Epiphanies in the Catacombs

In which I put my thinking cap on.

I know I promised a definitive “Best of Paris” list was coming up—and rest assured, said list is arriving soon…soon-ish…somewhere in the soon-ish future...oh, bother.

I have a confession to make. There are several reasons why I left my “best of” lists to the end. One, because I am much more qualified to call myself a Paris expert now than I was nine-and-a-half months ago.

Two? Well, this is my mourning process. Or my detachment process, to be more accurate. Once you are able to condense the past nine-and-a-half months of your life into neat little lists with pithy descriptions and matching pictures, you are able to turn them into a vacation, albeit a lengthy, foreign one. And you can pretend you are preparing for a homecoming, and not a home-leaving.

Because Paris is, nine-and-a-half months later, my home. Paris, in all its prickly, quixotic, illogical glory, is my home. How strange to say that! And yet, my home is still my home. So do I have two homes? And when I graduate next year and end up somewhere else, will I then have three homes? How many homes can you have before they don’t count as homes anymore? And how long can you be away from your home before it stops being home?

I also want to muse on that number, nine-and-a-half months. A baby is conceived, developed, and delivered in nine-and-a-half months. An entire being, made up of roughly 5 trillion cells, that for better or for worse is going to fundamentally alter its mother’s life. A being that is both entirely unique, and entirely you (or at least, if I remember my biology classes correctly, half of you).

To extend this strange metaphor just a bit further, I would like to think that everyone who came to Paris delivered a baby this year: their own, unique Paris experience. We planned. We pondered. We even obtained credentials (yes, thank you, French consulate). Paris arrived, and we fell in love. And out of love. And in love again. Strangling was probably at some point considered. Sometimes we stared at each others’ experiences and wondered if we were doing this all wrong.

And now, nine-and-a-half months later, it is time to late Paris go.

Not quite yet (hence, my putting off the inevitable “Definitive Best of Paris” list).

And no, not forever.

* * *

I should explain the title of this post.

I have been trying to visit the Paris Catacombs since two summers ago. It shouldn’t have been this hard. I live a five-minute walk away. But the Catacomb line, in terms of sheer slowness, might be the worst in Paris. The Catacombs close at 5 p.m., and if you aren’t there by 2 p.m., you won’t get in.

So, after arriving twenty minutes before opening and still waiting a good forty minutes to get in, my friend Julia and I embarked on a two-kilometer journey, 20 meters (or 66 feet) below street-level. After three-quarters of an hour walking through dark, dripping tunnels lined with artfully arranged human skulls and tibias and reading quote after quote of depressing musings on life’s pointlessness and death’s inevitability, I was feeling a bit down.

Please don’t let me dissuade you from going. The whole experience is rather awesome. I even hear of raves in different, non-tourist parts of the Catacombs. But make sure you have someone to laugh with.

Anyway, the point (which I have been taking a long time to make) is this: I don’t agree with these quotes. Not one bit. Yes, life can be all too short. Even long lives are mere blips on the spectrum of time. And yes, we will all die, and no one (and I mean no one) knows what happens next.

But I also think life is beautiful. The very fact that we can all breathe and think and communicate and feel things is, quite simply, a miracle.

As I read my daily news and sometimes wonder why this world is so frighteningly idiotic, and as I walk around Paris on one of my last nights here and panic, because why didn’t I make just a bit more of my experience, and maybe my life in general, and oh, God, I’m getting old, I have to breathe deep and realize that the very act of breathing is a tiny miracle, too.

And, more importantly, that I am so, so lucky. I’ve spent this year being young in one of the greatest cities in the world, and quite a few other bits of Europe as well. I am healthy, whole, and happy. And I am ready to stare down those long-dead writers who thought such depressing things and say, aren’t you forgetting about the actual living part of life?

So, dear readers, here’s to living. And thank you for sticking with me for so long.

A few of the more thoughtful quotes:

Translation: "They were what we are.
Dust, playthings of the wind. Fragile as men.
Feeble as the newborn." - Lamartine

Where is she, Death? Always future or past.
Hardly is she present before she is no more.

*All Catacombs photo credit goes to Julia.