When I was growing up, I learmed a coping trick. When things got too tense and I felt like my head was just about to explode, I would tell myself: The world is bigger than this room. The world is bigger than this house.

Today has felt like that, all day long.

The world is bigger than this country.

Tonight in French class we listened to "Il Est Cinq Heures, Paris S'eveille" (It's Five O'Clock, Paris Awakes) by Jacques Dutronc. It made me smile, because I remembered Paris in the morning.

Paris, 1993.

The first time we visited was 10 years ago, in June 1993. We saved our money and hoarded our vacation time and went away for two whole weeks--one week in Paris, then on to London.

I was never so excited to go anywhere in my life. Seven years of studying French, plus an overactive imagination fed on Brassai and Atget photographs, had built Paris up in my mind to mythic proportion.

I wasn't disappointed.

I just wanted to walk around, everywhere, all day, and so we did, with a few side trips to the Louvre and the Pompidou, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. And we made side trips to the cemetaries, leaving a pebble on Gertrude Stein's grave.

Eiffel Tower, 1993.

It was hotter than I'd expected, and we'd leave the windows open in our hotel room at night, and the noise from the street would go on until the late hours.

In the morning, we'd go down the narrow Rue de St. Andre des Arts and buy some pain au chocolat and some Orange Volvic. We'd dodge the street sweepers and the shopkeepers starting their days.

Brassai photographed Paris by Night, and I liked that, too. But I loved Paris in the morning.

Happy wanderer in Paris, 1993.