DEBORAH CROMBIE: As much as I love London, there is something about Paris that gets me every time, something shadowy and indefinable. A Moveable Feast is my favorite Hemingway book (I read it for the first time in London) and I adore Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. So when I read J.T. Ellison's essay below, I got chills. Now I'm wondering if, when I'm in London the next few weeks, I might just hop on the Eurostar and spend a day wandering the streets of Paris. Read and see if you are not tempted.
A Place of the Heart
Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.
“Montparnasse”
by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway’s morbid poem aside, nothing speaks to me like the
idea of 1920s Montparnasse. It’s so utterly romantic, a generation’s best and
brightest living, breathing, creating, loving, drinking, eating, fighting
together. And a Parisian backdrop… what could be better? The “moveable feast,”
as he referred to it, has always seemed to me the height of collaborative
creativity.
I’d dreamed about it, read about it, but I’d never visited,
not until my husband surprised me with a birthday trip in 2014 (so much for the
seven years of French I took in school, right?). I fell in love, naturally.
Paris is a hard city not to adore. It has a vibe of its own, like New York, and
London. Unique unto itself, impossible to describe properly to those who
haven’t been there.
That trip, we saved Montparnasse for last. My expectations
were utterly unrealistic, which I realized the moment we stepped off the Metro
and were greeted by a Starbucks.
Where is the romance in a Parisian Starbucks? Where were my
ghosts? Where was the creative spirit I knew lingered in city’s dark recesses?
We had a snack at Le Select and then wandered off to look
for Sarte's grave, which we couldn't find, and decided the whole afternoon must
be an existential joke, then decamped for Montmartre, and Sacré Coeur, with its
lovely views of the city.
I stood there, on that windswept hill, bereft. What I was
searching for was down there, somewhere in the city of light. I knew it. I
could feel it reaching for me. But my time in Paris was up. We had to leave in
the morning.
That evening, sitting at a little café we’d been frequenting
all week, running the day over in my head, my disappointment with Montparnasse,
and with myself for not experiencing it properly, a woman sat down a few tables
away. She was so utterly and completely French I had to write her in my
notebook. After a cursory description, my writer’s mind took over. Several
pages later, I’d sketched a strange little story about her, and what she was
doing in Paris.
This became the basis for my newest novel. It seemed my
brief encounter with Montparnasse had given me something after all.
Back home in Nashville, as the book got underway, I made
plans to return to Paris. This time, I wasn’t going to rush into Montparnasse
with high expectations. I was going to spend time there, get to know it, write
in its cafés, experience its shadows and light. Montparnasse is a special place.
It wants to be coaxed into showing you its best side. Rushing in was never
going to work. I needed to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps, to drink and love
and create on site.
Trip two, we were leisurely in our approach. We ate in all
the restaurants in the 7th, walked the streets morning, noon, night. We bought
fruit from the markets and got lost down alleyways. I spent a whole afternoon
at La Closerie des Lilas. Inside the dark, silent bar, the tables all have
plaques, a veritable who’s who of creativity and history, all placed by their
favorite seats. I’d found the ghosts of Montparnasse, at last. I located
Hemingway’s plaque, sat in his seat, drank champagne and ate olives, and
existed. And then, I wrote.
And as I did, I realized there was something there, in the
room with us, an energy I could feel like water on my skin. I tried to capture
it in my words. I got very teary and overwhelmed at one point, not like me at
all. It was incredibly special. I came home rejuvenated by the experience, and
finished the book, which I can honestly say was my most challenging to date.
The scenes I wrote in the dark bar made it in, as did many from that week.
I still feel like that afternoon in Paris turned the tide
for me, both as a writer, and for this particular book. I achieved a lifelong
dream, to write a book in Paris. Parts of one, at least.
It’s amazing how expectations can ruin the journey for us.
If we’d only stop and smell the roses, quite literally, what would we
experience? It was a great lesson for me, as a writer, and as a human. To exist
within the place, instead of thinking it will come to you.
Do you have a special place, a place of the heart?
DEBS: I know I do. London has always been that special place for me. I feel layers of time and lives in every street and neighborhood. And my favorite way of getting to know any place is to get the touristy things out of the way and then to just live, taking the pulse of things.
REDs and readers, what about you? What's your special place?
Here's more about LIE TO ME, and J.T. will be giving away a copy to one of our commenters!
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