F E A T U R E S

What is it about Paris?
By Don George, Editor
The seductive heart of the City of Light

Philosophy au lait
By David Downie
I pose, therefore I am. "Philocafes" conquer Paris.
- Books on Paris
- Philocafes schedule

D E P A R T M E N T S

The Surreal Gourmet
By Bob Blumer
Asparagus with attitude

Passages:
"Anatomy of Restlessness"
Gone to Timbuctoo
By Bruce Chatwin
- Getting there

Postmark: Los Angeles
Lost in Los Feliz
By Dawn MacKeen
What happens when Madonna, Gwyneth and Brad take over your old neighborhood?
- Books on Los Angeles

Readers' Tips and Tales
Your favorite city in the whole wide world!

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Your virtual travel agency

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L A S T + W E E K

Tuesday, May 6

Riding high
By Cintra Wilson
Our resident enfant terrible does the Kentucky Derby

A full list of all
Wanderlust articles

BY DON GEORGE | may 10, 1997: It began with David Downie's cover story on the new philosophers' cafes that have become all the rage in Paris. That inspired me to dig out my journals from my old post-college days there, all bursting with just-blooming discoveries, despairs and dreams.

Now a few hours have passed. Outside, a dark and drizzly day dawns in Northern California, but inside, it is a warm August evening in Paris. I am walking under the plane trees by the Seine, just after a concert of classical music at a tiny, stony, centuries-old church I had serendipitously stumbled onto a few hours before. I am alone but I am not, because I am drunkenly in love with the river, the trees, the party boats that spotlight the elegant façades that line the bank -- I am in love with the city, and wherever I go, it is there.

I walk down a tiny alley past galleries and antique shops and bookstores to a place I know, an eight-table restaurant with real sawdust on the floor and waxy wine bottles bearing candles on white paper tablecloths and the best steak and French fries in town. There is real romance here, too. Lovers sit at the corner tables, their arms intertwined, staring deeply into each other's lives. I think of Baudelaire and Hemingway, of the blond I met the week before with the heart-plucking laugh and the Cote d'Azur eyes. I sigh. "It is good," I write in my journal, "to be alive."

Later I am at the Hemingway bar at the Ritz Hotel, reading "A Moveable Feast" and pausing occasionally to look at the bronze bust of the man himself. Suddenly the years collapse and blur by like snippets of film: It is my first summer in Paris, and I am sneaking into the Ritz with my best coat on, praying the discreet door guardians won't ask me what I'm doing there so I can explore inside and pretend I belong ... It is my second summer in Paris and I am drinking champagne in a room in the Ritz with two Southern belles I met just a few days before. They were lost, I gave them directions, we started to talk and the next thing I knew they were imploring their parents to adopt me for the duration of their stay. And so I am introduced to the inner mysteries of the place: the sleek antique furniture, the towering windows behind thick drapes, the sprawling, cosseting, bepillowed beds ... Now it is a decade later and I am finally an actual guest at the hotel, enwrapped in a dream come true, trying to weave its spell around my wife and at the same time to prevent my toddler from spilling on the silk sofa and tipping over an 18th century vase.

So many years, so many memories ... Again the scene shifts, and now I am at Shakespeare and Company, talking with the irascible, irreplaceable George Whitman about Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, about the writers and pilgrims who still sweep through, looking for inspiration, camaraderie or just a cheap place to stay. I wander into one of the weekly salons, held up a cramped staircase in a book-lined, third-floor room, and listen to a wispy poet read his latest works to coal-eyed women and chain-smoking men.

What is it about Paris that I fell in love with, that so many people fall in love with? Partly it's the sheer beauty of the place, the quirky cobblestone neighborhoods and the grand boulevards lined by elegant immensities of symmetrical stone. Partly it's the rich history that seems still to infuse the air -- the bells pealing from Notre Dame as they have for centuries, the medieval tapestries enlivening the Musée du Cluny, the sacrifices commemorated at the Arc de Triomphe. Partly it's the omnipresence of art and culture -- the museums and the theaters, the gardens and the galleries. And partly it's the bistros and the boutiques, the cafes and the theatrical life of the streets.

But it's something else, too, something ineffably romantic about the city: the way the light filters through the trees and reflects off the Seine; the way the leaves glisten on the pavement after an autumn rain and the smell of them filling the metro stairway as you ascend to the street; the echo of a flute in an arch at the Louvre; the sudden swish of a child's sailboat in a fountain at the Tuileries; the way the city glimmers at night, a metropolitan Milky Way -- oh, City of Light.

Isn't this true of many cities? Well, somehow not. There's something about Paris that makes people walk hand in hand and stop to kiss long and deep, and sigh, oblivious to all the people passing by.

And so I take memory by the hand, walk a little way, and stop: The air is warm, a breeze rustles the plane leaves, the moon slivers and shimmers on the Seine. "Everything is possible," memory whispers in my ear. I close my eyes, and we are young again.
May 13, 1997

What about you? Have you fallen in love with Paris too? What is it about Paris anyway? Share your thoughts in Table Talk.

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Don George is the Editor of Wanderlust. You can e-mail him at dgeorge@salonmagazine.com.

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Salon Wanderlust is published every Monday evening at 6 p.m. PDT in Salon. Send all reader mail to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com. To receive a colorful weekly update on what's happening in Wanderlust, sign up here. Published articles are housed in the Wanderlust archives.