I begin following railway lines because I have been thinking about the disused railway track that ran through the deepest edges of the park in the town where I grew up. Steep banks obscured by trees. The entrance to the park, and the dark green railings running alongside the road, that create a feeling of motion, of dreaming.
Urban Walking
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The studio in the Avenue de l’Observatoire
Finding herself with little money and no plan after Stephan's arrest, Marya accepts an invitation to stay with the Heidlers in their studio on the Avenue de l’Observatoire. In the book we are told that the Heidlers 'lived on the second floor of a high building half-way up the street'. The studio is situated near the Luxembourg Gardens, and at night they walk together through the ‘lovely, crooked silent streets’. I find the tall, elegant houses of the Avenue de l'Observatoire, leading away from the gardens, and walk along trying to decide in which building the studio might have been located.
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What they call an impasse
A cheap hotel in Paris. Hotel rooms often figure in Jean Rhys books, and this particular hotel is situated in an impasse, that most evocative of French place names. They can be found everywhere in Paris, and often they are named. Threaded through the book are some possibilities that might help me to pinpoint its location, and from the map I can identify a few lines which lead to nowhere, dead ends.
The Street Walks In 