Words and images by Geo Ong
In the introductory chapter of his book Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris, Graham Robb recounts his time as a younger man in the City of Light: ‘I came to know Paris well enough to realise that I would never really know it.’ He later concludes the chapter with
A tourist who follows an uncharted course like a train of thought, only later, after retracing the puzzle of streets on a map, recognises how much knowledge can adhere to the accidental experience.
I recalled my very brief visit to Paris a few years ago. Despite the city seeming positively exhausted by portrayals in the media, I found Paris extremely foreign, enchanting in its mystery, and I came away feeling my love unrequited due to its imperviousness, or rather, my inability to penetrate its core (minds out of the gutters, people!). A large part of this feeling of inadequacy is quite simply that I cannot speak French. That, coupled with the fear of being ridiculed as an American stereotype, kept me practically voiceless the entire three days there.
I often envy those who can transplant themselves effortlessly into foreign environments—the task, while I never shy away from it, is always met with a double dose of apprehension on my part. However, I don’t think I’d ever fully trade in my quiet contemplation, for with ease usually comes security, and that security oftentimes results in complacency. Robb again: ‘So many people chose to live in a city that poets habitually described as Hell because it offered the priceless blessing of oblivion.’
Generally speaking, you feel safe in your home environment. (I, of course, don’t speak of safety in terms of not getting mugged in a dark alley at night. By safe, I mean that one knows what to expect. In a new environment, anything can happen, be it good or bad, including getting mugged in a dark alley at night. —And having said that, I needn’t clarify the fact that one has an equal chance of getting mugged in a dark alley at night whether one is in Paris, New York City, Los Angeles, or London. Isn’t that comforting?) Scenery becomes routine—you no longer pay much attention when you walk from one place to another. In a new, foreign environment, your eyes (as discreetly as possible) scan every street sign, note every storefront, regard every landmark, and read every face.
In Satori in Paris, Jack Kerouac spends ten days total in Paris and Brest with a plan to trace the ancestors who share his name. But Kerouac travels like he writes: with no direction, just feeling. Allowing the scent of cognac to dictate his journey, Kerouac realises that he has strayed from his original itinerary. He takes one more sip of cognac and writes
Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how ‘successful’ your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts. [...] As usual I was simply concentrating everything in one intense but thousandéd ‘Ah-ha!’
