It was a crooked path that led me here. The idea for the book
came in a dream, though I don’t remember. One morning it was there, like a
stray cat on my doorstep and once I fed it the book would not go away.
A few years after we were married, Diana and I spent the down-payment
for our first house on a 21-day trip to the Micronesian Islands. We went scuba
diving on sunken Japanese warships and ate fish caught fresh with bare hands.
Most importantly, we met savvy world travelers who introduced us to a new low-budget
travel lifestyle. While we had paid over $100 for our room at the Hilton Hotel
our Australian friends paid a mere $8 for a two-room hut on a private local
island used to raise pigs. When we visited them the piglets ran around us like
puppies!
Again we saved up the down-payment for our own house and
considered starting a family. Our careers in corporate photography and
advertising were growing. Life in San Diego was good.
But serendipity ruled and
we met more people who had traveled the world on the cheap. One couple lived in
Africa and another taught English in Japan. They spoke about their experience
as if it had been a mystical human quest. Diana and I knew our crooked path lay
before us. Within a year we had sold most every possession, canceled the phone,
cable and newspaper, gave away the cat and bought two one-way tickets to Tokyo,
Japan. For the next two years we circumnavigated the globe, filling our lives
with worldly adventures.
Upon our return Diana changed
her career path. From now on she would work in the business of travel, “When
I’m not traveling I want to work with people who are.” She began as an media
assistant for an adventure travel company and now owns her own travel agency,
Dimensions in Travel, in Novato, California.
I gave up photography as a
business and worked in the printing industry as the digital revolution of the
1980s took hold. I constantly worked on newer computers as Apple’s Macintosh matured.
When Adobe released Photoshop 3 I saw the analog world of film was dead and the
brave new world of digital communication had arrived. All us technology geeks
had the same babble, “Just imagine one day when all our computers will be
connected and we will be able to send messages and pictures, maybe even video,
to everyone else around the world…”
Since all I needed was a computer, phone line and good printer, I
began working full-time as a book designer from my home office. I helped turn
writers into authors, made dreams come true and created beautiful books. As a
stay-at-home dad I enjoyed coaching my children’s soccer and baseball teams.
That’s where I found my enthusiasm for teaching.
When the children got
older I went back to college for a California teaching credential in Art and
English. I taught technology and media production to Middle School students and
began to seriously study art history. The Impressionists fascinated me; so
bold, so different, so hated, so revolutionary. This grew into a fascination
with Paris and the birth of modern civilization in the 19th century.
I read about the odd life
of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and was deeply moved. I felt he held a
secret for me; that his story and my story had a parallel. I wanted to learn
more about him, more than books and teachers could tell me. So I took the money
saved for the down payment on my new car and spent it on three weeks in the
Netherlands and Belgium tramping through every town where Vincent had lived.
It felt so natural to be
on the road again. I learned about Van Gogh by talking to the locals, by
picnicking next to the canal where he played as a boy and by walking the long
backroads that Vincent walked when his mind was filled with trouble. It was a
mystical human quest.
Soon after serendipity
appeared. The Larkspur Library was hosting a series of talks on travel and
invited me to speak about my journey, In
the Footsteps of Vincent van Gogh. I didn’t expect much of an audience so
was surprised when over 80 people showed up. I rambled on for more than an
hour, showing arty photographs from my trip. The crowd loved it. I did the
presentation a few more times and the audiences grew larger. At one show all the
seats filled up early and the dutiful security officer had to turn people away,
including my lawyer who was proud to have arrived 15 minutes early!
I was thrilled to play to
a full house. Much more rewarding than trying to instruct bored teenagers in
the use of an Excel spreadsheet program.
When Dimensions in Travel hosted
a group on a France Riverboat Cruise down the Seine river from Paris to Rouen with visits
to Monet’s Giverny and Van Gogh’s Auvers-sur-Oise, I was invited (its all about
who you know) to come along as host and expert guide, give my Van Gogh talk and
also speak about the Impressionists and Paris. That’s when I first presented
the Bridges of Paris.
It began with a question
asked during one of my talks, “Michael, which is your favorite bridge in Paris?” I
had never thought about the bridges. I answered with “Pont Neuf, because it is
the oldest yet called New Bridge,” but truthfully, I couldn’t have named
another bridge.
In Paris my curiosity
became a quest and soon an obsession. Diana stuck with me on the first day when
we traversed ten downstream bridges but after that I was on my own. I crossed
18 more spans over the next two days. With the empirical evidence gained by
walking 28 of the 37 bridges, I shared my story with an enthusiastic riverboat crowd.
I did the show a few more
times back in California and as sure as Paris rain my path took a crook. It
came as advice from a well-dressed woman in the audience, “Your pictures are
just lovely. You should really make a book about all this.”
Living in Paris for a year was not a daring decision. It’s more
like, just one step in a life oriented to maximize global travel. Our children have grown into adults and moved out. Daniel
is teaching in Memphis and April is studying at San Diego State. Diana’s
business is strong and now with an empty nest at home, she travels to places
like Japan and Alaska regularly. I had set aside enough money to finally replace
my 25-year old Honda with a new Toyota Prius, but then there was that dream I
don’t remember about the cat that won’t go away.
Last spring I got my old Honda
tuned up and then flew to Paris for six weeks. I became a photographer again,
this time taking pictures for myself, for my art. I stayed in local apartments,
made some Dutch friends, found a research assistant and met an expatriate
American with a small studio for rent. Serendipity again: he is a writer with a
book he wants to publish independently and I am an independent publisher
wanting a home in Paris. With a handshake I am Parisian.
Now I’m living in a tiny
walkup studio on an island in the middle of historical Paris. I’ll be back in
California for the holidays and Diana is planning her next visit to Paris right
after she gets back from Vietnam. I’m guessing the kids show up during the summer
school break, when Paris sizzles.
The book should go to
press next summer and be published in September, 2014. This autumn I will be photographing
the bridges as the tree leaves change color and the sun is low in the sky. In
February I’m hoping to capture some snowy or at least moody winter bridges.
Every day is new for me in
Paris. It is an adventure just to buy milk. The crooked path continues. My blog
tells the story.
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