Look Who It Is
To see my whole self I had to stop believing the stories I told
For as long as I’ve been going to Paris I’ve been trying to bring home a piece of who I am there. It’s what’s always driven me to buy things. Like wearing only perfume that I got in Paris, as if there were some alchemy that would make me who I am in Paris when I’m not-there.
Because for as long as I've been going to Paris I’ve been someone else there. I realized that while writing a feverish love letter to the city during a workshop a few years ago, when I finally managed to distill into words the feelings that I have for this place, the place that I was convinced is my real life while the life at so-called home is a dream. Since that meant the version of me in Paris is the real me, who does that leave when I’m not there? I guess someone just marking time till the next trip? Enveloping herself in things from Paris in a futile attempt to be someone else.
Then, in January 2025, fleeing the home that wasn’t, not since our country elected a monster, I went to Paris to stay. For a few months anyway, looking for a way to be that person for more than a few fleeting days. Looking to be her for real.
Cold and rain-soaked weeks in a large city far from everyone I loved, a city where I'd lost my truest power - my words - destroyed the illusion that Paris was the magic answer. From the pieces I picked up, though, I’d come to a reckoning.
Paris is where I go, I wrote in my journal one morning, the reality coming into focus even as the words materialized on the page. It’s not where I stay.
With only myself for company, there was plenty of time for that unraveling of everything I believed about this place, and about who I was in it, to sink in. The question remained, though: where did that leave the me that shines in Paris?
It wasn’t my first time coming undone in Paris. With my husband Brian we’d landed there in September 2023, dust still clinging to our clothes from the previous night’s 6.8 earthquake in Marrakech, the earthquake that sent us and the entire city fleeing our beds into open squares for the night.
When I could string sentences again, I took to Facebook.
Alienated.
Alien.
What I don’t know how to do now is talk to people who weren’t there. People who think the earth is solid under their feet and that homes and churches and buildings are permanent.
I walked 10 miles around Paris yesterday but I don’t know my way around anymore. I’ve lost my internal compass in this city, the place that I could find my way around blindfolded.
I can’t stay an alien from everyone I know and care about but there are three people now. The one before. The one during. And the one now.
Brian was going home and I was scheduled to stay in France two more weeks -- some travel writing and some Paris time. I was terrified to be on my own, but, “It’s probably better to stay here where I’m already surrounded by strangers, where they don’t know who I’m supposed to be, and I don’t have to pretend,” I wrote. “Where maybe I can figure out which of the three people I am now and how that fits when I get back.”
By early March ‘25, frustrating French classes were behind me and the desolate winter was truly giving way to spring. My friend Karter from home hopped over from a trip to London, bringing his exuberant energy and a reminder of where I’m from -- and a fresh way of seeing myself here. Before he arrived, I felt invisible in a conspicuous way. With him I felt unremarkable in a good way: just another pair of people in a flurry of vintage shops and sidewalk cafes, disappearing into the crowds. By the time he left, the solitude of those first weeks was a memory of someone else, someone who’d worn a scarlet A for Alone.
Now I didn’t feel alone so much as just … in a space between being with people. My friend Diana would be here next week, and for two days after Karter left I criss-crossed the city by foot. I still missed my people at home, but the movement settled me. I felt the first sense of peace since I’d landed.
Then on a Friday morning promising sunny skies, I climbed out of the narrow bed in my 20th arrondissement studio at an hour I hadn’t seen since arriving. My ever-so-sweet and thoughtful best friend Mike had booked a massage for me at a hotel spa, and the rush to get out the door that morning meant there wasn’t time for my daily journal ritual. Instead, I tried something different while I got ready.
I talked to Claude, the AI ‘assistant’ from Anthropic. “I can feel time winding down,” I said. I didn’t want the image of sand slipping through an hourglass to torture me. “We only have the moment that we're actually in,” I said. “And so, truly, what difference does it make how many more come after when we can't be in them?” My approach, I mused, would be to focus on finding awe and wonder, because a particular fascination of mine is how experiencing each affect our perception of time, “even to the point that I sometimes think time is a construct,” I told the mechanical familiar in my phone, who agreed that was a sound approach.
Then off I went, stopping to drink up the chilly sunshine at Cafe les Deux Gares, warming my hands on a café crème and thinking how lucky I was to have a friend who would do such a kind thing, how grateful and a bit surprised I was to finally feel at home here after the embattled first weeks.
