Paris Jensen writes about learning to savor the improbable and embrace the possible in Paris, France

Paris Jensen
Class of 2022
Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris, Fall 2021

There’s a French word, insolite, that doesn’t translate exactly into English. It is somewhere in between “surprising” and “improbable.” It’s not an imprecise word though, and when I hear it, it calls a very specific image to mind: a Saturday night at the aquarium, the semester I studied abroad. I was standing in front of a tank of sea anemones, drinking a tall glass of champagne.

I saw plenty of marvelous things, living abroad: gothic cathedral spires that made you feel like you were falling when you looked up at them; priceless works of art; working public transportation. But in that insolite moment some mental camera clicked: the picture went down in the dictionary of my memory forever. Of course, when it happened, I simply thought, “yes, of course – this is Paris.”

So when I say that in Paris, a different life is possible, I do mean champagne in the aquarium – among other things. I had many French moments that seemed improbable by American standards. That’s especially clear to me now that I’m back in Middletown. Here it would be “unreasonable” for me to eat a whole fresh loaf of baguette in a public park. Besides, what would be the point? There would be no grandparents playing ping pong with their grandkids, no pigeons fussing and strutting under the benches. The ambiance would be absent, the scene incomplete.

I could never recreate that baguette-fresh-out-of-the-oven feeling alone. Most of the moments that I remember best took a city to make. For example: a friend once invited me to hear a foraging lecture in the park (the same friend, by the way, who later took me sheepherding in Paris… but that’s a story for another day). That was already a very Paris experience, I thought. But then the lecture ended, around 5:00: it was time for the aperitif. The regulars got out drinks and snacks – homemade rhubarb cordial, hummus – some of which they had made with things from their own gardens and foraging excursions. And they shared these insolites snacks with the whole group without a second thought. We accepted gladly.

My guess is that when most of us think of culture, we mainly think about how it is baked into routines. But lately, I think about how it manifests in moments of unexpected celebration. I especially think about all the strange, sweet, funny encounters and experiences that become possible when you’re a stranger, and so many things are new.

Those were the moments – when the routine and the surprising and the festive all became a blur – when I really started to look at my life through Paris-colored lenses. I started to see different possibilities in my life: “improbable,” but very real, possibilities. That feeling of connection and surprise gave me energy and confidence: it also gave me a lot of material to work with. In short, it was a big part of how I ended up doing something rather insolite myself, and writing nine love poems in French in nine days.

It was supposed to be a nine-page essay, the final paper for a course called “L’Amour à la française.” But as I was writing the introduction, I felt something unexpected click, and I got a different idea. I wrote to my professor asking if I could change the assignment. Worth a try, right? As it turns out, yes. When in Paris.

Most of the poems weren’t about Paris: not outright. But I couldn’t have written them anywhere else, especially the one about falling in love with strangers on the metro. I called them the paradoxes amoureux. They were insolite moments made of other moments, images of everything I had learned, felt, and imagined in four months. In poetry, as if by magic, the everyday and the surprising, the off-kilter and the celebratory all rolled into one.

That was how I realized that I could learn to live like this: a poem every morning. Champagne in the aquarium at night. Something unexpected tomorrow, waiting for me. In just four months, the improbable became possible, and the possible became natural. Welcome to Paris!

But I’ve found that the insolite is part of giving yourself over to life in a new culture, wherever you go. What you see, what you taste, who you meet, what you write, how you love: in all of it, the realms of the possible and actual are rearranged in ways you can’t anticipate, might not even imagine.

And so, if you are also thinking about studying abroad, I hope that you get your bread loaf on the park bench moments too – in a metaphorical and perhaps also a literal sense. I’ll gladly drink a toast to that. With any luck, I’ll be back in Paris by the time you read this, drinking it next to the anemones.