How do you eat a croissant? Any way you touch the thing, it falls apart all over you, scattering flaky crumbs down your chin, across your shirt, into your lap, off into the breeze passing lazily like butterflies through the streets and towns of one of the most beautiful places in the world. How many croissant flakes must be floating on breezes past sidewalk cafés all over France?
I've been back in the States for over two months now, and the time has long come for me to close this blog with a final few thoughts. Sometimes, it seems like my stay in France was naught but an intermezzo, one of the most beautiful melodies, that played for a brief period in order to transform my everyday life. Indeed, eight months is not so long, when you think about it.
Living in France means becoming part of it. You let yourself become wrapped up in the coming-and-going on small streets, in the speed of trains and metros, in the quiet promenading in parks. Your rhythm becomes that of the other citizens surrounding you, and you slowly let yourself share life, in community recreation centers or over late-night apéros in tiny studio apartment rooms, in cracking hazelnuts and dining together under a bowl of stars, and even in the giving-and-taking of public resources: taxes in, health care out. You brush the sleeves of your neighbours every day, and trust me, the shared life is the good life: even silently performing your daily tasks, you are never alone. Solidarity is everywhere: it creates community, and community creates a village, or a city, and villages and cities create a country. Go to France and ask yourself what they have that "we" (I'm addressing my fellow Americans here, but reflect on this yourself, dear reader) don't. This is what Americans have been doing for decades, going to Europe and sighing, scratching their heads and saying to themselves, "What do they have that we don't?". Often, the answer that Americans tell themselves is history, although you could go to a city like Boston, arguably with a very rich and "European" history, and still not feel what you feel in any small town or big city in France.
Because it's the way we live that's different. We, in our little metal, air-conditioned, motorized boxes that carry us from apartment or house to work to mall and back home again, without ever having to sit next to a stranger, without ever having to see how the other part of society lives. We can ignore our neighbours as long as we don't have to see them, as long as we don't have to come into contact with them. And ironically, it's that proximity that we feel and appreciate in France, without even realizing it, and certainly without reproducing it back home. If there's anything we lack (for we, spoiled rotten decadents of the world, have pretty much anything we want/need, but often not what we need most, like a child who refuses to eat anything but sweets, and whose parents, almost willingly, turn a blind eye to his bad habits); I repeat, if there's anything we lack, it's community, and proximity to others, and no amount of creating artificial-looking outdoor shopping malls with gigantic sidewalks and speakers playing music from faux rocks is going to be able to reproduce that togetherness. Atlantic Stations be damned.
Yes, Hemingway, leaving France (and not just Paris, my dear man) means taking a bit of it with you, like that croissant from your afternoon coffee break whose tiny buttery flakes cling to you everywhere you go. I always start at the middle, unfolding it from the top-most point, until I could almost wrap myself up in it, and the last part I eat are the two pointed, crunchy ends. France might be a moveable feast, but a feast is not never-ending, and several months back home have thrust me into this gigantic American life in spite of myself. I, too, find myself in my car more often than is good for me, driving distances on a daily basis that the average French(wo)man might drive only for vacation. The entire town of Flers would fit inside 1/10th of the ground I cover each day, and likewise, life is more expensive and more excessive, as if everything, including a meal, had multiplied itself by ten. Except, of course, quality. Order a croissant in America after returning from France, and you'll see what I mean. It will cost you three times what it does in France, and a croissant in the best bakery in town won't taste anything like a croissant from Le Temps du Levain, where 70 centimes gets you a buttery, flaky piece of heaven to wear for the rest of the day.
With this, I have just one thing to say. Maybe one day, I'll get to go to France and stay there. Maybe one day, yes... But for now, I am American, and I live in America. And the croissants just aren't that good here (and don't even get me started on the pain au chocolat). So thanks a lot, France. You've ruined me forever. Life will probably never be like that again, and I'll be craving that croissant for years to come.
*It may interest my readers to know that several hours after I posted this, NPR uploaded a blog post about the quality of croissants in France. Will mass industry take the place of centuries of artisanry in the place that is best known for it? Only time will tell. But oh! how I hope not.
