Parc Monceau

Writing this post has been somewhat difficult because I did not have any epiphanies while walking around Parc Monceau, and consequentially (rather apparently) nothing to write about. I feel that I have not, recently, thought about anything of value. While on the train to Parc Monceau I put in my headphones and tuned out the world.

I've been feeling increasingly detached in Paris, which was, at one point, a utopian city in my mind. This is not to say that Paris is the problem, though, but me. I have stopped walking aimlessly though the city, both from exhaustion but mostly because of this pervasive loneliness I feel creeping into my life. Every relationship brings me further from companionship, every romantic fling brings me further from love. I cannot afford the high prices of coffee and alcohol in the brasseries. The only true luxury I allow myself is the box of cigarettes I buy at the beginning of the week, which has, in recent weeks, become two.

Upon arriving at Parc Monceau, I noticed myself comparing it to Washington Square Park. Kids from the school nearby were on their lunch break, and the park was flooded with them - greeting friends, moving around, talking, playing. How fortunate are they, as children, to be ignorant, and how ironic it is that once they grow to understand and appreciate youth, they will have spent it.

I walked past a man standing against a tree. He stared off into space and as I passed I could feel him watching me though his peripheral vision. I tried not to effect his reverie, and in passing him again later, I noticed he looked a bit disturbed. I sat down in a field later, and the sun rose just to warm the ground I was sitting on. The grass was lit just in a way that reminded me of the beauty of nature, the beauty that reminds me of the ephemerality of everything.

Where life is compared to a walk, the born saunterer Thoreau talks of, who can spend his life in a perpetual pilgrimage, is the man apt to live his life like a walk, where the final destination is inevitable, but its location in time and space is yet to be revealed to him. I talked about this a lot last semester in New York, with people who shared the same pathos for wandering as I. Vis ta vie, elle est courte, aujourd'hui peut être la dernièr, etc., mais je me demande pourquoi je ne suis pas morte encore. 

Je suis quittée de Parc Morceau autour du metro Villiers, et je suis revenue chez moi. J'ai commencé d'écrire ce post, mais je ne pouvais rien écrire. J'ai mangé un sandwich et j'ai fumé une cigarette sur ma balcon.