Synaptic

I chose the piece first because like all good travel writers, Emily knows her place–in this case, Paris and its Metro. But also like all good travel writers, Emily is still able to find surprise and wonder in that place she knows so well.

– Keith Ratzlaff

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The Métropolitain, Paris’ subway system, consists of sixteen lines, numbered 1-14, 3bis, and 7bis (bis essentially signifies a division, like saying 7a in English). The stops are all named for significant events, people, and points of interest within the city such as Invalides (the name of the building where Napoleon’s tomb is) and Père-Lachaise (named after the cemetery that houses Jim Morrison and Édith Piaf, among others). Most stops share the same aesthetic features of wrought iron fences surrounding the stairs leading underground and a sign displaying what line the stop is on. After entering the stop, a rider approaches ticket-vending machines and a service counter with employees wearing surprisingly chic and well-tailored navy blue and mint green uniforms. For some reason, there is typically a photo booth in this area; I have no idea why.

A regular rider scans a prepaid monthly pass on a purple pad on one of the turnstiles just past the counter. This is followed by a hallway that bisects into two stairwells leading to platforms facing each other. The walls behind each platform display giant advertisements and cobalt blue signs with the name of the stop in white letters. In the hallway just past the turnstiles there are signs listing the next stops on the line and displaying big arrows pointing toward the appropriate platform for each direction. Riders who get on a train going in the wrong direction can use this hallway to change trains without exiting the stop. There were only two times when I did this. The second time was no big deal, but maybe that’s because I learned so much from the first time it happened.

The intern from my service learning at the Centre Socioculturel Belleville, an NYU student, invited me to play board games with her friends in the Latin Quarter, close to Place d’Italie. It’s a part of Paris that’s so charming the streets actually seem sort of clean. I remember being disappointed that the café where we were did not serve alcohol, especially because we were playing a boring French strategy game about creating a civilization. When the game was finally over, we walked to Les Gobélins (a stop named for a factory, not a mythical creature), chatting about a little bit of everything. They asked me which way I needed to go and I glanced at the sign, deciding I needed to go the same way as them. After all, I was taking the 7, which I felt I knew like the back of my hand since I used it almost every day get to school, go grocery shopping, or change trains trains at Châtelet-Les Halles, the world’s longest subway stop, to go to my service learning.

It wasn’t until after the other Americans had gotten off the train that I realized what I’d done. The signs at Les Gobélins were oddly placed, so I completely missed the fact that I went the wrong way, winding up about nine stops in the wrong direction from my foyer (residence hall) at Île Saint Louis. By now it was midnight on a Thursday night. The trains wouldn’t run for too much longer. I was at Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, three stops away from the terminus of the line in the suburbs (the French equivalent to the Projects) and I needed to get to Pont Marie at the city center before a) the trains stopped running and b) my residence hall began its nightly lockout hours, a so-called safety precaution lasting from 1:30 to 5:30 a.m. I completely exited the stop and re-entered, as I couldn’t find the stairs leading to the hallway that would allow me to change platforms without going through the turnstiles. There was no one behind the counter and the lights were off. I saw on a TV monitor that there were buses running, but I never understood the bus system in Paris and I wasn’t about to start that night. The few other people on the platform were the less-than-romantic representations of life in Paris: A tired Eastern European-looking family with a baby. A woman in a short black skirt and boots who would probably throw me onto the electrified tracks if I looked at her the wrong way. Two men, presumably of North African descent, walked by smoking what was either marijuana or incredibly pungent cheap cigars and yelling in some language other than French. The digital display suspended from the ceiling that had been ominously blank revealed it would be twenty minutes until the next train. The lone woman walked away, exasperated.

I thought about my program director, Mme Cavaness’ warnings of pickpockets, the perceived vulnerability and obliviousness of Americans, the apparent lack of employees at the station, and how few minutes I had on my phone, making the prospect of successfully calling her in a panic highly unlikely. I took out my French newspaper and put on what Americans describe as my bitch face, attempting to blend in. I mentally chanted to myself, “Don’t look scared. Don’t look scared. Don’t look scared.” No one appeared to pay attention to me, but that didn’t mean I trusted them. After all, the best criminals are the ones no one suspects. Finally, I could hear the train approach. A few moments later it rolled into the station. I bolted to the doors, aggressively turning the handle to open them. I must have been visibly tense for the entire ride. Not many weeks before, a friend of mine riding the last train home on the edge of the city had been forced to get off two stops before hers. This meant she had to walk forty-five minutes by herself during the only time of day when there is violent crime in Paris. At least she was in a neighborhood she somewhat knew; I was taking a serpentine line that stretched throughout the city, so the odds of me finding my way home, let alone doing it on time, were next to none. To make matters worse, I had no cash for taxi fare and people who use ATMs alone at night are easy targets.

