paris, in winter

On the plane, I read Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin and Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber. One book about cooperation, the other about losing your mind. Very fitting, honestly.

S’s flight had also been delayed, and we met around 11:30 AM at CDG. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, and we hugged for a long time, standing there in the middle of the airport. Then, because I apparently cannot let anything stay romantic for too long, I broke the moment by showing him the 1.5 star rating I found on Google Maps of the McDonald’s inside CDG. First of all, McDonald’s exists in France? The country known for cuisine as an art form? Apparently even France has its own sad little fluorescent corner of despair. We giggled together and got out of there.
S booked us an Uber to our hotel. On the way there, I kept staring out the window, enamoured by the snow and the architecture passing by. Gray buildings, bare winter trees, snow gathering on ledges, blue shadows, pretty streets I was too tired to understand properly. Everything looked very delicate yet severe at the same time. I was exhausted, but not too exhausted to be enchanted by it. Paris from an Uber was like watching a dream through glass.

We arrived at the hotel in the Latin Quarter. Our room had a burnt orange velvet couch, a wooden oak crescent-shaped coffee table, and all these warm oranges, browns, and mustard yellows that made it feel like a little amber cottage. I loved the hotel room immediately. S had picked it and booked it for us. I had no idea it existed before. Our room also had this musky vanilla scent that I still remember more clearly than almost anything else from that day.
I used the last remaining pieces of my energy to put on my flannel pajamas, gush about the room some more, and put my stuff away. After that, everything gets blurry. I cannot remember what we ate for lunch or dinner. Maybe S ordered something. Maybe we ate in bed. Things dissolved into sleep before it could become memory.

An early crisp morning, with sunlight shining through cold clouds. I put on my wool trench coat and leather boots and felt giddy, still tired, confused by time, but ready to be impressed by absolutely anything.
We walked to Rue Mouffetard and stopped by Au P’tit Grec to have their famous street crêpes for breakfast. Rue Mouffetard already felt like one of those smaller secret cities hidden inside Paris: sloped streets, bakeries, hanging signs, little shop windows, people walking through the cold in coats. Everything looked so pretty without seeming like it was trying too hard, which is the annoying thing about Paris.
We sat together eating our crêpes and questioning why they were playing cheesy 80s American music on the radio. Was this just a coincidence, or did they take one look at me, clearly American, romanticizing everything within a five-foot radius, and decide to soundtrack my entrance accordingly? There is something very funny about eating a French street crêpe in Paris while being haunted by the 80's ghosts of American malls.

It was the best crêpe I had ever had. Warm, cheesy, comforting, and excessive in the way street food should be. I ended up having another one later on in our trip.

I wish I had bought the “i’m fuckin it” McDonald's condom instead though.

When we finally reached Notre-Dame, the city shifted into a different mood. We seemed to be some of the only American tourists in the area, probably because winter in Paris does not attract the same flood of Americans that spring and summer do. Most of the voices around us sounded Spanish, Italian, British, or Russian. While S and I were taking photos together, I started feeling overwhelmed by how massive the line was to get inside. I decided not to bother visiting the interior of the cathedral due to this, which I now regret.
There is something weird about standing in front of a monument that millions of people have already stood in front of, photographed, admired, and tried to mentally possess before you. Eventually I stopped trying to have some profound reaction to it and just let myself be there, freezing, looking up at this massive gray cathedral in the middle of winter.

We walked past the Seine toward Square René Viviani, where we came across a mysterious pair of boots someone had left behind near the water. I told S that maybe this was some kind of cultural signifier, or a tribute to a dead person, or a memorial for someone missing. But even the Parisians walking nearby seemed bewildered by them. I never saw anything like it again for the rest of the trip. I secretly assigned my own symbolic meaning to them.

One thing about Paris was that smaller, random, prettier things that had no explanation and no historical importance kept interrupting the famous things I was supposed to admire more. These smaller things somehow stayed in my memory more vividly. For instance, we continued walking wherever, which felt like the correct way to experience Paris. At some point we visited a Japanese figurine shop because I wanted to purchase these adorable tiny deer figurines on display.

