New Yorkers like to believe we are the center of the world.  September 11th, tragically, proved us right.  I have been in Paris a week now, but, for all intents and purposes, I could still be in the Big Apple.  The French nightly news opens with coverage of the recovery efforts in New York, followed by investigations on European terrorism and stories about Islamists in Afghanistan.  The oversized Metro billboards, which usually announce wine festivals or the release of a new teeny- bopper movie, advertise special edition magazines about the Days of Terror in New York.  Some show images of the World Trade Center, the south tower sliced by an burning orange gash.  On others, black smoke looms over the skyline, a ghost-like image of Osama bin Laden emerging from the cloud.

The guards who now stand at the entranceways to stores and public buildings, requiring visitors to open their bags and, often, present a motive for their visit, are testament to the fact that the whole world has changed because of what happened in New York on that day.  The increased security measures - here, in the United States, and around the globe – are only the most visible changes since that horrible Tuesday.

John F. Kennedy Airport, where flight check-in was four hours prior to departure, was abnormally calm a week after the attacks.  U.S. Marshals patrolled the lobby.  The waiting area's Greenwich Village Bistro, where I ordered a glass of wine to calm my nerves in the hours before boarding, seemed sadly confused about its identity:  the waiters wore crisp black and white uniforms and the menu was written in a self- important script, but the tables were set with plastic forks and knives.  The metal detector line was three times longer than usual, and it inched along at a pace that left me anxious that I might miss my plane.  I felt only contemptuous relief when the guards made a woman behind me discard her gold-plated manicure set.

Upon arrival in Paris, passports were controlled so carefully that, by the time I advanced from the end of the line, past the identification checkpoint, and exited into the baggage claim area, everyone ahead of me had long been gone.  Only two or three sad-looking suitcases snaked around the luggage belt, waiting for their owners to claim them.  In the Metro and on the streets, soldiers patrol with machine guns hanging at their sides.  The city's trash cans have been bolted closed, to prevent terrorists from using them as bomb depositories.  In an attempt to manage the discarded apple cores, gum wrappers, and expired Metro tickets of Paris, some street corners have been outfitted with translucent green bags hanging from metal rings and bearing the words:  VIGILANCE – CLEANLINESS.  Still, garbage has been piling up atop the bolted receptacles where provisions have not been made and there remains no place to throw things away.  These piles serve as a smelly reminder that what happened in New York that day has affected even the banalities of daily life, thousands of miles and an ocean away.

The changes that we do not see, the invisible ones, are the most grave.  In the RER, I jumped after hearing a strange hiss as the brakes released air; my first instinct was to fear a bomb.  As the Metro screeches around curves in the tunnels, I silently plan escape routes, instead of making faces at babies or eavesdropping on lovers' arguments.  I wonder if I would be safer to take the bus.  After telling my downstairs neighbor that I was from New York, I watched his initial excitement drop into an expression of sorrowful apology.  Still under the effects of jet lag, I fall asleep early, but I awake at 4:00 a.m. from dreams of buildings imploding and airplanes combusting.  Rather than a sense of relief upon opening my eyes, I move from the terror of nightmares into the prison of semi-wakefulness, as I roam half-asleep through visions of chemical warfare.  My friends, my neighbors, my former landlady, everyone is worried about what the future will bring.

In the chill of early autumn, Paris is welcoming.  It is comforting to hear people speaking French, to be reminded that there are other places in the world besides New York.  Places where, even though the news opens with images of the smoldering remains of what were once hundred-story towers, I can step into the streets and not be afraid to meet someone's eyes, and discern the pain of having lost a loved one.  Where Have you seen? posters are not tacked to every bus shelter.  Where bunches of flowers, bundled into autumn- colored bouquets, are a sign that I have stumbled upon a florist's, not a fire station.  Where the air doesn't hang thick with the nauseating smell of burnt when the wind blows in from the south.

Still, the memory of that day is unrelenting.  In my studio, a poster hangs above my bed of the New York skyline at dusk.  The city lights are bright against the pink and purple of the night sky.  I look to the photo for inspiration when words escape me, and I find myself swallowed up for a moment in the image.  The Brooklyn Bridge spans the length of the photo, continuing beyond the bottom corner where the poster ends.  It is almost like I could walk into that photo, cross over the bridge, and be in my native town again.  Like I could stroll from one City of Lights to the other.

In the poster, which is, glaringly, a "before" picture, the Twin Towers stand proud vigil over the rest of the skyline.  When my eyes turn toward the the wall for inspiration, they fall, inevitably, on those towers.  This photo of New York – complete – is the way I want to remember my city, always.  Its place of honor above my bed, in Paris, feels like an act of defiance, no matter how small.  It bears testament to the spirit of the New York that was.  It is proof of our resilience as a nation.  Of the magic that enchants tens of millions of visitors every year and has inspired eight million people from all walks of life to make the city their home, to be swept up in its frenetic and irresistible rhythm.  It is proof of a spirit that, no matter what they do, can never be destroyed.

So this installment of my Paris Journal may seem to have little to do with Paris at all.  The truth is, in fact, quite the contrary.  The events of this September have proved that the world is infinitely smaller than we had thought; that what happens on one continent deeply affects life on the others.

If I am able to be in my studio in Paris, listening to the rain fall as I write this Journal – rather than grounded in the U.S., too fearful of the future to have left the comforts of home – it is because of the resilience and dogged spirit born of my New York roots.  Americans, including the tens of thousands who have suffered tremendous loss in the past weeks, refuse to let terror stand in the way of our everyday lives and our dreams.  A natural curiosity to explore and to strive, bred from a childhood spent in a vibrant and mysterious city, has led me to this other city across the ocean.

What draws me to Paris is the unique possibility that exists here to be a global citizen, and to meet others who share the desire to erase the borders between nations.  Ironically, it has taken tragedy to sow the seeds for such a unity among nations.  The September 13 editorial headline of the French daily Le Monde read, "We Are All Americans."  It is my hope that, some day, we can all be Parisians, Afghanis, Cambodians.  Paris, like New York, is a city where cultures coexist, borrowing from and enhancing one another.  The overlapping influences described in this installment, then, make it, more than anything, a very Paris Journal.

Mail:  GParnes@Yahoo.com

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