Chapter 2: Lovers

In New York City, lovers hold hands through Central Park. Kissing is a daring game – pecks on a frostbitten face to the tune of rattling subway cars, a poorly hidden bout of footsie underneath the tiny tables of Max Brenner’s chocolate shop. Yet, complaints about lovers seem more common than the act of loving; in Starbucks across the city, jaded twenty-somethings declare that “love is dead!” over cups of burnt coffee. A boy once told me that New York’s obsession with flashing lights and adrenaline movements have made it impossible for her people to recognize love. Love is too slow for the Big Apple; love is a well-guarded secret from the people who call NYC home.

Paris may be the City of Lights, but she moves in seductive, deliberate movements across the threshold of space and time. Lovers in the metro do not suffer from frostbitten faces – they kiss openly and defiantly, needing no prompting from the blanket of metro music. Café tables in Paris are even smaller than those in Max Brenner’s chocolate shop; there is no room for footsie, only space to knock knees and bow heads in quiet conversation.


Paris moves easy and slow. She, in fact, cannot move without love – her history is studded with stories of passion, her monuments are markers of first kisses, first loves, first heartbreaks. In history: the tumultuous love of Napoleon and Josephine, the modern day romance of Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg that transcends both reality and movie screen. In monuments: markers of first meetings and the passage of love and time.

It begins, perhaps, at the steps of Sacre Coeur. A man with guitar sings Beatles songs about the flutters and thrills of love, drawing crowds of eager hearts to the stairs, to his stage. A boy and girl meet, walk down the steps, wander the streets of Montmartre with nothing but art and passion on their minds. They arrange a meeting for a cold day at the Eiffel Tower and, under the Tower’s gaze, huddle for warmth. The Tower may see huddled infatuation day in and day out, but she never tires of winking at lovers as they leave her grounds and stroll, arm in arm, down cobblestone streets.


Monuments serve as markers of memory, of time, of history, of love - the boy and girl flock to monuments to make their own memories, time, history, love. Each time the boy and girl walk down the stairs from the Sacre Coeur, they pass by an old couple climbing up to the cathedral. Boy and girl, man and woman, young and old – they lock eyes and nod, understanding that in Paris, time has collapsed and that the past and future of love is most easily recognized in the present.