Then we went to Diptyque, the oldest and first Diptyque shop, located at 34 Boulevard Saint-Germain. It was so beautiful and cozy inside. Golden, shiny, gleaming glass, decadent bottles, candles, dark wooden shelves, warm light. Atiny chapel for beautiful expensive objects. The shop smelled warm, smoky, resinous. S bought Diptyque car fresheners for his family, and then bought me a Feu de Bois candle, which is a candle scent I had wanted for a while because it reminded me of the perfume Zoologist T-Rex if it were less polarizing. I remember holding the little Diptyque bag afterward like it contained something sacred.

We passed by so many flower shops during our walks, their flowers spilling out onto the sidewalks. S bought me a pretty pink bouquet, which we carried back through the cold streets to the hotel. We did not have a vase for it, so we used one of the hotel mugs, which I then accidentally spilled onto the burnt orange velvet couch in our hotel room. Romantic, but tragic. Somehow very aligned with the whole trip: beautiful, slightly chaotic, and mildly my fault. [will insert photo of flowers]

We also passed by a police propaganda/merchandise shop called "Boutique Fraternité Police", and we were actually dying in the street laughing over this for at least 5 minutes straight. In the window were these cute childlike Lego-looking figures wearing police uniforms, one even brandishing a giant machine gun with the cheerful innocence of a toy made for a six-year-old.
S and I ended up passing this shop more than ten times throughout the trip just from our walks. Eventually it stopped feeling like a random store and started feeling like a landmark, or a checkpoint.

We went to a local market to do some grocery shopping. S bought me Nivea toner, cotton rounds, milk, and fruit, while I wandered around fascinated by the cereal section. They had Kit Kat cereal and Crunch cereal, which felt both glamorous and horrifying at the same time. Actually, I'm sure these sugar-laden cereals exist plenty in America, I just never peruse the cereal section of American grocery stores. I also regrettably bought a cola-flavored Capri-Sun knockoff, and it tasted horrid. Like stale old Coca-Cola with absolutely no carbonation to redeem it.

On one of our walks, I also found these really cool vintage books at a bookstore.

Paris bookstores always felt less like businesses and more like private academic offices that opened to the public. Crowded shelves, old covers. every book was hiding from someone more serious than me.

We got back to the hotel, and I booked an appointment at Helia Nails to get a French manicure. I was pleasantly surprised by how meticulously clean and professional the salon was, especially compared to the nail salon I went to in San Jose the day before leaving for Paris for my pedicure. That salon had obviously reused a lot of supplies, with little bits of nail dust still on them, and carts of nail products that looked old and dirty. It was kind of gross. It felt like a real manicure. Relaxing, no-pressure, extremely clean, and attentive to what I wanted. The nail tech asked me questions about my preferences, took her time, and paid so much attention to detail. Nothing felt rushed or disposable. It felt professional in a quiet, calm way. It was my first ever manicure as well. Merci beaucoup, Jade. [insert photo of my nails]

Afterward, S and I headed to Il Était Un Burger for burgers and fries. Compared to the rest of the restaurants we ended up going to, this place was loud and casual. We were hit with the energy of local twenty-year-old uni students talking over each other in rapid French. After all the soft lighting, bookstores, perfume shops, and pretty winter walks, it felt refreshing to see Paris in a completely different mood. The restaurant was noisy and unbothered. Trays hitting tables, people laughing, fries disappearing immediately, everyone talking too loudly. It gave me a little glimpse of how French youth interact in a restaurant when the dining rules are not so formal. I got the Raclette Style, and it was absolutely divine.

We went for another walk out on the streets of the Latin Quarter, around our hotel, which by then was starting to feel like our own little temporary neighborhood inside Paris. Another pretty floral shop appeared (insert photo here). As we were walking, we passed by a small grocery market that had a bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice glowing in the window. It stood out to me because of how vivid the orange color was, almost unreal, like a tiny bottle of captured sun. S bought it for me, and we walked toward the Carnavalet Museum with the juice in hand.

On our way to the museum, we made several stops at different shops. I stopped by a beautiful antique shop to take photos, but unfortunately it was closed (insert photo here).

