Angels in disguise

May 7, 2009

Dear Emmanuelle,

We enjoyed spending time with you this past week and hope you return home from America Obama-juvenated. Living next door to Frank and Robyn privileges us to join in dancing and sharing food and wine and most of all conversations with visitors from the travelogues.

A Parisian can't know how much fun it is writing to someone who is one. It's like communicating with another planet. Yoo-hoo, how's the Seine? The Mississippi is still bloated. How's Eiffel's tower? Cape Girardeau must seem low-slung from your perspective, but it's not as skyline-less as it could be when the New Madrid fault really slips another disk.

Those of us who live in smaller places can go goofy trying to find a connection with someone whose home is one of the world's greatest stages. No, I said, when DC and I were there for five days, we didn't go to Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore where Hemingway and Miller hung out. I do like the store's motto: "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise."

The connections that end up mattering are simple shared experiences like walking downtown after listening to music and conversations that lead to open spaces instead of dead ends. Your longing for some of the simplicity and connectedness you see in life here is obvious.

All Parisians can't possibly be as astute about books and movies as you are. You left me feeling as if I'd taken a cultural Rorschach test. I acquired a copy of the book about art and spirituality you recommended. Sometimes this is how culture is transmitted, isn't it, one conversation at a time.

Presumptuous as it might have been coming from people who might still qualify as strangers, I hope you accepted our willingness to advise you on your future as well-meaning. Someone younger who appears to be groping for answers brings out the guidance counselor in us singed veterans of domestic wars. We have learned that confusion and chaos are the necessary prelude to knowing.

That Robyn thinks you should write a book doesn't mean it's a crazy idea. Here is a writing formula from Richard Rhodes, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his 900-page book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." He advises:

"If writing a book is impossible, write a chapter.

If writing a chapter is impossible, write a page.

If writing a page is impossible, write a paragraph.

If writing a paragraph is impossible, write a sentence.

If writing a sentence is impossible, write a word and teach yourself everything there is to know about that word and then write another, connected word and see where the connection leads."

Here in Southeast Missouri, and I suspect in Paris, we are happily condemned to seeing where connections lead. Usually it's somewhere that enriches our souls. We await your return.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.