Still deep in thought, I made my way into the hotel down a side street. Directly to the elevator, my finger poised to press the ‘down’ button for the spa when I whirled around at the sound of my name, my name in an American accent, to see … Mike. Did I freeze? I think I froze. “Look who it is,” he said, our little joke, what we say in our ‘talking to the dogs’ voices whenever the other comes to visit.
Sometimes I think I’d love to see a video of that moment. The shock, the incomprehension, the dazed recognition that yes, that’s my best friend I've missed so terribly standing here in front of me. But I’ve decided it lives best in my memory. I asked Claude afterwards what happens neurologically when there’s an epic surprise like this, and the psych major in me is mesmerized by the AI description:
When Mike appeared unexpectedly in Paris, your brain experienced a profound reality-expectation mismatch that triggered a cascade of neurological responses …this created what neuroscientists call a "flashbulb memory" - encoded so differently from normal memories that it may remain vivid for decades.I hope that you, reading this, have had the occasion to feel something as electrifying as I did in that moment. It was these great, towering cascades of joy that built one on the other. It’s Mike! He’s here! He’s here to see me! He’s in Paris! He’s not just here this moment, I get to show my best friend the place that means so much to me!
What I don’t recall is the moments between arriving at the elevator alone and flinging myself at Mike, sobbing, but I recall seeing his tie peeking out above his sweater because of course he wore a tie, in coach, on the red-eye to Paris. I think I sputtered some questions. How are you here? When? What? Then announcing that I think I should sit down before my knees dissolved and I dropped into the nearest chair, still asking questions between tears.
When I pulled myself together and realized I was making a scene, someone from the hotel was asking if we still wanted a massage; she was apologizing that they only had one available. An audience with the creator of the universe themself couldn’t have pulled me away from my friend at that moment. His room was ready, she said, so instead of heading down in the elevator by myself, I ascended with Mike, looking still rather agape at him.
The best thing about the surprise -- never mind, there are so many there’s not one best, but a best thing about the surprise -- was I didn’t have time to plan and fret and obsess over making everything perfect. The other best thing was that Mike arrived at the precise moment he did. I’d made it through the hard part and proven to myself that I could do it. And I’d done it without the thought of this on the horizon buoying me. He’d had a hard time not telling me, he said, the night he called at the moment I was spiraling after the great biscuit catastrophe.
We were to bring a dish from home to a potluck my final day of French class. After a two-hour interview with an Appalachian chef back home for an article, a conversation that turned to what it means to be from a place you don’t feel you belong, that showed me it’s possible to find -- or create -- community anyway, I was on fire to make biscuits. And this, my first overture toward home? I fucked up, adding citric acid instead of sugar to the dough.
Despite my tears when I answered Mike’s call, he managed to protect the surprise. Then, I rallied. Looked around the kitchen, and with beans and duck fat, ham and foie gras, made bean soup that was the best damn version of a dish I’d grown up eating.
And the other best thing about the surprise? Just as I was wondering how to not have one eye always on the clock, my time-blind friend showed up. (Yes, that’s a real thing; have I mentioned he has ADHD? And I don’t mean the kind people claim to have when they’re just scattered.) The only thing in the world for a person with this kind of ADHD is what is in front of them right now. So for four days time had no connection with our experience. What does that look like?
Come with me to the second afternoon of Mike’s visit, a Saturday. After a spin around my Paris in a teeny yellow vintage Citroen under achingly blue skies, we encountered some ethereal creatures posing in the middle of Rue de Rivoli as a camera crew click-click-clicked. It was (isn’t it always?) Fashion Week in Paris, and we were at the Jardin des Tuileries. The long-legged creatures in their shimmering gowns began to slink one stiletto in front of the other, seeming to glide just above the ground that we mortals trod upon. “They’re walking, they’re walking!” we shrieked, clutching one another as we clomped along after them, ogling before we erupted into unhinged laughter as we realized how absurd our reaction was to seeing … human beings … walk down the street.
We laughed until tears stung, then I talked our way into one of the palace hotels that was definitely not seating anyone for tea sans reservations, but somehow I conned into allowing us to use their WC. After snacks at a coffeeshop where we posted up on stools by the window taking note of the dress and communication rituals of the Fashion Week crowd in their native habitat, I took Mike back to the Tuileries to witness the unbearable beauty that is golden hour in Paris. The light gilding the very air, the Eiffel Tower unperturbed in the distance, the green chairs scraping across gravel as the game of finding a seat around the fountains played on, still another photo shoot, the people, people everywhere.
