Paris

The Mazeppist has returned to Paris for a few days of wandering the city's streets, haunting its cafes, museums, parks, bookstores, restaurants, art galleries, churches, mosques, and universities.

Why? Because Mazeppism is a humanism and humanism is an urban phenomenon. Ever since the first humanist epic (Gilgamesh) celebrated Uruk the sheepfold, humanists have looked to cities as repositories of the best that has been thought and said (and built and written, painted, sculpted, performed and sung). Cities are stages upon which the human tragi-comedy is improvised in concentrated fashion: its glory and misery, wealth and poverty, avarice and generosity, and everything between. Paris is a grand venue de l'humanisme.

In December 1995, the Mazeppist visited Paris with a copy of al-Ghazali's Munqidh in hand (W. M. Watt's translation). He found this late 11th-early 12th century confession something of a revelation. Indeed, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the direction his life and work has taken in the past two decades began in Paris and with that book.

This trip, he is reading Van Gogh's letters, Irving Stone's Lust for Life, and seeing as much of Van Gogh's painting as he can find in a brief visit. He expects similar revelations to unfold, and suspects that they already have.

But time alone will tell.