What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Walking: A Parisian Romance in Five Acts. Prologue and Act 1.

It is a necessity, a rule in life, that an argument is to be followed by tranquility and amends; a short-lived time of clarity and peace, a moment of pure love. How rare and magical these intermissions, bathed in luminosity and translucence! And how badly I need them, require them, to survive this terrible love.

I am sleeping a little better already. The weather is breath-taking; windy, sunny, a drop of the season’s end already anticipating in its nooks and corners. Finding the most gorgeous spot, by accident, in our arrondissement yesterday did seem counterintuitive, like sorcery; some insane magic, since right there was where we had the most intense and disturbing portion of the fight. But it had been in the making a while already, and now that it’s over, I am glad. I am glad we had the fight.

Here, right now, is the place where I am my best self, where we are our best selves, I muse as we descend the steep slope towards the rest of the city and its arrondissements and La Seine, holding hands, chatting idly, talking all the time, in Paris, in this larger-than-life, divine setting, in these Paris scents of a summer almost gone, and bakeries, and garbage, surrounded by wrought-iron gates and balconies and nostalgic, green streetlights, by urban parks and cooing doves, by the Pont Neuf greenery and our own signature bench there. Even having always considered the film unbelievably depressing, I cannot help thinking fondly about the young Juliette Binoche and Dennis Lavant, as we sit here, with books in our laps, he is reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, I, Essays in Love by Alain de Botton, as we are writing in our journals or fetching water to refill our empty bottles from the fresh water fountain by the entrance gate, as we are observing the park life, with the constant hubbub of the passing sight-seeing boats full of tourists frying in the afternoon sun, and the guide’s voice in the loud speakers, describing the river and its many bridges and their history in English. But the sound, loud as it is, can only be heard a short while, when the boat is right by us.

Here, our life, too, is life lived on the streets. On these historical, unspeakably beautiful, and unbearably romantic cobblestone streets we, too, are immortal. Whatever becomes of us in the end, our love story is written on these streets. We, very much like Ingrid and Humphrey, will always have Paris.

Hopelessly, shamelessly romantic words. My language of Paris. It is how I always end up writing when I go there. And there is no excuse, other than Paris, indeed, is the most romantic city of the world, the most over-the-top, insatiable, ludicrous, sensual, joyous, wonderful town, truly a City of Lights and the Capital of Love. To lose oneself a little to love is all but required at the city gates.

To visit Paris is to fall in love with it: the wild, difficult, temperamental, crazy town of writers and dreamers and romantics and many, many days spent hiking up and down the confusing streets in the blazing sun.

Our morning stretches into the longest of all mornings – but isn’t it true for all our mornings here? Today, though, we have agreed to let our poor selves rest a bit, to succumb to the raging demands of our tired feet crying for mercy. Our daily hikes are hard on the knees and the soles and heels of feet, we are constantly walking on hard stone floor and the kilometers keep adding, so all the time there is the real danger of spraining something or the skin rubbing off. I like it here, I think. We got rhythm, here, I like how the walking is like hard work, cleansing, smoothing. And we are getting along well. There is nothing more empowering.

Our day on Rue Lamarck, Montmartre, begins with the sounds of the men who, by all intents and purposes refer to themselves as workers, appear downstairs, to pretend to do a little remodeling on the downstairs apartment patio. The sound of sawing reaches us through the cracked balcony door, but not for long. They saw exactly two or three pieces of wood in half. Then, the radio comes to life, and the sound of coffee cups and loud joking and marveling at the news and disagreeing on anything under the sun replaces the random work sounds. They are never going to finish the patio, we laugh. But it is a kind laughter. This is how you do things in Paris. A bit of work, then, a lot of fun. We are at the very heart of joie de vivre, right now. We listen as the men whistle along to their favorite tunes on the radio and argue loudly and then bang with hammers a little while discussing politics and the weather and food.

We usually make an approximate plan for each day over our own several cups of coffee. It is most commonly nothing more than a direction where to start after finishing what can only be described as a feast of a vacationer’s breakfast. There are some gorgeous parks both to the east and west from Montmartre, and usually we pick out one of these as an entry level. Our favorite bakery lies nowhere near en route either direction, but we don’t mind going out of our way; this is a very Parisian custom, and we have only adapted it in our last three trips. The city folk here are extremely particular about where they buy their daily bread, and after realizing the hard way that while the bakeries might all appear the same, they so are not, we, too, have become meticulous hunters of the ultimate baguette and croissant.

Our bakery can’t boast being the friendliest place in our district, but everything is forgiven when we get the warm, lovely, mouth-watering products in our hands. There are degrees of Parisianness, and I believe the baguette hunting proves we have evolved at least from the random tourists who’ll eat any old given roll as a delightful croissant to at least frequent fliers who don’t just accept it at face value if it says “best” on the label. They all say the same thing, that’s the thing. The trick is to just do the work, eat at every damn bakery until the right one comes along, and thus earn the right to baked goods snobbery.

It says in many a guidebook that Parisians go to such lengths in making the most of each meal they even take the closeness of a good bakery into account when looking for a new apartment. I love the idea, and every time wonder why us Finns aren’t more careful like that with every meal. Then, of course, I come back home only to find that the bakery heaven of Paris is no more, and I have once more entered the world of super markets. My so-called life outside Paris.

Leos Carax, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, 1991

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, 2007

Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, 1981