PARIS PURCHASE: WHAT YOU CAN’T BUY

The most important Paris purchase on a mission to harvest cultural material?

It’s a bad question because the big things aren’t for sale.

The key is remembering the important parts.

More important than the monuments and churches and castles are the people. The best Paris purchase is an emotional investment.

If you come with a loved one you will share, “We’ll always have Paris,” the rest of your lives together.

If you come alone you won’t have someone to remind you that you’ll always have Paris, but you will.

At some point you’ll feel like buying a beret, a neck scarf, striped pull over, and a pair of calf length trousers. You might practice a mime routine.

If a Paris purchase doesn’t include those things you’re still doing fine.

You can’t buy a simmering sunset from the second deck of the Eiffel Tower any more than you can buy the rising harvest moon emerging from the orange afterglow.

Mixed feelings aren’t for sale, either, like those young soldiers must have had entering the military academy with the military hospital only a few blocks away.

The brisk pace of a French man or woman on their way to the Metro ought to be for sale, but taking inspiration will have to do.

Most of all for the Paris purchase you can’t buy the warm glow of a FaceTime call from Newport, Oregon where it’s their eleven at night to your nine in the morning.

Being half a world away and seeing the faces that make life worth living only reinforces the bonds.