We crossed from the gardens toward the courtyard of the Louvre, look, friend, there’s the famous pyramid, and how can this building be so stupendously beautiful and it’s only one, just one among so many in this city, we marveled to one another, and “let’s take a selfie,” Mike said, and never have I heard him say that, I’m the one who takes the selfies.
A woman nearby like a pied piper with an over-sized bubble wand, casting great, glistening bubbles that drew every child within a hundred meters to dance under their ephemeral magic. “She’s doing it just for the joy,” Mike said in wonder. Well, yes, and the coins. I dropped some in her cup and she stopped me, motioned for me to follow the children's lead, and have a photo. I looked his way, half embarrassed, half joyful, and spun around as the gossamer gold floated about me like champagne bubbles escaping their glass that I’ve long dreamed were me.
Time, what is time, but we had dinner reservations at the Italian outpost of Frenchie, and I LOVE Frenchie, and Mike will never say that he wants something in particular because he prides himself on being user-friendly, but I’d cajoled out of him that he maybe wouldn’t mind having some pasta, and lucked into an opening at the decidedly unParisian time of 7:30, but they would only hold this first-seating table for 15 minutes and we needed to get back to his hotel and change, so it was time to go. We crossed with the crowds and made it to Palais Royale metro.
(This is the one with the enchanting colorful, glass bead site-specific installation by artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, which as it turns out, is meant with its two domes to embody “temporal duality.” What even is that? I swear you can't make this shit up and I only discovered it in writing this; it's the philosophical concept that time exists in two states simultaneously: the one told by the clock and the one we actually experience.)
And there! In the square by the metro a group of people were dancing their hearts out, all beaming faces and swinging limbs, and how could we not stop and watch, noting which ones were the most exuberant, our own heads bopping along and toes tapping, all beaming faces ourselves. I did something silly, I don’t remember what, and nearly tripped on the piles of backpacks the dancers had cordoned off, and “that’s what you get,” Mike said, laughing at me, and in that moment it didn’t matter what time it was or when dinner was or what the previous two months had been, in that moment, wonder at Paris showing her magic, awe at seeing it with my friend and through his eyes, wrought their timebending power and the whole world was that square and those dancers and my friend laughing.
I realized when I got home and saw on my little blackboard where I’d scrawled our hastily assembled schedule because I’m the one who does things like that, that dinner wasn’t booked at 7:30, it was at 7:15. We were late as it was, but if I had remembered the time correctly, the trajectory of the afternoon, that day, would have changed. We would have missed those moments that joined with the others from those few days that collectively formed what I came to understand was the inverse of the earthquake.
Sanctuary can give way at any moment, I had learned in my bones that shook in a seismic event. But the love of a friend who sees you, who values you, and who will go to ocean-crossing lengths to be sure that you know it, that? That is something we can have faith in like we can never count on the ground below our feet.
How long can you stay, I finally thought to ask that first morning. I have to leave Tuesday, Mike replied, somewhat wistfully. Tuesday. Tuesday!? We get today, tomorrow, the next day, AND the next day, I thought. An eternity stretching before us to share my Paris with my friend, my friend who'd never been here. I barely knew what to do first. So we walked, as I always do in Paris. He had a chocolate pastry. We had coffee at my favorite hotel, on the greenery-wreathed terrace where Paris life with all its bicycles and dogs and impossibly fabulous people unfolded around us. We joined the throngs along the Seine as the sun set, we went to a ridiculously fancy dinner that was meant to be rooftop but because it was inside we ended up seeing no more than our own reflections in the glass. Two faces illuminated by candlelight and joy at this reunion, and this opportunity to see, together, the place where I am my most true self.
Mike began to not only see my Paris, but to weave his way into it. He’ll never just hear these stories again, I wrote in my journal. He's part of them. He’s been to my produce shop and couldn’t contain his smile seeing me chat (en francaise!) with the shopkeeper. Come to my coffee shop and positively glowed talking with the baristas who knew my order.
He even talked to a little bird that hopped on a cafe chair, chirped bonjour to him in the way that we had been doing with each other constantly, trying to mimic the exact way we heard it a hundred times a day. His eyes lit up when I gave him a taste of ice cream on Rue des Martyrs, a cone that was like burying my face in a bouquet of fresh mint, and that was one, just one of the instances that I knew he got it. He got Paris. He got what I loved about it, what drew me here time and time again with such an irresistible pull. He might even be starting to love it himself.
