Paris

The city of love where love has never been the priority.

Paris is an amalgamation of antagonisms and contradictions. Within its streets and across its boulevards resides the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly. Paris is a cultural battleground, whose geography is hard-fought between competing ideologies. Its Napoleonic architecture, and other relics of its fallen aristocracy, compete with the modern buildings of capitalism for the audience’s attention. The Paris portrayed in the literature and the movies that haunt our collective memories has, in patches, succumbed to the yearning scream of its forgotten population. The beautiful is marred with the tragic, as antiquated buildings rub shoulders to shoulders with foreclosed shops, abandoned by the failed dreams of previous owners. The graffiti that leaves its mark on the side streets, blooming amongst the darkness, acts as a reminder that those society forget still exist.

Paris is a tale of a city yearning for a past that remains alive only in the self-delusional, and comforting, romanticism of the tourist. The idiosyncrasies of what Paris represents, the values, the culture, the raison d’etre, can only be witnessed in the brisk movements of the city’s serveurs; those men and women who attend the cacophony of tables laid out on the pavements longing the boulevards and avenues. In all other places, most notably, on other faces, the flame of Parisian love has dimmed, as if extinguished by the end of an overpriced cigarette. Just like everything else, it has become too expensive to do damage to one’s health. Vices have…