Our world has its holy cities. Mecca and Medina, the seven Sapta Puri, the Vatican, the four of Kabbalah—we know these are holy, we’ve read the texts and made the pilgrimages and we know why. But I believe there are more holy cities than our religions proclaim—cities that capture the imagination, that reflect all the desires of the human heart, cities whose magic is tangible in the hours from twilight to dawn. New York, Holy City of Longing. Singapore, Holy City of Order. Paris, as the cliché goes, Holy City of Love.
The nagging persistence of clichés—the reason they never go away—is that they mostly ring true. Spring comes to the Champ de Mars and couples kiss in public like they’re trying to devour each other. I wonder how many of these are Parisians, how many tourists who’ve come to escape themselves, to play a new role in a new city, where they can get away with public affection bordering on sexual cannibalism. It’s for the visitor, after all, that these cities can be what in the zeitgeist they merely represent.
For Jacques Shmeaux who commutes from the 21st arrondissement to sell laser pointers to tourists beneath the Eiffel Tower, la Ville Lumière is probably as much the City of Love as Times Square is to me an attraction. But for we on the road (and, if only briefly, I am again on the road), these confluences of trade and necessity where humanity clusters, focal points of imagination and will, these cities—these holy cities—they are magical.
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