The Eiffel Tower

The first city I visited alone was Paris. I left for France after my seventeenth birthday. Because of a vivid dream I had, I was certain I would remember the city, and so it was. I stepped off the very late train from Luxemburg in the Gare du Nord in Paris and spent the night there. I went out into the street at six in the morning to look around; the buildings were familiar. I already knew from my dream how the french coffee and brioche would taste.

I stayed at a youth hostel in Marais. My feet tasted every sidewalk crack in that neighborhood. The noises of the cars never interrupted me, because the honking did not belong to me. I walked a lot, because I didn't want to aim for the Eiffel Tower. I wanted to sneak around it, getting a bit nearer through new parts of town, without opening the photo laden tourist map forced on me by a huge Parisian. I wanted to open this souvenir on my own roundabout, nothing planned schedule. I wanted to circle like a patient dog scenting a tasty bone, knowing that an extra week or two buried in the ground gives the bone a flavor of distinctive character. I meditated on the disgust expressed by Verlaine and his friends for the newly constructed tower. So as not to disappoint myself all at once, I peeked at its ugly sides from time to time where a street widened. I found cafes where Verlaine sat and sat in his thoughts.

A week in Paris finished my money, but I still wasn't ready to meet the metallic tourist magnet. In the hostel, I talked a Mexican guy with a guitar down to the plaza in front of the Pompidou Center. I danced the jarabe tapatío in my green dress from Jalisco. If you're a Mexican and you need some cash; it's really worth the trouble to pull the Jarabe Tapatío from your bag of tricks. Wherever the hell you find yourself, you'll be fine. We got enough money to each stay three more weeks in Paris. Twenty three francs a night, lockout during the day, and moving every four days to a new hostal mattered not at all, I was in Paris.

The third week of my stay, I could not postpone my visit. I had to go introduce myself to the radio station that crowned the tower. I thought I'd be well received. I had no plans to sell the tower for twenty cents a pound, like the English entrepreneur, or deafen the tower by riding down the stairs on a bicycle, like the French journalist. I would not give the tower a migraine headache flying through it, but missing the opening slightly, like the pioneer aviator. I would only introduce myself and decide whether it was nicer up close or as far away as possible.

And there I was in front of this structural sorcery, and the first and only picture I could form was of an orchard ladder with my father at the very top picking apples, while I played marbles underneath. It's only a metal triangle of a ladder, to raise what needs to be lifted up and lowering what's finished being raised.