I write today from Paris, where, just before 2022 ended, I did something I had never done before: I got lost.
It wasn’t intentional, although I planned something along those lines when I first got here on Christmas Eve. Decided to vary paths that I always do, I had an idea inspired by a French artist, the brilliant Sophie Calle.
It is not easy to explain her art in a paragraph, but in general terms we can say that she develops narratives of chance, or even random portraits. In one of her most famous works, Calle called several people from a phone book she found on the street and published these conversations in the newspaper Libération.
My experiment was a little less complicated. I thought about, at the beginning of the year, taking a subway, getting off at a station I had never used and exploring that neighborhood.
He wasn’t sure whether to leave everything to chance or choose seasons for the charm of their names. There is no lack of evocative stops on the Parisian metro: lines 7 and 11 take you to Place des Fêtes (Place of Parties); 8 and 9 stop at Bonne-Nouvelle (Good News); with the 2 you get to Rome; on 3 you get off at Malesherbes (Weeds).
What’s not lacking is inspiration. Even before putting my plan into practice, however, chance itself came to prove that it is he who commands us, and not the other way around. Coming back from a delicious lunch at a restaurant I didn’t know yet, Chocho (write it down!), I decided not to ask the GPS to indicate the way home.
I knew I was in the 10éme, or the “tenth arrondissement”. The areas of Paris are numbered in a bizarre snail and because of that my address, at 3éme (third) is close to where I was. Yes, it’s complicated: the 11th is next to the 20th; the 14th borders the fifth and sixth. All right for those who really wanted to get lost.
I insist: it would have been easy to open an application. Or, in case of panic, enter the first metro station and see which lines I should take to reach Chemin Vert (Green Path), another destination with an adorable name.
However, I just relaxed. I was walking with the wind, sometimes against, sometimes in favor. And discovering amazing things.
A barber who played the best Senegalese pop at top volume, making the block dance. A bakery with a brioche stuffed with caramelized onions. An exotic cactus shop. An Arabic restaurant that had just won an award (and it was already full).
A bookstore with a volume of illustrations of plays by the Rond-Point theater by the brilliant Stéphane Trapier. A brand new and, as I later discovered, highly praised chocolate shop: Plaq. The most famous fishmonger in the neighborhood, on the Marché Saint-Martin.
Maybe they weren’t exceptional discoveries, they certainly weren’t for those who always go there. But for this newcomer, it was almost like he was visiting an unknown city, a pleasure that I no longer believed I could experience in Paris.
It took me nearly three hours to reach my address on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. If I didn’t get lost I would spend less than 30 minutes on the route. But who was looking at the clock? I walked into the house exhausted and happy. At the beginning of a year like this, when everything is about to be written down, the experience was precious.
And I already want to get more lost: I think that today I’m going to take metro line 13 to Gaîté station. I won’t make it easy here and give the translation of that name (Google!). But I can say that this is the best way for us to start 2023.
I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years, and my work has been featured on many different news websites. I am also an author, and my work has been published in several books. I specialize in opinion writing, and I often write about current events and controversial topics. I am a very well-rounded writer, and I have a lot of experience in different areas of journalism. I am a very hard worker, and I am always willing to put in the extra effort to get the job done.
