“Sufficiently unsatisfying” is a phrase that sums up the Parisian mindset quite well. Ask a Parisian to tell you about their city, and they’ll say the buildings are beautiful but always under construction, the people are well-dressed but obnoxious, the food is good but too expensive, and the apartments are absolutely worth keeping but unsanitary. The Parisian grumbles about his favorite topics while still believing he lives in the most beautiful city in the world. Deep down, talking about Paris is like going into therapy to discuss your relationship with your parents: everyone has done it before, but to quote Tolstoy, every family has its own story. If Paris is so deeply rooted and immutable, if every change is accompanied by a revolution, the best way to write about Paris is to do so from a punctual perspective. This is where the chronicle
format comes in; unlike a book, it captures a fleeting moment in the present. What you are reading already belongs to the past, set against a backdrop that never changes. Fortunately for me, if this column is exceptional or simply good, so much the better; if it is mediocre and shallow, you won’t remember it.

Now, I’ve laid the groundwork. Now, I can give myself permission to complain and marvel at everything that catches my eye. I can transcribe it in the most infra-ordinary* form, which, as George Perec would say, brings together “What really happens, what we experience, the rest, all the rest (…). What happens every day and comes back every day, the banal, the everyday, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the background noise, the usual.” I can seek out what, beneath the words, takes on a different dimension of beauty.

*Georges Perec, L'infra-ordinaire, Seuil, 1989