Being Cornered in Paris

A friend has asked me about the title of this blog. What does it mean to be cornered in Paris?

According to Wikipedia:

Paris Syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (delusions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, etc.[5]

Twenty Japanese tourists are hospitalized each year with Paris syndrome. Jerusalem syndrome, in which people become possessed of religious obsessions which led a tourist to set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque in 1969, accounts for 40 hospitalizations a year. Both are precipitated by the shock of the real vs. the myth.

France spends about a billion dollars a year to fight for her beautiful language, in Alliance Francaises, consulates and marketing. Paris is the most visited city in the world. A fervent japonaise, like une francaise, needs to experience the right thing in the right place at the right time The pressure is great.

I believe it is the distance of Paris' beauty, her cold rationality and lack of affect that causes the ardor of the suitor to become psychotic, like the chilly sado-masochism of Catherine Deneuve in Belle du Jour. Yes, the warmly lit cafés remind you of California or New York, but you have to bring your friends with you (see http://hubpages.com/hub/Being-American-While-In-Paris, Victoire being my nom de plume).

I have presented a few of the symptoms myself: depersonalization, derealization and anxiety. I could see them in others. An American friend, who had been seeing a Frenchman, presented the symptoms as they fought on the street, his body language cold and obdurate, her loose blonde American hair shaking over her open wound of a face. She was being drained of her personhood, it seemed from a distance. Remember, the solution to everything is simply to be French.

I had already gone through Phase I of mon amour de Paris, over 13 years. Year 14, my world was rocked by the effect of Paris on the relationship I had come here for. As for the long ("big", according to one therapist) story of our relationship, we have ended up in couples therapy, and are tiptoing around one another these days in a minuet that reflects infinitely in a Versailles halls of mirrors, as we offer the other a golden goblet. We dance on.

And how does one fare outside the challenging household?

Parisians are not interested in making new friends, since they already have their circles. That is, their friends from grade school. Unless, of course, it would raise their status to do so. Americans are not usually in that category.

Angel at Reims

But the stone streets do echo with a kind of companionship, in the sweet-faced saints outside Notre Dame, their blessings (too often replaced by Viollet le Duc) communicated in silence. Or the death mask of Beethoven that I greet in silent communion in Jardin des Plantes as I jog by listening to his music. Or the countless expats who attend Meetup groups in search of bonds.

Do I still have Paris syndrome? I had a few breakdowns, developed tinnitus, and then we began to travel the world.

Our spirits became light again.