laurengetsalife

We had rushed forward and been knocked back more times than we could count. Sound swirled around us, the smell of exhaust and burned rubber so strong it was almost a physical barrier. On the other side of the road, the Place de la Porte Maillot seemed custom-built to tempt curiosity, a gateway between idyllic postcard Paris and it’s shiny new counterpart. We had to see it ourselves. Exhausted, thirsty, and panting with our past efforts, we braced ourselves to again attempt the sprint across eight lanes of impenetrable traffic.
“There’s a tunnel just over there.”
Oh. Right then.
While the trip through the tunnel was no less terrifying than facing the veritable NASCAR rally above, it was decidedly less likely to cause permanent physical damage. I reserve the right to claim permanent damages to my psyche. Our feet splashed through unseen puddles, lights flickered menacingly, the murals that would otherwise be intriguing turned threatening, and we picked up the pace in an effort to get to the sanctuary promised from the road.
Green grass and waving trees unfolded before us, the noise from the street thrumming through the leaves like waves on a shore. Rabbits dashed back and forth in search of cover. Music floated through the air. A lone reader slowly turned the page of her book. The square was an island in a sea of concrete, the perfect midpoint refuge between the old-world charm that had begun to seem fabricated and the new-world bustle that gleamed and tempted in the distance.
I wandered my island. I listened to the musician, a saxophonist of around eight practicing for her school concert with more skill than I had shown at eighteen. I surreptitiously attempted to read the blurb of the reader’s book, only to be crushed by a wave of disappointment when it turned out to be in French. I less surreptitiously attempted to catch one of the rabbits who was minding its own business in the grass by the path, crushed by a second wave of disappointment more akin to a king tide at my failure. The more time we spent there, the more I was overcome by a sense of peace that I had been missing at the rest of the monuments we had seen. Sitting in the grass (as close as possible to the now rather exasperated rabbit) I started to realise why people would actually live in Paris; despite it’s fame, and it’s popularity, it is still possible to find hidden pockets of peace amid the chaos that, at least for the time you spend there, can be completely and utterly your own.