How can one get lost in a city that calls the ground floor of its buildings, 0? My apartment is near the end of a long dark corridor on the second (but called the first) floor of La Cité intérnationale des Arts. There is a mystery floor between me and 0 and it is called ES. The corridors of all the floors are dark because of electricity saving mechanisms, which automatically switch off the lights after a few minutes. I like the dark so, I rarely bother to hit the light switch as I come around the corner from the stairs into the hallway. As I pass the dozen or so doorways, I slice through a cross-section of distinct domestic odours, each sharpened by the darkness. It is sunny outside, so perhaps fewer people are inside; today, I only got a taste of soup and cigarette smoke.
How can I get lost in a city that marks the square in front of the Notre Dame cathedral as point zero for all the roads in the entire country? Even though I can see the cathedral from my window, I have still not got myself completely oriented in terms of north and south. For me, everything centres around the Seine and my apartment on the Seine. Is it the constant curving of the river and the fact that my apartment faces the Seine that everything else beyond or behind these two central axes are not quite attached to them in ways that make any continuous sense to me- yet! This means I am constantly turned around, not unlike when I come out of a subway. As a result, I find myself in unexpected pockets of interest such as a string of galleries and book stores along Mazarine, when I am looking for St-Germain, or the Library for everyone (Bibliothèque pour tous) while lost again on my way back yesterday from the Cluny Museum. So, for now, if I had a place I had to be at a specific time, it would be wiser to go the opposite direction suggested by my intuition, or leave extra early.

Perhaps, I will abandon the maps and make my way through the city with only my senses as guide; choosing like the woman and the unicorn in the Cluny, a different sense each day to orient my excursions. While wandering on Rivoli, one afternoon in one of those first blurry days of my arrival, the thought came to me ,  “why did I come here again?”

A response came even quicker, and I laughed out loud. Was I hearing the beginnings of a debate form inside my head? “Paris is a city of guiltless pleasure.” And, I love to follow my pleasure, a kind of pleasure in living and tasting the world that engages me. One that is sane and healthy. It must be time again to do some more reading of my introduction to philosophy book along the Seine.