I also entered a cute vintage thrift shop called FREE’P’STAR because I wanted to buy this vintage purse that was on display. Again, it was not for sale and was only for display, which strangely never happens to me in America, where I’ve purchased things that were literally being used as display items. In Paris, the most desirable objects exist only to torment me from behind glass.

We then stopped at a chocolatier called Maison Georges Larnicol. I bought some Précieuses,Rochers des Glénan au chocolat au lait, Rochers des Glénan au chocolat blanc aux amandes, mango chocolate pearls, macadamia chocolate pearls, and a Réglette de carrés de chocolat. I ate them later throughout the trip whenever I had sweet cravings. They were incredibly sweet and rich, almost too rich, but in the way that makes you understand why sugar was treated like a luxury substance.

We then stopped at another pharmacie, where I finally got my hands on Jasmin Mint Marvis toothpaste and Limited Edition Marvis Kissing Rose toothpaste. Then I randomly stumbled upon a Ricola shop and bought four of every flavor of Ricola cough drops, which felt excessive at the time but ended up being useful because I got sick on day seven of our trip. So really, it was not excess. It was prophecy.

We then went straight to the Carnavalet Museum to learn about French history, which honestly did not interest me much besides the French Revolution. Barely. S really enjoyed it, though. I tried to enjoy it, but after a while I got tired, hungry, and bored. I knew I was standing in front of objects that were important but I could not emotionally access them. I wanted to see surrealist art, cubism, and impressionist art...

We left because I wanted food. Regrettably, over lunch, S told me there was apparently a section of the museum dedicated to Art Nouveau that I would have really loved, but I somehow could not find it. This was devastating information. We promised we would visit the museum again another day to see that section together, which of course we never ended up doing. Some parts of Paris remain imaginary because I failed to reach them in time.

We had lunch at Les Philosophes, where I had the most delicious onion soup ever. It had creamy melted cheese and veal broth, rich and golden and deeply comforting. I ordered another cappuccino alongside it, but no dessert, because the soup was so hearty and filling. I dipped a lot of bread into it and ate it slowly, until it felt less like soup and more like an entire weather system of warmth.

This was in Le Marais, an area notorious for being filled with tourists. It was crowded and overwhelming, but also beautiful in that glittering, expensive, overstimulating way. The streets were filled to the brim with luxury perfume boutiques, fashion houses, and beautiful storefronts. I was overwhelmed by the amount of perfume shops on every street, which is a privileged form of distress, but distress nonetheless.

First, we entered L’Artisan Parfumeur because I was thinking of purchasing a bottle of Mûre et Musc Extrême. It was beautiful, but such a light fragrance that I could not convince myself to buy a full bottle. I wanted a travel size, but the thing with these luxury French perfume brands is that they rarely ever sell travel-sized perfumes unless it’s a more commercialized brand like Dior. I tried a few more perfumes in the store and really liked À Fleur de Pêche and Rose Privée, but ultimately their perfumes felt too light and straightforward for me to feel justified in buying a bottle.

Next, we checked out a Penhaligon’s boutique. I tried Luna, Bluebell, Solaris, The Favourite, and Elisabethan Rose. My favorites were Solaris and Elisabethan Rose, but again, there is something about Penhaligon’s fragrances that does not fully appeal to me. They are either too generic-smelling or too fleeting. Their bottles are painfully beautiful, but the fragrances themselves are quite “meh” to me. Pretty, yes, but sometimes beauty without strangeness feels unfinished.

We also briefly checked out the Diptyque store in this area. We stepped in for approximately five seconds, said “bonjour,” and left after realizing how much we disliked the interior and vibe compared to the Diptyque shop in the Latin Quarter. By the way, Paris has a shocking number of Diptyque shops, and I kept encountering them without even intending to.

Then we went to Frédéric Malle, where I wanted to try L’Eau d’Hiver again and decide whether I wanted to buy it. I tried that along with Portrait of a Lady, which was too strong and regal for me, Iris Poudre, Music For a While, Eau de Magnolia, and Lipstick Rose. I loved Eau de Magnolia, but ultimately decided on L’Eau d’Hiver because of how absolutely complex and mind-blowing it is, especially when worn in the snow in Paris. It is simultaneously simple and understated, yet complicated and intense. I bought a full 50 mL bottle.

