Some days, Paris is non-stop rain and an umbrella that doesn't work, metro cars that smell like wet dog, and a city of grumpy bureaucrats.  Other days, it seems like magic; like a place where anything can happen.  It is the latter that draws Americans to the city in droves, hoping to discover for themselves that je ne sais quoi that has tempted the likes of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and Jim Morrison for decades.

Over the past months, I have been able to find that magic.  Sometimes, however, it is elusive, and real life gets in the way.  Like when you are enduring the trials of apartment-hunting in a city that, like the rest of the world's great metropolises, is purely a sellers' market.  And when you don't have pay slips to prove that you will be able to pay your rent, or, more grave, you lack a French guarantor, who will take responsibility of paying – or risking legal pursuit – in the event that you default.  Or when you're standing on the spiral staircase of a sixth-floor walkup in 95-degree heat, waiting to see a studio that the 20 people in front of you, who are certainly armed with pay slips and French guarantors, are also hoping to rent.  And finally, the tension-laden misunderstandings with the person who is lodging you and providing you work.

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These sorts of things, life things, happen everywhere.  You can't escape them if you are in New York, or Sao Paulo, or Paris.  Paris' gilded rooftops and grand boulevards may provide a romantic backdrop for the tribulations, rendering the burden at times somehow more romantic, but they do not make the problems disappear.

Still, what is amazing about Paris is that, sometimes, real life is the magic.  Like when you're sitting at an outdoor caf‚ writing with another expat, wondering how many times that accordionist is going to pump out "These Are the Days," and laughing because only those of us who have lived here long enough, and ridden the line 4 metro as often as we have, even know how limited the repertoire of these musicians is.  Yet still, we find it secretly charming.  Or on your walk back to the metro, you pass the Notre Dame, its spires piercing the ostentatiously scarlet streaks in the night sky.  Or you call the New York Times Paris bureau to see if they have received your inquiry about becoming a stringer and, although they laugh at you when you ask ("We never use stringers"), you persist, which is, somehow, easier to do in French than in English, and you ask if they need help around the office, or an intern, or something.  And they respond, well, actually, a girl was supposed to come from the States for three weeks, and she just called this morning to say she can't come, so we do need an intern in fact, desperately.  And the internship is for the exact time – three weeks – that you are to remain in Paris before a quick trip to New York.  That's the sort of serendipity that exists in Paris, surprising you when you least expect it.

In ten weeks I have slept in three different beds – a room in my friend's place in a Paris suburb; an apartment in the nineteenth district, with a view of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur out the living room window; and, finally, the tiny studio from which I now write, smack dab in the city center, with a view of the rooftops scratching an unseasonably crisp blue sky through the windows, which I have thrust open to usher in the afternoon sunshine.  I can stay here only until I find another place – the sublet is illegal – but I found it in another example of Paris good fortune.  It was the morning I was supposed to move back in with my friend, right at the height of our tensest moment.  I was afraid that just being in the same space would make everything worse.  As I ate my breakfast, fretting over how we would survive the next few weeks, my phone rang.  It was the actress I had interviewed the previous week, calling to tell me that her friend had a studio, and was willing to meet me to discuss a short-term lease.  The owner, an editor, agreed to let me the room, and filled me with the history of the building – 'important for someone from a country with no history' – as she explained how to work the shower and sofa-bed.  Every evening, as I prepare my dinner or a cup of tea, I contemplate the etchings preserved on one section of the wall, left by tailors who worked here two centuries ago.

So here I am, bags packed, plane to catch.  And, as is my nature, I automatically start to reflect, to faire des comptes.  Paris, like New York is a city of turbulent emotion; perhaps that's why I feel able to breathe here.  There have been the wet dog days, plenty of them, when I felt lost and infuriated, and all I saw when I closed my eyes were the faces of my friends and family, and the reassuring lights – even at midnight – of the Twin Towers.  Some days, I vowed that I was going to return stateside, forever.  But there were also the days I was dizzy with intoxication from this city's beauty, its self-possessed grandeur, the opportunities that seem to be hidden behind every door, if only I turn the right key, at the right moment – which can only be a matter of time.

So I will go back to New York – which, if home is our past and the earth that has nourished us, that flows through our roots and has become a part of us – will always be home.  In my thoughts, my words, the lens through which I observe the world, my native city is always present.  But, for now, New York is no longer home, not in the sense of the every day, the routine, "real life."  New York is no longer the place I wake up every morning, and wait five minutes before dragging myself out of bed, where I wonder when I will attain "success," and where lays hidden the secret to happiness.

Rather, Paris has become home, the city where everyday life unfolds, where I do my banking, become frustrated by bureaucracy, and take long walks at night to tire myself when I can't fall asleep.  Now, I can estimate apartment size only in square meters.  Having never experienced the mires of real estate battles in the U.S., I have no concept of square feet.  I can tell you what groceries or internet subscriptions should cost in francs, but the appropriate dollar values have grown fuzzy in my mind.

Now, as I survey my studio and double-check to make sure I have all the documents I need – my passport, metro pass, plane ticket – I am struck by the unsettling realization that what I am packed for is really a vacation – a vacation to New York.  And so I will return here to Paris in a few weeks, to continue seeking what the belle ville has to offer.  I will take Paris' rainy days along with the magical ones, and try to remember to persevere.  I will continue this search for a home – not geographical, but that home that is built inside each one of us when we finally find peace within ourselves.  I will continue trying to trust those who have come before me, who have ten, fifteen, thirty years on my twenty-three.  And, in my attempts to convince them that I believe them that everything will work out, I will try to convince myself, as well.  Wherever that home is, on whatever continent, I am determined to find it.

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