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Wherever you go, there you are   I lived alone in Paris for six
months when I was 20. Technically, I had a roommate, an 80-year-
old Frenchwoman who'd helped her father smuggle Jews out of the
city during the Nazi occupation. She took in boarders to help
pay the rent on her Latin Quarter apartment, and I was just one
in a long string of American students.  Most evenings I spent
alone in my bedroom. I felt lonely and awkward because I hadn't
made any French friends, and I was too cash-strapped to take
advantage of the city's nightlife. Yet I never felt bored. I
spent the evenings reading French novels, listening to French
pop music and writing in my journal. During the day, I'd go to
classes and then wander around, seeing words on billboards and
in storefronts that I'd read in a novel or had heard on the
radio. My thinking seemed clear and uncluttered; new ideas came
easily and unexpectedly.  Only lately have I come to believe
that that the feeling I