For dessert, we went to Carette for their classic hot chocolate. It was served in a fancy teapot with a side of French cream and a biscuit, which made the whole thing feel ceremonial. The hot chocolate itself was sweet, rich, and dense. Less like a drink and more like melted velvet. Afterwards, we started walking back to our hotel, about a thirty minute walk away. It was cold, but not unbearably cold.

For breakfast, we went to L’Arbre à Cannelle, a local crêperie near our hotel. The name translates to “the cinnamon tree:. It was very cute, cozy, and quaint inside, a warm little breakfast pocket away from the cold street. I got a sweet crêpe and an Irish coffee, which made me slightly buzzed before the day had even properly started. S got quiche and a café latte.
After breakfast, we went to an antique Japanese shop called The Bleu, where I bought this adorable bunny along with the phone charm version of her. I named her Marie, which felt like a fitting French baby girl name. She looked like a tiny French baby girl who had somehow wandered into a Japanese textile shop and decided to stay there forever. I also got these cherry blossom wooden pencils, delicate and useless in the exact way pretty things should be.(insert photo here) S had a pleasant and slightly subversive conversation with the store owner about Japanese fabrics and textile philosophies, the Edo period, kimonos, and boro. I say subversive because, first of all, the French rarely indulge in customer small talk the way Americans do. Second, the lady was Japanese, and I genuinely could not tell if she was enjoying the conversation or if S was making her anxious and she was just being polite. He was speaking in fluent English while she seemed to be struggling a little, although there was obviously a shared genuine interest in Japanese things. I think she was surprised by how much S knew, given that he is not Japanese. He is just highly interested in Japanese philosophies, textiles, and clothing styles. There was a real shared interest in the air, but I was still trying to read the room the entire time.

After that, we booked an Uber to the Sephora on the Champs-Élysées. Why? Because I could not, for the life of me, find oil blotting sheets or a pencil eyeliner sharpener at any markets or pharmacies, which frustrated me. As it turns out, shops in France have much different stock than stores in the US. In America, you can walk into a local Target or CVS and find basically every object known to civilization. In Paris, apparently, you may have to cross half the city for a tiny square of oil-absorbing paper. Sephora was the only place in Paris that had these items in stock, and I’m really glad we went. This Sephora made the Sephora at Valley Fair Mall look like a peasant’s dollar store. First of all, it was impeccably clean and actually bougie, not just new-money flashy. Their fragrance section was ginormous and had both niche and high-end brands you never see at American Sephoras, including L’Artisan Parfumeur, Nina Ricci, Issey Miyake, Narciso Rodriguez, Penhaligon’s, and so many others. Basically, brands you would usually only find at a high-end American Bloomingdale’s were just casually sitting in an average Parisian Sephora, as if this were normal. They even carried ultra-niche brands that are difficult to find in America, like Serge Lutens. I finally got to sample Insolence, a perfume that has been impossible for me to find in American malls despite its relative popularity. There are so many fragrances I refuse to try back home simply because I would have to buy $20 decants on eBay. The fanciest perfume brand my local Sephora carries is Kilian. Meanwhile, this Sephora had everything. They even had self-checkout. It was a twenty-something-year-old consumer girl’s TikTok dream, but with better lighting and actual dignity.

Afterward, we walked toward Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum recommended by S’s close friend, an art professor. I trusted his taste in museums because he has traveled around Europe visiting them and has worked on projects with other artists there. On our way, we passed by a Le Labo, where I immediately stepped inside with the directness of someone who already knew exactly what she wanted. “Bonjour.” “Parlez-vous anglais?” “Hi, I’d like to purchase a 50 mL bottle of The Matcha.” Whenever I shop at Le Labo these days, I don’t really browse. I just surrender. I love the DNA of Le Labo fragrances too much. When they labeled my bottle, I made sure it specifically said “Made in Paris,” and I did not care if I sounded like an obnoxious tourist. Paris gives objects a dignity and elegance that everything about the United States lacks. [photo]

