy Latin Quarter.

Once they overcame the typical obstacles of making adjustments that everybody who moves to another city does, they set about building their life together in Paris. A small street that runs parallel to the Seine, rue Saint-Séverin is one of Paris' oldest streets; it dates from the Latin Quarter’s creation in the early 13th century. Its name is an homage to Séverin of Paris, a devout hermit who lived on the River Seine’s banks during the first half of the fifth century. Lined with restaurants, bars, and souvenir shops, it is often a boisterous street. Franca, at times, compared it to McDougall Street in New York's Greenwich Village.

The two ladies would spend almost twenty years together in Paris. It was never quite clear as to what led to the breakup of their thirty-five-year relationship. When pushed for a reason, Franca would, without any reluctance, state they had just grown apart. The love was still there, but the romance had faded. Marla would state the strong winds of their youth's love, which had served to fuel their relationship over the years, had eased to a minor breeze. Perhaps the truth was to be found somewhere in between. Relationships are tricky, and although it is easy to fall in love when young, it is not unusual for two people to move apart as they mature. Franca once said that as they moved about the chessboard of their life together, they eventually ran out of moves. "There weren't any moves left. We just ran out of moves to make." To their credit, their relationship ended on the best of terms. The two ladies still loved each other, still cared about each other; they were just no longer in love with each other. There wasn't any reason for the relationship to end badly. There wasn't any reason for their friendship to suffer, and both ensured the end of their relationship was not the end of their lifelong friendship.