Mike came to Paris when he thought I might not come home, at least not for good. On his final afternoon, sitting side by side at that table where we chirped with a bird, the cafe on the same square where the dancer’ joy overflowed, where art asks what is time, I got to tell him what I’d learned. This isn’t where I stay. And he didn’t say and didn’t have to say because I already knew: he would stand aside and encourage me to go if that’s what I needed to do to be ok, to be me, but he was glad that’s not what it would take.
We stayed in the moment, through the flea market; through breakfast, brunch, lunches, dinners; through miles, miles, of walking; through the dazzling Dolce & Gabana exposition, through hitting my haunts like the Hemingway Bar -- where I’d once texted Mike that if he ever wanted to know what money smells like it smells like the Ritz Paris -- and now we were here making fun of the one percent who could identify each other in the wild and sniffed us out as interlopers immediately; through adventures with the metro, the teacher herding a field trip who let Mike squeeze through the turnstile with her when his ticket wouldn’t work; until almost the very end. We lingered at a table outside a Montmartre hotel cafe after dinner, just us and our chocolate cake for so very long that when Mike went inside to ask for the bill the waitress looked at him in the way that only a Parisian server can and asked, “where even are you?”
We stayed relentlessly in the moment until the Uber came to deliver us back to his hotel where I had to muster the courage to call my own Uber, to say goodbye to my friend for another month. I couldn’t stand to leave directly from there, from the lobby where I'd walked in alone and heard my name. We went to a tiny park down the street, a square where the trains rumbled underground. The car would arrive to take him to the airport in, what, seven hours? I had been so alone for so long. I had found a way to be alone with myself and to be ok. And now I had spent these four days that already felt like a dream with my best friend and he had to go and it would just be me again.
We sat on a bench, huddled close for warmth and for missing each other already. My phone glowed in my lap, the Uber queued up and finally I punched the button. There it came. Mike opened the door and I got in and he slipped a lip balm, the good one, his Aveda one that I’d been borrowing every day, into my coat pocket (except it was his coat he’d bought that day and that I'd put on for the walk and forgotten to give it back) and he closed the door and I sped away on my own, as my friend stood alone under the Paris streetlights.
In 2022, in the wake of the July heat wave that gripped Europe, I wrote an essay on what Paris is to me. What I am in Paris, and how different that version is from the me at home. I spent several days workshopping that essay with editor and icon Don George, but I couldn’t figure out how to finish it. The essay had begun like this:
I dream, sometimes, that I’m speaking French. Words that dance below the surface when I’m awake in the world, so many tiny fizzing bubbles at the bottom of a champagne flute, spring free, colliding on their rise to the top where they burst, giddy with their freedom. It’s Paris where I’m talking in these dreams, of course.
I was staying at Hotel Babel in Belleville that week, high above Paris. In the breakfast room, a Moroccan fantasy, I opened my laptop. Read the waiting draft again. I looked at the tattoo inside my left wrist. I still don’t know where the words came from, but I started typing, and this came out:
Last year an artist in Paris tattooed a coupe of champagne on my wrist. That wasn’t enough, I realized. “Add ‘oui,” I asked.
In the tattoo, one sparkling bubble floats above the glass free, released from its transparent cage. Sometimes I dream that’s me.
What happened when my friend came to Paris, when someone who knows me, who sees me -- all of me, not the fragments that I present to the world or the performances I give on social media -- who loves me for everything that makes me me, even when I’m my most flawed and even when I’m maddening or disappointing or any of myriad ways we can be human, when he showed up with no warning, when he crossed an ocean to see me as I am, I forgot not just about time. I forgot I was supposed to be Dana in Paris.
“Without my thinking about it or realizing it, it was just me. In Paris,” I wrote in my journal a few days after Mike left. “No more different versions. I don’t really know what that means.”
This was too big. Too much to have ricocheting in my head. So I got up one morning and walked to Belleville, to Hotel Babel. At the same table in the breakfast room from those years ago, I got out my paper and pen.
“I thought, if I could come here and sit … that this new puzzle piece could be put into words, like before when I finished the essay with the line about the bubble...’”
That bubble I’d dreamed was me. My pen hovered over the page for the sheerest of moments before continuing.
“I think maybe it’s me now. It’s not a dream anymore.”
Loved this!
Awww Dana! This is perfect!