As we got closer to Palais de Tokyo, we got a little lost and somehow ended up on the backside of the museum. It opened into this giant concrete space surrounded by Art Deco, French Beaux-Arts, and classic Haussmannian architecture. There were these massive statues and facades everywhere, including La France by Antoine Bourdelle, Allégorie à la gloire des Arts by Alfred Auguste Janniot, and nymph statues facing outward toward the Eiffel Tower. [Enter photo of nymph statue facing the Eiffel Tower] We finally got to Palais de Tokyo, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I expected to appreciate it in the polite way one tries to appreciate contemporary art when trying to be intellectually generous, but there were so many works connected to intellectuals and artists I already take interest in: Frantz Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir, Georges Bataille, Jean-Paul Sartre, Deleuze, Guattari, Michel Foucault. Many pieces were directly inspired by these thinkers, which made the museum feel less like a building full of random contemporary art and more like a concrete argument made out of theory, images, bodies, and politics.[photo examples]

S and I spent about three hours at the museum. We got photos taken of me in an analog photobooth, and then took more photos right outside the museum since the Eiffel Tower was conveniently in view. I still decided I did not care enough to get closer to the Eiffel Tower, at least not during the day. During the day it feels almost too familiar, too overproduced by postcards and keychains and every American fantasy of Paris. At night, though, it looks absolutely magical. At night, I understand. After that, we went back to Au P’tit Grec for some casual crêpes to eat at the hotel. Well, actually, I had become so tired and cold that S went to get our crêpes while I rested in the hotel room. I ate the entire thing when he came back.

For breakfast, I had another fruit bowl S made for me, and then we headed out to the most adorable Ghibli-themed café called Le Renard Café by Tomo. I enjoyed cherry blossom tea, tiny pastries, illustrated children’s books, and cute edible things that look too precious to eat. I got this Totoro-shaped pastry. S ordered vegetarian onigiri, a café latte, and some more pastries. We enjoyed ourselves, carefully and slowly indulging in our treats. I also picked up an adorable Japanese children’s storybook filled with colorful illustrations. [photos] At the end, S surprised me by buying us fox-shaped chocolates. They reminded me so much of the fox from *Le Petit Prince.

Next, we walked toward 59 Rivoli, but on our way I wanted to stop to see Sainte-Chapelle. I did not know that it required reservations to go inside, so we decided we would visit another time and kept walking. “Another time” is always the dangerous phrase of travel, because sometimes it means later and sometimes it means never... but we did end up visiting it on day __. 59 Rivoli ended up being one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. 59 Rivoli is easily one of the coolest hidden gems in Paris. It is a former squat turned artist collective, where you can explore studios, meet artists, and see amazing work up close, all for free. The whole building felt alive: staircases, paint, posters, open doors, half-finished work, artists sitting in their studios, and a rebellious energy.

I was lucky enough to meet some artists and purchase their art. Most notably, I met Francesco, who was such a sweet and welcoming artist. He spoke to me with so much enthusiasm, silliness, and grandeur, like every sentence had its own little performance inside it. When I asked if he had a smaller version of a particular painting I was interested in, he offered to draw a miniature poster of me right then and there. While he was drawing me, I said, “It looks so cute,” and he said, “Ah, Angela! Yes, it is you!” which immediately made the whole interaction feel like a scene I could not have invented better.

Another French man, whose English was not very good, came up to me and S and tried to express, with the few words he had, that he loved all humans and loved seeing us together. It took me a second to understand the tenderness of what he was trying to say. Me and S being together feels so normal to me that it did not really occur to me that other people might read us as something political or subversive, especially in France, an islamophobic country, where S had already been mistaken multiple times as Arab or Muslim. I had not thought of us as a political statement. I was literally just walking around Paris with the person I love. But inside 59 Rivoli, surrounded by art revolting against colonialism, Zionism, nationalism, and all the ugly machinery of empire, I understood why that artist seemed so happy to see us. Sometimes a couple is just a couple. Sometimes, without even trying, they become a tiny little argument against the world’s preferred separations. [insert photos of the art I bought]

