@sophiaemeloni

Dear Mom— This time I have run to Paris with a pipe dream of assimilation. Like many, I bare the scar of having been scorned by the city once before. During a tweenage romp in the BHV I wielded my slender grasp on French like a bludgeon mistakenly saying “nice ass” to a prickly sales woman in an attempt to thank her kindly. Still hot with the shame of the trauma, this time around I smile and “oui” with the reserve of an American martyr baring the lashes of cultural inferiority. Most notably, I have alighted to the graphic European cigarette box—endlessly horrified and intrigued by their deterrent pictures. I was provoked and puzzled by the game. The amputated leg sockets were easy to come by— unsightly but not all together obscene; for me, it was a yawn. The blackened lung, however, now that was the money shot— elegant and to the point, cheekily on the nose but not as gauche as the cancer baby or the septic foot with yellowed veins. My first instinct was to collect them for display— hoard them like pokémon cards until I was invited to trade in the elite Parisian smoker trading circuit. My mind raced with the possibility of how I would play it << deux pre mortem neck holes pour un rotting teeth in a decayed mouth>>. Of course, this is only the beginning. In a moment of symbolic youthful meloncholy I went to take a rainy walk through Cimetière du Père Lachaise. A barricade had been put up around Jim Morrison’s grave. That’s when I realized that the whole world was American. But mama, lying somewhere between Henry Miller’s Paris and David Sedaris’s Paris I have discovered my Paris. In the freezing cobblestone street, among the smog and the trash I double fist crepes and plot my next cigarette box trade before I allow the melancholy take hold and cast myself into the Seine with the only phrase my high school french teacher ever spoke to me echoing in my mind— “Sophia, n’importe quoi”. As always, more to come. Love, Sophia