Royaume Uni du Canal St. Martin

I now live in a strange enchanted castle-- not in Disneyland/ Marne-La-Vallee on the RER A (thank God), but in the 10th. Consider this: our house is a hidden canal-front fortress with a giant double deadbolt door and then, once you step into our narnia, there are no more locks. We are free to come and go into the Big House when The Owner is away and the first day I dared cross the threshold, there was a box of pastries waiting for us. This was effective positive reinforcement without the Pavlovian bell-- go into house, get treats. Now I always check the kitchen for stray religieuses.

The premises include: 2 studios, a small courtyard covered in an otherworldly jungle of houseplants, a rooftop garden above my apartment, and then the Big Apartment that belongs to The Owner. The Owner is a retired academic and being a retired academic is pretty much my dream and the closest thing I have to a life ambition... The Big House has about 47 strangely shaped octagonal rooms all with at least 3 doors, making each one exageratedly accessible and they're all lined floor to ceiling with books. The house also features an excessive number of well-trodden wooden staircases. It's kind of a French version of Vermont log cabin architecture combined with the Winchester Mystery House-- not that I ever went there because I wasn't a bay area tourist and couldn't be bothered to go to San Jose EVER, not even to see the famous haunted house with staircases to nowhere built by the guilt-ridden heiress to the Winchester gun fortune. Not that the Canalfront Empire feels tainted by spectral guilt. If anything, it is a small slice of Eden in this uncertain and indifferent world.

The Owner travels a lot-- being retired, this is his main occupation which he deserves after years of suffering the French public educational system (after 2 years and the current interminable strike, I'm also ready to retire), and when the cat's away, the mice will play. We, the tenants, of course, have no actual mice in our enchanted castle but take care of the actual cat and play with her. She is very sweet and chubby. In the Big House, we not only have access to our feline friend, but also those elusive luxuries like a washer/dryer, an oven, and a landline that only Real People have in their enchanted kingdoms in France.

I'm not the only tenant. There is a whole universe of inhabitants. There is, of course, the cat, my flatmate (who is, luckily, a friend and coworker), and a non English-speaking friend of The Owner's son who lives rent-free in the basement in exchange for remodeling the son's apartment. I joked to the flatmate that we're like individual nation states who all form the United Kingdom of 39 Canal-Front Lane. We decided I would be England, she could be Scotland, the Owner would be Northern Ireland, because he was frequently travelling off the main island and the basement carpenter could be Wales, since like Welsh street signs, we don't always understand him.

Geography is on my mind lately, since you have to reorient yourself completely when you change quartiers here. Each neighborhood, of course, has its own character. Everyone has their own image of Paris-- my Paris is different from even that of my best friend, and this Paris pretty much becomes the immediate 4-block radius around your house and your daily commute.

So far, here are my 4 blocks: there's the enchanted castle, the enchanted although sometimes pungent canal, and some lovely bars and restaurants, my current favorite of which is called the Goldfish. I've taken to running along the canal to la vilette in one direction and Oberkampf in the other, which is a great route.

For practical concerns, I also have the required constellation map of different grocery stores with varying prices and quality and some cheap takeout Indian restaurants identified. And a little shop where you can buy 3 euro belts.

On the gritty realist side, there's also the very unenchanted post office homeless tent city, but this is a reality in any big city-- not everyone can afford housing here. The flatmate and I are lucky to have the enchanted castle deal that we have.

The neighborhood reminds me a little of very different geography: the Mission in SF in a way, just with fewer Spanish speakers. We have different political demonstrations everyday at Place de la Republique, which is very San Francisco, and a young, artsy, and creative crowd. Hipsters and homeless people, however, live along the same street, which is also sadly very reminiscent of San Francisco. There's a cafe down the street that seems lifted straight off Valencia Street from San Francisco and plunked down in front of the Canal St. Martin which we now call the California Cafe. I sometimes feel like all my favorite places in Paris are ones that remind me of SF, but the French-speaking European version 2.0. You probably always superimpose your past cities on your current ones to some extent-- like when I moved from DC to SF there were lots of neighborhood equivlents to work out, like Dupont Circle was the DC equivalent of the Castro in SF, for example. Our French canal-front castle is maybe my version of 28 Barbury Lane, the equally eccentric and enchanted apartment building from cult San Francisco book Tales of the City.