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I took this photo in April of a man sitting under some blossoming trees beside Notre Dame
as I wandered around Paris lost in every moment of adventure and discovery...
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I just re-read Hemingway's, A Moveable Feast after thirty years. I was motivated to revisit his expatriate experience of the 20's in Paris after visiting the Steins Collect Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde exhibit at SFMOMA as well as the Gertrude Stein exhibit at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum.
As an artist and writer, I would have enjoyed living the expatriate life in Paris during the 20's and 30's. Reading the book was a much different experience this time than three decades ago. But, the last paragraph rings as true for me today as it did in the late 70's:
"There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
In Memory of Deborah Nourse Dubs
