It’s been 35 years.

  I was about 25 years old when I first visited Paris. By that time I was a two time dropout, Engineering and then the Liberal Arts. How I got around to reading Henry Miller I cannot recall. I know when I was 16 or 17 years old and working in a used bookstore—the long gone Idle Moment—the father of a friend pointed out Miller’s Tropic Of Cancer and said it was “a dirty but good book.” I didn’t read it then, only later, after I had dropped out of the mainstream of our Western educational system. 

  It spoke to me. Or more accurately it sang to me and kindled something sleeping in my heart. 

  And I’ve been following songs like that for nearly forty years now. 

  What a difficult and joyous road it has been! 

  That first time in Paris I washed dishes and sought out Miller’s old haunts. It was a lonely time. 

  Soon I will return with a camera in my hand, of course Tropic, but also a book on Miller by the Hungarian photographer Brassai. During his itinerant knockabout days of hunger depicted in Tropic Miller would accompany Brassai as he roamed and photographed Paris At Night. 

  Paris, springtime, books and a camera! 

  And no need to wash dishes! 

  Stay tuned.