paris

I walked into a church last month and it felt like a mother’s arms around me. I don’t even like churches, let alone grand cathedrals. But in this one, you could almost see the prayers like butterflies, floating to the heavens.
The church was the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and I couldn’t have been more surprised. I entered expecting tourism and history. I discovered prayer.

Here I was warm, I was safe, I was welcome inside the arms of Our Lady. Here was peace, bubbling around me in the hushed hub-bub of hundreds of different languages. Here, a priest blessed two tourists. There, a nun taught a little group of men.

I thought, “prayers are alive.” I didn’t know who heard them, but I knew they were heard.

Together, we lit a candle. Our little prayer mingled with the others, dancing like the tiny flame upon which it was cast. It was answered, of course.

“Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”

It is a haven in the city. You fight your way over Pont Neuf to the Left Bank, through traffic and bicycles and dogs and cafes spilling out onto pavements and waiters flagging down tourists, until you reach a quiet, tree-lined square that was once a monastery and later a slum, and finally cross the threshold of the little English-language bookstore called Shakespeare and Company, Paris.

Once inside, it is as though you have come home. That is, if home was a place with little nooks and crannies of bookshelves stretching right up to the medieval ceiling, lined with exposed beams and strung with chandeliers. You gather up books to buy later, drop some coins in the wishing well, and climb the narrow stairs.

Up here is perfect peace. Ancient, cloth- and leather-bound books line the shelves, and the tiny rooms are dotted with couches and armchairs that have been well-worn to faultless comfort. You hear birds. Following the sound, you take a seat by one of the open windows where geraniums flower in pots and, just beyond them and across the Seine, Notre Dame rests in centuries of sleep.

You pull out one of the old books and start to read. Hours and visitors come and go, browsing, reading, softly talking. From the other room, someone opens a piano and begins to play a classical tune you don’t recognise. It is lovely. They play another, so you put down the book and close your eyes to listen.

The bookstore’s founder, George Whitman, long ago spent many years walking through South America. “I walked from Mexico to Panama,” he said, “where the road ended before an almost uninhabited swamp called the Choco Colombiano. Even today there is no road.”

He was touched by the hospitality of the locals, who would often feed and accommodate him. This had a profound impact upon his life, and led him to create a bookstore that would become a sanctuary for writers and artists.

First called Le Mistral and then changed to Shakespeare and Company as an homage to Sylvia Beach’s famous Parisian bookstore of the same name (1919-1940), the lovely little space where you now rest your eyes and listen to classical music first opened in 1951.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of writers, artists and friends have found a place to rest in this haven in the city, including Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Gregory Corso, William S Burroughs and Alen Ginsberg.

And now you.

The long French dusk gathers, slowly, while you read and rest. When at length you step back outside, golden light spills from the bookstore onto the square, and festive, coloured cafe lights loop across the night sky.

You re-enter the crowds and find a restaurant with friends but somehow, while the waiter buzzes past delivering crepes and olives and fries and wine, you carry the peace of Shakespeare and Company with you into the city.

And all around, Paris glows.

Reason #612 why I need an apartment in Paris: so that I will have a place to put all the amazing and ridiculously cheap finds at Paris’ several marchés aux puces (flea markets). I need space, par example, for that antique typewriter; that gloriously carved and upholstered chair; that ancient Turkish lantern; those three concertina cameras; that tarnished, silver tea set; and that sweet little watercolour by a little known artist from La Belle Époque.

However, finding myself somewhat wanting in the Parisian apartment department (give me time), I have had to make do with these small mementos.

* A beautiful, tall antique bottle
* Another antique bottle, this one a heavenly dark blue
* Four antique postcards (later, I’ll try to translate the messages)
* A lovely, rusty old key. I wonder what it once opened
* Three unused antique postcards, to send to friends
* A little book on French history
* Antique Queen Elizabeth tin
* A colourful woven basket (not pictured because it was too big)

And some other reasons why my bag was so heavy:

* A hand painted Christmas bauble from Paris
* Little glass bird, found in Carcassonne
* Reproduction of an ancient map of Venice
* A fantastically trashy and touristy Rome mug
* A Venetian mask (the girls bought us one each for my birthday party)
* Two tiny vials of perfume from Grasse
* A glass Christmas bauble from Murano, Venice (Santa driving a gondola)
* Glass candy, also from Murano
* Sweet little purse depicting Marie Antoinette fashion
* A flipbook with a romantic Paris street scene
* Flower stickers
* Leftover stamps, since the kids didn’t send as many postcards as expected
* Three watercolours from an artist in Monmartre, and another two from Venice
* Novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and The Lady and the Little Fox Fur, and children’s picture book Paris Y Es Tu? (too big to be pictured)
* A wonderful notebook with vibrant squares of Pantone colour
* Piece of handmade Venetian lace
* Shoulder bag from my favourite bookstore EVER, Shakespeare & Co (Paris)