Following a Single Line Across Paris
Psychogeography revisited: Metro #3
I left the apartment in the chilly morning and walked a couple of blocks through quiet streets to the Metro station Pont de Levallois Becon, the Western Terminus of the #3 subway (Metropolitain) line through Paris. From there, I boarded the train, camera in hand, and a copy of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast to read as I rode the entire subway line to its final stop on the Eastern edge of the city: Gallieni station, at the Porte de Bagnolet. My mission was to walk across Paris from East to West, following the line of the #3 as it wound its way through the storied city.
I had written about psychogeography in a prior article, and it is a concept I learned about in Paris of all places, during a travel writing workshop I had attended in August of 2023. The main idea of this technique is to use geographic patterns as a guiding theme for your travels or creative projects. You could focus your walks around a specific color, for example, or a particular architectural feature, or in my case, using a subway line as a guide through this massive city.
