Are you a writer or an editor?
I wanted to ask the man sitting next to us at the Cafe Les Éditeurs, but I thought it would be rude, too intrusive.
Being nosy, I confess, hasn’t stopped me so far in Paris. It’s the way I meet strangers, like Neel Kumar, an affable Indian director from Dubai,
at the Jardin de Luxembourg, where the flowers were in full bloom.
The Leica he carried is the camera of choice for the master French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson,
piqued my interest. We chatted for nearly a half hour about writing, photography and the motorcycle trip he plans from his home to Paris!
But later, at the chic Les Éditeurs in the Sixth District, I held back. The man, natty in a blue suit with a short scarf favored by Frenchman, was so deep in thought. He hunched over a manuscript, making the tiniest pencil edits, or looking into the distance to the far reaches of his mind, perhaps for fresh ideas. For me, it was a familiar sight, moving from a computer screen to a printout, thus achieving the physical distance that this step of the writing process demands.
We stood out as tourists at Les Éditeurs, long a destination for the literati, where publishers, writers and editors talk shop and broker deals. Around us, writers bent over their laptops. They were hard at work, like the man sitting next to us.
We drank our coffee and let him be.
Thanks for sharing, Chip. You seem to be having a great time exploring Paris and interacting with kindred spirits.
Loving these postcards!