Have a good night.

I returned to Paris on Thursday morning after an overnight train ride from Rome with Christian teenagers from America and the zenith of discomfort known as the "couchette" -- it's like a shelf, but for people, on European night trains. You're supposed to sleep on them. I don't know who thought of this, but it is probably someone on a par with whoever invented CD packaging. Because they are painful. We visited seven countries in two and a half weeks. Berlin was far and away my favorite place. We also saw Luxembourg, Brussels (don't go to Brussels), Bruges, Amsterdam, Prague, Rome, and Vatican City. I'm not counting anywhere we made train connections.

It's good to be back in Paris. I'm realizing that I speak French well now. Like, I'm sort of, you know, bilingual. I just find myself so much more comfortable speaking with people on a regular basis, joking around with strangers and waking up other passengers on the metro when they've fallen asleep at the terminus. It feels good to be able to do that. It's something I definitely wouldn't have had the balls to do when I first got here.

Tonight I went to a movie, thus getting back into my Paris hobby. I see a lot of movies here. The earlier showing I wanted to go to was sold out, so I found myself taking line 4 to Shakespeare and Company to peruse, then leaving because it was too overrun with tourists and people speaking English and this weirded me out, picking up a crepe at the stand I know at Odeon, and then wandering Montparnasse before my movie. And something strange happened. I was crossing the street away from Le Select, one of Ernest Hemingway's old haunts, when I saw a panhandler man wearing a giant wooden cross around his neck. I almost felt compelled to say, "Dude, that's some cross you got there," but I make a point of not talking to homeless men ever since one beamed me with a beer can when I first moved here. Then I noticed the restaurant he was standing in front of. It looked nice so I swooped into see how exorbitantly priced the drinks were, when a waiter came out with a plate of oysters and a tub full of water. As he balanced the plate of oysters on one hand, he used the other to dump the tub of water onto the homeless man. He then proceeded to yell at him. I guess they had asked him not to panhandle in front of the restaurant. This seemed like such a cruel, uncalled for thing to do. I mean, Paris is full of homeless people, but aside from that one experience I had, I don't usually see them as being dangerous. So I stood in front of the tabac next to the restaurant and pretended to look at postcards while I watched the homeless man hobble away from the restaurant. I looked to my left and spotted a homeless woman at the metro stop. She was packing up her bags for the night, and nestling a puppy into a little bag. I looked at her, and the man with the wooden cross, and remembered how many homeless people live in Paris. And then I did something that I never do. Knowing full well that my bank account has been hurting since my trip and that what I was about to do next might just help this man buy beer, I reached into my wallet, took out a euro coin, walked over to the man with the wooden cross and put it in the paper cup he was holding. My reservations didn't matter. After all, a euro can also buy you a baguette.

"Bonne soiree," I said. Have a good night.

It was a small, timid action, but it felt like the best I could do. Sometimes the right thing is really pretty obvious. The man inclined his head towards me, almost bowing. And as I walked away from him, feeling a little cowardly, a little better, and a little confused, something occurred to me. Seeing someone treated that way upset me because it's happened to me. Because in November, a homeless man threw a beer can at the back of my head, and it made me feel small and vulnerable and insignificant. I didn't realize it when I gave the guy a coin, but I felt some kind of understanding that I don't think I would have had otherwise. We are all small. I'm small. The man with the wooden cross was small. The waiter who threw water on him is small. The man who threw a beer can at me is small. Everyone is small. But no one is insignificant. As Unitarian cheeseball as it may sound, everyone matters. We all have the capacity to connect with other people in a way that isn't destructive. And I thought back to the night of the beer can incident. I was wearing the jacket I was wearing that night. And it felt so circular. I felt so far away from the girl who ran down Rue de Tolbiac in a state of shock and panic, already worried about the dry cleaning costs. I couldn't see beyond myself that night. A few months ago, the man with the wooden cross would have scared me. But I also know what it feels like to have someone you don't even know treat you cruelly for no reason. Somehow, that incident opened me up in a way I didn't realize until now. And, most likely not unrelatedly, Paris has become my home. And it feels fucking amazing.