Dreaming Again of Paris

Later, I’ll have things to say about Twitter in the aftermath of today’s terrible events.
Later, I’ll write about networks and agency and altruism born of terror.
Later, I’ll offer a scholarly take on #PorteOuverte and #StrandedinUS.
Later, I’ll argue that social media has real problems but also offers new opportunities to do good.
For now, though, I grieve for Paris.

Going to Paris in February 2014 fulfilled a lifelong dream. As a teenager, I was obsessed with seeing the City of Lights, with being in the presence of the Mona Lisa and Monet’s Water Lilies, with seeing the Arc de Triomphe and the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower at night.

Paris is – without exception – the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

And being there changed me.

The trip haunts me in beautiful ways I can’t quite explain. Paris’s ghosts followed me back across the Atlantic, and I live with them here in rural Vermont. The ghosts of so many lost to the French Revolution and the Nazi Occupation. Paris’s history is written on its cathedrals, on its bridges, on its cobblestone streets. This is another day that will be written in stone, written on the Bataclan, on the Stade de France, on the pavement and stones of the Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, on Alibert and Charonne. More ghosts to join the others.

May we learn to live with these ghosts as well. May we learn lessons of community, of grace, of hope from them. And may they rest in peace.