Paris is not real. The city is no doubt a sight, beautiful and magnificent, it has even been called timeless. Burgeoning with history, culture, and art. It is nice to wander through, to experience and feel. But for me Paris is a macaron, past a sweet taste and an interesting texture, I do not find a macaron inspiring.

 

An old goat once said of beauty that “Anything in anyway beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it...” 

 

I take few photos wandering Paris. I find it a city of manufactured beauty –occasionally hollow. Something trumpeted so many times it has become a dull drum. This place is made to seem beautiful; it is not real. A city of lights built for moths. The Eiffel tower is not real, an ugly, pretentious beacon of rusty beams dressed pretty so that it might be seen. The Louvre is but loud stone, overwhelming and overbearing. It is a white noise of carvings, sculptures and caricatures splayed across old, ornate walls. From echoes of Greek pantheons to knock off roman pillars and looted Egyptian obelisks. This city is simulacra. A revolving monument to the ebbs and overlaps of conquest and cultures burnt deep into the conquered. 

 

At night, I find pockets of life, found beneath the assault of decadent storefront displays. Tense terraces, with tall doors hide quieter Parisians beneath their eaves while tobacco-stained conversations spew out onto the street side from night-time cafes.  Where golden light poxes an otherwise neon nightscape. Clips of polished shoes clap the streets as suits make their way home. While the cooler folk, lounge and quip daring songs in their mother tongue, laughing, and pointing at hapless tourists bumbling their way down their sacrament streets. The churches stay quiet, peaceful, and still, amongst the schizoid Parisian night. 

 

The cigarette here is an aesthetic, a mark of equality and fraternity. A Parisian answer to the tribal tattoo or an eagle feather in one’s band. Amongst the swathe of foreigners and weekend wanderers, it denotes one as Parisian. Hanging cool from the middle lip, waiting for the lighter’s fire, or tucked into the side steady, while smoked, on strides down rue st Honoré or rue des Dubois or any rue in this snaking cityscape. There is a smugness about the smoker. To be here in this place is to smoke, to throw it about in your hand like a conductor, orchestrating this city’s mad music. To be at the centre of it all is to have a cigarette lit. 

 

Don’t be fooled by the Parisian gaze, for it isn’t you they’re looking at, but their reflection they might glimpse in your eyes. They tolerate the tourist gawks because their lustful eyes and bashful smiles are reminder of how beautiful they are in their beautiful city. Dressed loud like charlatan hipsters, fashionista hopefuls and heretics of a gutted bohemia. Parisians are dressed to be seen, after all they are this cities attraction as much as the Eiffel tower or the Arc de Triomphe. A spectacle population. I’ve never seen a people not taking anything seriously, as serious as Parisians. This place is too far west of the silk road for the dharma to have reached. Everyone is something, for some reason. Here the anattā is me; no enlightenment is found beneath the leaves of Tuileries.

 

This cities story has been told as many times as it will be. Today it is covered by an autumn chill. The hum of engines scores a late sunrise. There is little life here, lonely leopards line the streets and whatever’s green grows feverishly, a madman’s beard. History has covered the land, suffocating it, roots upend the cobblestone paths in this city of pigeons and pigeon shit covered stone. 

 

Maybe I’m missing something of Paris, or maybe Paris is missing something of me. Today it is a pretty place for pretty people. All since chewed and digested, stagnant and stale. Past a sweet taste and interesting texture. Paris is a macaron; a macaron does not inspire me. 

 

~

 

The Parisian soul sells itself out to the tourist mob. The sites of triumph, thought and emotion are now swarmed and sold, and I cannot breathe, between what is and what was there isn't much. But on the hill of martyrs, in the cathedral of Sacre-Coeur, under the stench of incense and rolling renditions of hallelujah, I’ve found something. Something real. Real beauty, in a city otherwise starved of it. 

 

This place is sacred; something fills the room in an otherwise empty Paris. Beauty unbridled as it asks for nothing; only a fool asks for the prostitute’s heart, or pays a penny for their soul. Paris is here, in song, in prayer, the beating heart of this timeless city is kept in the faith of the revellers. Staunch against the swarm of tourists storming in from their temple-side merchant tents. Ravenous travellers, desecrating the fringes of this place, welcomed, and ushered in on guided tours of ancient murals, faithful souls, and blood-soaked stones. The candles here melt but this flame burns eternal, not in god. But because of whatever comes of the worship, of the song. I see tourists ignore the signs; “no photos,” snapping, lapping up any aesthetic that might paint them in the light they want to be seen. Narcissists in berets of cheap wool and fanny packs, fat. But who could blame them? These ravenous souls, so parched of real beauty. Who could blame the thirsty for drowning themselves in what water they find? 

 

There is an absence in Paris. One interrupted by the jangling of coins in plastic cups, by beggars sitting cross legged, precariously on the pavement. Their song can be heard beneath the hum of the cars, its musicians seen beneath waistlines squeezed by Prada belts, and between the see-sawing of legs and fat shopping bags. Paris is built to be seen, but what of what this city hides? Did the catacombs become so full that the wayward bodies now find their way into concrete nooks, where the young bodies play along highway backyards? 

 

But for me this absence is real. For me this absence is Paris. 

 

Paris is a mutt you see, a melting pot of all it is not. In Tuileries, you’ll find a glimpse of this, a peculiarity. The Rose-Ringed parakeet, light green interlopers with striking streaks of blue beneath their wings. These birds stand out in this town of dull gulls and pigeons pecking at cobblestones for grubs. They’re elegant, reminiscent of wild, sun struck places. They arrived in the 70’s from Africa and the Indian Subcontinent - escaping Charles de Gaulle airport, not set on being pets. They light up the autumn coat of Tuileries, speeding, spectacled flashes of green. These birds are Paris, but not as Paris would have you believe. 

 

Paris is emergent, a far grander sum of its parts. It is not without these parakeets. A menagerie of cultures, people, and things. Paris is breathing, and while much of it yearns to be seen. There is still beauty here hiding in plain sight. Don’t let the marches and high arches distract you, from what life and beauty you might still find in this has-been city of bees.