This morning began with eggs and tomatoes, the color of memory. Coffee hot enough to wake me, edits sharp enough to carve into Lane’s images. I sat at my bistro table, sipping and clicking, time folding like the ripples in my espresso. My task? To make the new old, or maybe the old new.
Lane’s photos became an experiment: How do you colorize black and white without losing the ghost? Like those photos from Aunt Mary’s, faces painted with watercolors that floated on the edge of reality. Trial, error, repeat. Each pixel a whisper from the past, asking, Am I new yet?
The city called. I answered.
I walked by small storefronts, each a tiny theater staging its own play. A chocolatier sculpting gems of cocoa, futuristic shapes born from a craft older than the word “modern.” A comic artist hunched over his desk, black-and-white frames spilling onto the studio walls like a graphic novel alive. Old comics, new ink. The air felt heavy with contrast, like a song played in two keys at once.
Then, a ping—Joanne. An old friend from New York, now here, now Parisian. We met for coffee, wandered past bridges, Notre Dame standing sentinel as we reminisced. My eyes, still tourists in this city, took in every detail: cracked paint, cobblestones, shadows bending over wrought iron. Joanne left for work, leaving me to my vignettes—storefronts glowing like relics in their glass frames.
Antique shops whispered promises of new lives for old things. Doors locked for the night, their treasures out of reach, but I imagined each item: a mirror reflecting someone else’s face, a chair bearing someone else’s weight. Is it still old if it belongs to me now? Or does possession make it new?
A reflection stopped me: an old French building mirrored in a modern glass façade, its ornate curves warped by the building’s jagged geometry. Old and new danced, each reshaping the other, a duet in contradictions. My mind spiraled: Can old become new if it never knew it was old?
Jazz floated on the air, breaking my spiral. A trio of musicians played on the street, their notes tumbling into the cold night. People paused, baguette sandwiches in hand, faces lit with joy. Music made old by its familiarity, new by its impermanence. I stood still, listening, feeling my thoughts scatter like sheet music caught in the wind.
Crossing a bridge, I noticed time was slipping toward 6 p.m.—the hour when the Eiffel Tower bursts into glitter. I paused, called Jaimie in New York, and shared the moment as the city sparkled. The tower twinkled, Paris inhaled, and for ten minutes, everything felt suspended in light.
Back at my apartment, I poured wine and pondered the day: old colliding with new, the way chocolate shapes meet tradition, the way jazz fills the streets, the way a reflection can be older than the building it mirrors. Paris is a city where time folds in on itself, where every moment is a collage.
Old is new. New is old. Perhaps neither exist. Or perhaps both do, endlessly.