I wonder what S. is up to in Paris? We didn't really have a chance to speak before she left for a one or two month trip, so I actually had no idea where she was going. Paris, after a brief US tour. As I remember, she gets a lot of her inspiration there, so I hope it works out and she has loads of stuff to show for it. Never having made the short trip to Paris (from London), I have no idea the affect the place has on ones senses. Tokyo is certainly an overload and has given me more to write than London. In fact, London is like a huge enervating cesspit. Were I to live in the countryside anywhere on the planet I would probably take to quaffing huge amounts of beer (and growing huge amounts of marijuana), I love nature but need excessive inebriation to live in it... and would write very little between stupors. New York City makes me feel thoroughly Steve Reich and early Phillip Glass, which is a good thing.. really. 10 years ago, Athens was also a good place in which to write, though I was a classicist type at the time; Delphi, too, had some inspiring charm. The Greek islands had the same effect. (I'm very curious about the differing affects of place and space on poetic production. That is, I wonder if the ideas we bring to a place (like Delphi, the navel of the world) override or work with the space itself. It would seem most natural that they would work simultaneously.) Generally I like to write in overloaded environments, like Tokyo. Throngs of people pushing on and off of trains, Obasans darting at seats, the unplanned mass of mostly white, pink, and brick-colored concrete, flashing lights, Korean 'massage' parlors, orange-tanned men with lonsilverer hair in suits, etc etc. Speculatively, the love of such chaotic places has to do with imposing an order on the chaos, finding patterns and frequencies that are hidden under the noise. But then this doesn't really account for Rhodes, where the chaos is the transient migrations of those little red mopeds. Though frightening at times, not particularly chaotic. K?ln and Düsseldorf are wonderful places to write, if you can stay awake. I believe the Meistermenschen are real; they might write for you, if you can catch one. There's a parade ground in Die Altstadt near the river in Düsseldorf that's great for catching odd bits of continental life, like obese men with long, bushy moustaches in pastel-colored clothes, and American tourists looking for the 'right kind of mustard' to go with their hotdog. Yawn!