Artsy Rambler by Evy Journey and Rich Journey

Mindful Journeys to Paris and Beyond

Experience the transformative power of art when you see the rich and vibrant city of Paris through the eyes of a mindful artsy traveler. From the light-inspired grandeur of Gothic cathedrals and the fresh beauty of Impressionism, sinuous forms that speak to our innate sense of beauty, and the rare library that helps one define oneself; to the role of French cuisine and cultural events in shaping the city's uniqueness, this collection of essays will take you on a journey of discovery and self-reflection.

Amidst the charm and allure of Paris and its art, questions arise and conflicts are explored. Can art truly enrich our understanding of life? Can it help extricate us from constantly waging wars? And how does a urinal become a symbol of controversy that challenges our conception of art?

If you enjoyed A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, this thought-provoking and sometimes meditative collection of essays will unveil the beauty and complexity of the world around you by unleashing the power of art as you satisfy your wanderlust.

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Excerpt from Artsy Rambler © Copyright 2025 Evy Journey and Rich Journey

Prologue — How It All Began

I ran after my brothers and their friends—empty cans in their hands—as they rushed to a pond to catch tadpoles. They filled their cans with water from the pond and dropped the tadpoles into the cans. What they did with those tadpoles, I would never know. Later in the afternoon, they flew kites when the wind was good. Or they rode astride a water buffalo that took them across an open field behind the few houses in the neighborhood.

They refused to take me on those little adventures—I was a girl, wore dresses, and could never keep up with them. That was what they said as they ran faster so I couldn’t catch up. I was unhappy at being excluded. Who wouldn’t be? But I had, by then, started to learn to live with being alone.

I spent my first six years with adults—my Lola (grandmother) and her two young unmarried daughters—in a town eight hours by slow train from the big city where my parents lived. Having no one my age to play with, I conjured up an imaginary playmate who stayed with me until we no longer needed one another. I had a big brother who kept my mother’s hands full as she took care of him and worked to secure a permanent position as a teacher.

In my Lola’s little town, no family owned a television to entertain them. But on occasional nights, sweet and sentimental tunes accompanied by a guitar pierced the dark silence just below the closed window in my aunts’ room. The serenaders were young swains courting one or the other of my pretty aunts who, if they liked these suitors or how they sang, invited them into the living room. There, singing went on for another hour or two. My youngest aunt who had a nice voice and knew some English songs was always invited to sing.

Like the adults, I stayed up for those soirees, sitting with Lola on the steps of the stairway to the bedrooms. Out of sight of the serenaders and my aunts. Lost, as much as the adults were, in the beguiling strains of what I learned later were love songs. I had heard many of those songs in previous serenades, and heard them sung again in later ones.

My parents took me back when I was ready to go to elementary school, although I continued to spend school vacations with Lola. I met my brothers—three of them by then—for the first time. To ease the transition to a new, and for me at the time, a strange, maybe even threatening environment, I learned to draw, initially by copying images of objects in picture books. Things like fruits, flowers, cups and glasses. Figures didn’t lag far behind. And soon, they claimed most of my drawing time.

Maybe it was from those preteen years of solitary innocence that I began to see myself as a spectator of life. I became more convinced of it as I spent time alone in my room, hearing the boisterous playing and feuding from the adjacent room shared by my brothers.

Across the years, I watched them play and fight, and the only time I remember going with them—when they ignored me—was when they flew kites, those light as the wind inanimate birds my brothers fashioned from colored paper and bamboo sticks. I filled my solitude by drawing and playing the serenades I remembered in my head.

In those early years, I lived within walking distance of the Pacific Ocean. You stare at that extensive expanse of blue long enough, and you can’t help wondering what’s beyond that seemingly infinite space.

I wasn’t alone in my curiosity about that imagined faraway world. Left to entertain myself, it was probably inevitable that I eavesdropped as my mother revealed her dreams to her relatives and friends. My mother dreamt of sailing across oceans to visit places that promised so much more than the island we lived in. Maybe her dreams were imprinted from the accumulated legacy of more than 400 years of domination by Spanish and American conquerors. Dreams that needed translation into some version of reality.

For her, that reality meant living in the United States, visiting Spain, and later, seeing as much as she can of the rest of the world. She talked about her dreams often enough that they became my dreams as well. Dreams that, for me, morphed into a near-obsession when I read English-language fiction[1] that kindled a desire to see its varied settings.