What a terrific, blow-out event last week at the Alliance Francaise as our Wanderland Writers wandered into this wonderful San Francisco venue to share bits of their Paris stories from our latest volume: Wandering in Paris; Luminaries and Love in the City of Light.
A finish from co-editor, Linda Watanbe McFerrin’s wonderful piece, “Inside the White Gorilla,” with its nod to the exigency of existentialism set the tone.
For tumbling through the layers of time and era in Paris, there is that sense of wait, where am I? In the Middle Ages, or café society in search of Gertrude Stein? Tripping over the highest heels of fashion, tripping out in a steamy hammam, or tripping up the stairs of the Garnier Opéra? Cavoring with Descartes or Thomas Jefferson or Napoléon? Or communing with the spirits of the dead artists and writers (Berthe Morisot, Voltaire anyone?) in cemeteries, streets and the bowels of the Panthéon?
Or maybe, like the characters in Woody Allen’s 2011 film, Midnight in Paris, we were all those places together, filled with happy Francophiles drinking wine and nibbling cheese, quiche and Madeleines right there in San Francisco.
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