Writer finds that U.S. isn't that bad

Paris will change my life, I thought.

The words passed through me as I watched Notre Dame glow in the October night, its shadows bringing alive in me dusty stories and characters that itched to be written.?Clasped in my hand, I felt Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, beautiful words and ideas, a dead writer's reflections on the same city that I felt myself falling in love with I thought I would be never be the same.

But now, Paris seems only a dream.

Every day, I have to remind myself how I loved the city: Notre Dame at night, the small Parisian cafes, the newsstands on every corner, the harmonicas on the metro, the rat-like Parisian dogs, and the soft music of the French language.?I know that I once saw the Eiffel Tower every night from my apartment window and that I dreamt of living along the Seine.

Now, Paris seems foggy, surreal, as if I had never been there, and yet I know that it made me more aware of who I am.?I thought I had become a part of Paris, but instead it became a part of me: the American and the writer.?

The Parisians do everything only slightly different than Americans but different enough to drive an American mad.?I had to wait in long lines for everything from a metro pass to a pastry - Parisians are never on time, view life more leisurely than Americans, and don't dwell on efficiency.? In the City of Lights, the Eiffel Tower turns off at 1 a.m. and the metro closes at 12:30 a.m.? I often waited as long as an hour to find a taxi, if I was fortunate enough to find one.

And then there was dating.?The French perception??Have sex, and then get to know each other.?Or at least, that's what I was told and saw.?It made me question my American Puritanism ... and learn that I like my nation's prudishness. Parisians are soft-spoken, impersonal, reserved, and very hard to meet.?It's taboo to do "small talk" with people you don't know.? International students often leave Paris frustrated, unable to make French friends.

I bought the flannel skirts, the tight-fitting, dressy blouses, the knee-high boots - I spoke softly, frequented cafes, even changed my characteristic smile to a Parisian grimace on the metro ... for all intents, until I opened my mouth, I could have passed for a Parisian.

I loved Paris. But while I loved it, I realized that I didn't belong there.?I felt empty and incomplete, and I didn't learn what was missing until I came back to Maryland, to my home.

I learned that while many people say America does not have a culture, they're wrong - I'm different because I'm American.?And while I admire the French, I'm happy to be loud and garish, socially conservative, impatient, and friendly to people I don't know - to be an American.

Paris also revived myself, the writer.?In Paris, I felt the history around Notre Dame, I saw the cafes the great authors once frequented, and I felt my love for words stir inside me.?I've thrown myself into journalism since I was 15, uneasy and afraid to abandon myself to fiction, as part of me, the true me, wants.?But Notre Dame's beauty, the Seine, and the roll of French words reminded me of literature and what I promised myself as a child: to be an author.

The lights of my room off, Camembert cheese and a glass of red wine to my side, and the Eiffel Tower - glimmeringly distant and cold like the French - I tapped away at my keyboard and let the words tremble from my fingers, once again writing for love of words rather than pressure of news.?Paris made me feel the art of writing, a passion I thought Hopkins had killed, and I wrote and wrote: letters, stories and descriptions. I thought I would give up journalism and find a small flat in Paris and write, like Hemingway, like Fitzgerald, like so many authors who were once nobody but who loved language and Paris and life and feelings.?

But Paris faded, and my brave brief foray into fiction did as well, and now it seems like a dream - both my renewed determination to be a writer and my life in Paris.

From Paris, I learned that whatever I once was, whatever people tell me I am, now I am a journalist, an American, and I love who I am and where I live.? I love myself, journalism, America, Maryland, Baltimore ... and I love Paris, for showing me what I love.