For dinner, we went to Chef Gladines, a quaint French diner with affordable dinner options. I chose it on a whim because it was the closest place on my to-try list, and I regretted it pretty quickly. First of all, they used a QR code menu, which I absolutely fucking despise. I was shocked to encounter this in France, a country I naively trusted to have more dignity around restaurants. But it felt too rude to leave after being seated, so we stayed. Second, the food was quite mediocre. The onion soup was nothing like the onion soup I had at Les Philosophes. The broth was much less hearty, more dull, and there was not enough cheese in it. I ordered the Roquefort escargot and strongly disliked it, but still ate some of it by balancing out the extreme saltiness of the sauce with the side of bread. It was not that the dish itself was necessarily bad, but the sauce was way too salty, and the snails had a squishy texture that I could not emotionally get past. I knew I wanted to try escargot because a British woman had been raving about it to me, and I am glad I did, because now I know. Unfortunately, what I know is that I am not an escargot person. Although maybe it was my fault for trying it at a diner for the sake of avoiding touristy restaurants. Maybe I will try it again one day, who knows. I’m honestly more interested in fondue now. There ended up being other French dishes that I liked way more than escargot, and I am at peace with that.

For dessert, we had the most amazing crème brûlées at La Petite Bouclerie. [insert photo] After the disappointment of dinner, the crème brûlée felt like redemption arriving in a ramekin. Cold custard, burnt sugar, sweetness hidden beneath a thin glassy surface that cracked under the spoon. It was perfect.

[insert photo of our beautiful walk back] We walked back to our hotel, stepping through wet snow. By then, the cold was starting to feel less romantic and more physically painful. My ears hurt, my body was tired, and the snow was turning damp under our shoes. I could feel my throat starting to hurt too, which was the first little warning sign that I was getting sick. I slept that night with a sore throat.

Me and S went to Musée de l’Orangerie. On our walk there, we passed through the Tuileries Garden, the public garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde. In the snow, it looked almost too pristine to be real. The trees were cut into perfect winter geometry, the paths were white and quiet, and everything felt spotless and aristocratic. It was beautiful, but in a very controlled French way. Snow makes Paris feel briefly untouched.

The first thing we did at the museum was get breakfast at their café. S ordered a bitter orange tart, a pastry, a sandwich, and an ube latte. I wasn’t very hungry, so he ordered me a cappuccino. This became one of the small rituals of the trip: S feeding me, caffeinating me, making sure I was alive enough to continue walking through the cold.

When me and S peruse through museums together, we have this silent agreement to go our separate ways so that we can each move at our own pace. Whenever I go through a museum with another person, I often feel forced to match their pace, wait for them, or discuss every single thing with them, which can quickly become exhausting and overwhelming. S takes his time. I mean, he REALLY takes his time. He reads everything: every wall text, every historical note, every little plaque explaining the artist, the movement, the century, the political context, the restoration history, everything. I respect this, but I cannot live that way in a museum. I prefer to take in the art intuitively and come up with my own subjective meaning first, or let the art overcome me with emotions I cannot explain. I want to be overcome first and educated second. Too many words can make a museum feel like a chore. I think the best way to enjoy a museum is to let the art speak to you naturally before words start interfering. It also prevents me from getting too overwhelmed.

Still, i read about certain movements when i wanted to. cubism. impressionism. especially the monet section, because by then i could feel myself becoming more porous to it, more willing to be absorbed.

My favorite pieces of art at L’Orangerie were:

Before heading to the Water Lilies collection, I grabbed a croque-monsieur brioche parisien at the café to eat while contemplating. Me and S met up again at the Water Lilies collection, by far my favorite section of the museum. It featured the eight compositions of Monet’s Water Lilies, including Reflets d’arbres, Les Nuages, Le Matin clair aux saules, Les Deux Saules, Soleil couchant, Reflets verts, Matin, and Le Matin aux saules. the room were grand, meditative, cinematic.

The paintings did not feel like paintings on walls as much as atmospheres you could step into. Blue water, pale sky, reflected trees, clouds dissolving into brushwork. The canvases curved around the room like a surreal dream. I understood why people talk about Monet in the language of softness and light, but the paintings did not feel merely pretty to me. They felt endless. Water becoming sky, sky becoming water, reflection becoming memory. A garden without a horizon.

