Turns out Gertrude {yes, we’re already on a first name basis} and I are neighbors.

I’m at 93 Boulevard Raspail. She is at 27 Rue du Fleurus. Which happens to be right around the corner from me. Two minutes, tops.

I try to stop by every day. Say hi. See how she’s doing. You know, talk literature and art and other artsy fartsy things like that important editors talk about.

Okay. All joking aside. I’ve got to say I can’t believe I picked, out of all the thousands of apartments to rent in Paris, one that is right by Gertrude Stein’s former home.

To know that these streets I’m walking every day, these are the same ones Hemingway and Picasso walked! That I touch the same brick their hands touched on her apartment building.

Just imagining them here, and what that whole era was like … what these streets were like then.

It inspires me to no end … this artistique energy, because it is here. You feel it.

I like to think that I’m following in their footsteps. Both literally and figuratively.