A Traveler's Souvenir

It isn't just the wonders of the world that dominate my mind and memory. Sometimes it is the trifles that cement in me that dawning consciousness that makes me suddenly aware, "I'm really here! I've stumbled on that rare completion of a dream I only dared to think about." Of this old globe no other part retains its power to capture me so well as one exciting synthesis of light, of tower and of art. However it's the unspectacular that moves me most of all. I've seen magnificence in Rotterdam, Brussels, Munich and New York-- all wonderful, and yet it was the transient things that framed a city for me then some fifty years ago. They would again if they remain today: those little bookstalls along the Seine. ~