Me and S mutually agreed that the placement of the African Arts section felt very strange and out of place, as if France was apologizing and attempting to redeem itself for the evils it committed through colonization by simply placing African art inside the museum. It felt less like reconciliation and more like a country trying to curate its way out of guilt.

Throughout this morning, there was emotional tension between me and S. We had a fight the night before, and he had been quieter than usual. His silence started to bother me more and more until I could not ignore it anymore. somewhere in the snow, in the middle of the jardin, i burst into tears. My mascara and eyeliner got messy, my eyes became puffy, and I kept frantically wiping my nose and makeup with my mini pharmacie tissues. I didn’t care how I looked to the other people around us. I only cared that I suddenly wanted to go home to San Jose because of how anguished I was. I stopped caring about how I was perceived by locals and talked out loud regarding my traumasm my strong boundaries. We sat together on a bench and had a long conversation about my temper, my rigidity, and how much i had been trying to behave correctly in paris. i had been trying so hard not to seem loud, entitled, brash, american. I cared deeply about French etiquette and the “proper” way of doing things while being in Paris.
I told S that some of the ways he acted in public made me feel embarrassed and self-conscious, like when he slipped into a zizek-esque voice during Zizek impersonations that made me feel like everyone around us was staring at us. He apologized and understood me. I also had to face the fact that I was repressing who I was a lot in order to be more “Parisian,” out of fear that I would be looked down upon if I acted anything like a typical American. Some things I do without a thought in America would be frowned upon in France. I did my research. S understood, but I knew deep down that these “cultural rules” were way too strict for what I preferred, because I am an intense and individualistic person. i had studied the etiquette, followed the customs, said polite little french phrases, softened myself into what i thought the city would respect. This was my way of immersing myself culturally. Eventually, all that self-editing started to feel repressive, which added to my bottled up rage (on top of being undeniably sick).

We made up and kissed each other in the snowy garden, surrounded by bare trees and wet paths, and then headed to Librairie Gall. There, we went our separate ways again into different sections of the bookstore. Me in philosophy, poetry, and critical theory. Him in history and sociology. I bought two books: The Absence of Myth by Georges Bataille and Écrits by Jacques Lacan, because apparently my idea of a romantic Paris purchase is psychoanalysis and transgression...

We then walked to Serge Lutens, which had an incredible gothic, cool-toned, dark interior with Islamic-inspired ceilings. The bell jar shaped perfumes looked like tinctures or potions, less like fragrances and more like preserved moods. I bought De Profundis, a melancholic fragrance that immediately made sense to me. Honestly, almost every single scent I tested at Serge Lutens was a masterpiece. I would have also bought Fils de Joie if it had not been discontinued. But De Profundis was on another level. To me, it smells like the gothic cathedrals of France and the snowy concrete of Paris, surrrounded vt chrysanthemus became a fragrance. They even gave me free samples of À la Nuit*, Fumerie Turque*, Fille en Aiguilles*, and L’Eau Froide. Tiny potions.

We then walked through the Louvre garden to head to our dinner spot for the night: Les Antiquaires. I loved this restaurant. The interior walls were filled with shining antique objects, and the whole place felt warm, elegant, and slightly nostalgic. I ordered Aubrac beef bourguignon paired with a red wine: Vieilles Vignes “Côte du Py." S got ratatouille. He loved the Dijon mustard on the side and wanted to buy a bottle of it, which we somehow never got around to doing. For dessert, S got a raspberry tart. I was too full for dessert. Tragic but survivable.

After dinner, we went to a pharmacie nearby to get supplies for my illness, which I could feel creeping up on me more and more. I got mint tea, lavender tea, blanc tiger balm, and Dulcolax for the jet lag-related slowing of gut motility.

That night, I felt chills. Painful chills. We rested in bed together while it rained outside. Paris had become another city again. It became the sickroom city. Tea bags, damp coats, tiger balm, rain against the window, two tired people lying close together in a hotel room. S didn’t mind getting sick too, I guess.