I made it to my stop by 12:30. Climbing the steps that led away from the platform, I felt a rush of normalcy. When I was approaching ground level, something about the light outside seemed different. Instead of the usual orangey jaundice of the streetlights contrasting against the cloudy night sky there was something white. How could there be a single thing left in this city that had not been stained some shade of grey or brown?

Once on the sidewalk, I scanned my surroundings, looking for drunks or bums or anyone who might try to give me trouble. What startled me in a far different way than any street harasser could have was the giant iridescent orb I spotted through the trees and could not fully view until I approached the intersection leading to the bridge that serves as the métro stop’s namesake.

What was that sphere reflecting upon the rapidly rippling current of the Seine?

Why was it so big? Did it have something to do with how far north I was?

Was it really the moon?

To be honest, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it. In Iowa it came and went as it pleased, giving a vague testament of the passage of time. As a child, I would stare at it on long car rides home during the winter, for some reason incapable of falling asleep. In Paris I’d been surrounded by clouds and light pollution and buildings, not to mention that my room with a view of a courtyard faced the wrong way for me to see it, but where had it been? This was March; I had been in Paris since January. How could I go months without seeing the thing whose gravity created ocean tides and whose cycles inspired the first calendars?

After I made it to my building and up the five flights of stairs to my room, I collapsed on my bed. My roommate was home on spring break. All of my friends in Iowa were at dinner. My mom was on her way home from work and hearing about what happened would probably just freak her out anyway. I settled on briefly describing my night in the journal I made a half-assed attempt at keeping. It reminded me of how nature was used for symbolism in The Great Gatsby.

I didn’t know why, but that night never really left my head. Maybe it was the first time I truly saw how much Paris had changed me. It was around this time that I knew without a doubt I would have a hard time giving up new habits like eating pizza with a fork and knife, drinking water from tiny glasses with no ice, and using 24-hour time. As the days leading to my so-called homecoming slipped by, I grew far too accustomed to 60-degree rainy weather and Saturday afternoons spent drinking beer on the Seine. I successfully gave people on the street directions in French that they at least pretended to believe were correct, and I was on a first-name basis with the employees at Corcoran’s, an authentic Irish pub next to the Sacré-Coeur.

My grandparents came to visit me for ten days after the semester was over, after which we returned to Des Moines together. The city seemed surreal, just as it had when I first arrived in January. Once again the weather was gloomy, the streets were tiny, the walking distances were too long, the drinks were too warm, the hamburgers weren’t big enough, and the lack of Italian food was depressing. Only, I wasn’t the one who felt that way anymore. I remember my first day in Paris—how I almost went into hysterics in the study abroad office, how I resented the constant bombardment of ornate architecture coupled with the omnipresence of pigeons. Had I just learned to ignore that stuff? On our way to the airport, my grandmother asked me how excited I was to finally go home. I pretended that I hadn’t heard her and that reverse culture shock wasn’t about to whack me over the head. I’m not sure if it was as bad as I expected, or if I just didn’t know what to expect. Suddenly outdoor humidity and indoor air conditioning seemed nothing short of aggressive, everyone and everything took up too much space and made too much noise, the drinks were entirely too big and they made my teeth hurt. I tried to rediscover the things I used to love, like nachos and spending hours going through the clearance racks at Target, but nothing felt the same.

One of the first nights after I got back to Iowa, my mom told me I should stand in the front yard to look at the moon. It was extra-bright since it was a honey moon, whatever that means. Obscured through the trees of our neighbors’ yards, it shined whiter than I’d ever seen it before—like freshly bleached teeth under a black light. I stared for as long as I could. I don’t think it reminded me of that night on the Pont Marie, even though it probably should have. After all, it was the exact same piece of rock in the sky.