Paris fits the slipper

There are cities one visits, and there are cities one enters as if stepping into a storybook. Some places preserve you in amber while others loosen the laces of habit and invite you to dance. Our latest stay in Paris felt precisely like that: less a trip, more a transformation. It was the passage from one fairy tale to another, from "Sleeping Beauty" to "Cinderella".

© Ana Teresa Fernández "The Ice Queen", 2013 | Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco

Vienna, for all its grandeur, often appears to us as "Sleeping Beauty" after a the hundredth year. The palace still gleams, the chandeliers wait to be dusted off, and the silver is perfectly arranged but cobwebbed. Yet, behind the beauty lies an extraordinary stillness... Not the serene stillness of contemplation, but the upholstered slumber of a system that has grown too comfortable with itself. Everything seems wonderfully intact because nothing is permitted to move too much. The kingdom sleeps on velvet cushions, and one might call it elegance, but one might also call it a prolonged valium state.

And where is the prince, one asks? The figure bold enough to cross the threshold, disturb the dust, and wake what has long been dormant? Alas, no knight in sight. Not because courage has vanished entirely, but because the castle is surrounded by rose bushes grown dense over decades. Their thorns are not botanical but social: codes, circles, surnames, old permissions, inherited caution, bought-in characters. They scratch at outsiders, discourage the curious, and reward those few who already know the way in. The result is a city of immense beauty that often mistakes immobility for refinement.

Then comes Paris.

Paris does not wait asleep in a tower. Paris is awake at unreasonable hours, arguing in cafés, sketching on napkins, rearranging itself mid-sentence. It is gloriously unfinished! It spills ideas onto pavements and allows strangers to believe, if only for an afternoon, that they belong.

For the non-member of the Parisian club, for the newcomer without pedigree, title, arrondissement lineage, or ancestral dinner invitations, it can feel at first like being little Cinderella before the ball. One arrives carrying traces of Vienna still: the stern stepmother of propriety, the practical sisters of caution and conventions whispering from behind. Don't be ridiculous. Don't speak too loudly. Don't improvise. Don't presume entry. Don't be "schlimm". Yet, Paris has no patience for such household tyranny.

Instead, Paris behaves like the prince in the old tale but with better tailoring and stronger opinions on bread. It ventures out into the streets with the slipper in hand, looking not for pedigree but fit. Who can step into possibility? Who dares to imagine differently? Who can laugh, contradict, create, "taquiner", seduce an idea into existence? That is Paris at its finest: not exclusive, as myth would have it, but startlingly open to those who arrive alive with curiosity.

The miracle of the city is that it does not require you to be born into it. It only asks that you participate. Sit long enough at a café terrace, and you are no longer observing Paris, but you are inside its machinery of thought. Wander through galleries, courtyards, bookstores, bridges, and suddenly the mind begins to move differently. Connections appear where there were none, questions become more interesting than answers, and even one's posture improves.

Imagination in Paris is not a luxury product. It is atmospheric. – Maison d'Art

This is why a stay there can feel so renewing while you discover that thinking itself has seasons, and some cities are spring. What had been dormant starts to stir! Plans once politely shelved begin tapping at the glass while language sharpens, and desire regains syntax. Meanwhile, back in the sleeping kingdom, the hedges remain expertly trimmed.

To compare cities is always unfair, because each excels at something. Vienna stands for preservation, ceremony, continuity, and the art of making history feel upholstered. Paris excels at ignition, and its lights fuses in the mind. It reminds us that culture is not only inheritance, but risk. Perhaps this is the true fairy tale lesson.

We will bring the Parisian spirit with us by being a bit "frech" and "schlimm", by "taquiner" others affectionately, by considering discussions as poker games, embracing differing opinions and ambiguity overall, and by establishing our own kind of "caprice". "Pardon our French" will get an instant new meaning. Promise!

Yours truly,

Margot

MDA sidenote: Ana Teresa Fernandez (b. 1981 in Tampico, Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores borders, identity, and the connections between people, place, and politics. Drawing on her background in linguistics and fluency in five languages, she uses performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture as forms of visual language. Through her work, she reveals shared human stories often obscured by division, while highlighting the fragility and beauty of our world. In her words: "Where unimaginable conditions are the reality, I seek to portray dreamscapes of what’s possible. The courage to transform is up to us.”