You Can't Go Home Again

The last time I went to Paris, the world was a very different place for me. I had just finished my sophomore year in college which was more or less the worst year of my life.  Fall Quarter was made of endless emotional agony which led to a Winter Quarter of excessive work  and a Spring Quarter of no work at all. To prevent getting a 0.0 for Spring Quarter, I conducted original research and wrote it into a 20 page paper in two days and then I read 1200 pages of turn of the century Anthropological studies in 36 hours to not fail the final exam. My flight to Los Angeles was three hours after my final, and my flight to Paris was eleven hours after I arrived at LAX. I was a mess.

Paris was a panacea for my woes. It was never-ending daytime filled with buttery palmiers and crispy baguettes. The World Cup was on television and we were rooting for any team that spoke French. It was my first time in a city with an efficient underground transportation system, and my first time being legally allowed to drink alcohol. The mere act of strolling down the windy backroads of Montmartre felt like heaven itself, liberation from the life that I had always known.

It isn’t only Paris’ edifices and landscapes that create such an otherworldly playground. Its also the sense that its inhabitants are somehow more than you’ve previously known—more stylish, more cultured, more swaggerful. There were tweens roaming the streets who were both better dressed and more confident than I was in all of my 19 year old glory.

I’m almost four years older now, and certainly much changed. I have taken Feminist Studies which has much altered my innards, the Sartorialist and I unintentionally wear and buy the same clothes, and I a casual foodie with a retained penchant for McDonald’s and zesty cheese.  And still, I boarded Air France Flight 73 with all intentions of coming away from Paris with the same feeling that I had last time: overwhelming and all-consuming adoration.

Paris certainly has its pleasures. Rotisserie chicken with French fries is quite possibly the greatest culinary pairing of all time and being able to order hot chocolate without being a total loser is a sign of a more advanced culture. Their bread is both delicious and affordable, and sliced ham in France is something I can and did eat every day, whereas sliced ham in the United States is something that fills me with omens of food-poisoning and bad Subway sandwiches (speaking of Subway, the French are obsessed with them). French cafes and brasseries are something that San Francisco desperately needs and their belief in outdoor seating even in the winter—and the attendant heaters that make this possible—is a platonic ideal of living that we should all try to replicate.

I left Paris not with an all-consuming adoration, but nagging questions about why I didn’t feel that way. Paris, though lovely, didn’t offer the types of transportive pleasures that it had once provided. I wasn’t moved by the taste of the croissants or the perfectly constructed crepe from the street vendor near the Pompidou. The Metro still represents a wonderful form of transportation, but one that now seemed part of the grind rather than apart from it. Montmartre seemed on the side of the world and with nothing so great to recommend visiting it. And there weren’t any clothes (or stores for that matter) that I couldn’t find in San Francisco.

Perhaps San Francisco has spoiled me rotten with its endless produce, great food at casual prices, belief in to-go cups of coffee, great bakeries (Tartine, Patisserie Phillipe, Thoroughbread), thrift stores, its east meets west high-end department stores, parks, bars, and walkable streets.

That’s certainly part of it. San Francisco has probably ruined me for most other cities. But the underlying issue is that I love San Francisco the way that I do, I’ve been able to understand what it has to offer, because I’ve had time and the type of experience that only living in a place that can provide. How can I replicate the type of love that you develop in a year to a city where you’ve spent  a total of one month over the span of four years? I wonder, if you fall in love with a place on vacation, can you fall in love with it again without actually moving there? When a home is built in 11 days, maybe you can’t go home again.

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