The City of Lights, KD Magazine Spring 2008
At first glance, the Parisian district of Montmartre is a tourist’s nightmare. People crowd Rue de Steinkerque, spilling out of cafés and shops onto the congested sidewalks. Walking up the street from the Métro station is a hazardous adventure – you barely have time to mutter “désole“ to one person before bumping into another. Montmartre seems like a deathtrap for the grievance most common among tourists in Paris: pickpocketing. And so, clutching your purse close to your body, you make your way through the mob. The noise is alarming – there is hardly a trace of English, and the mixture of German, Spanish, and French that fills the air is hurried and incomprehensible. Rising far above the street, the basilica Sacré Coeur is visible in the distance.
Here is where you have a choice.
You could fight your way up the street to the Square Louis Michel and do the tourist visit to the Basilica Sacré Coeur, stopping on the steps to take a picture – the broad landscape of Paris in the background – and undoubtedly, your experience would be positive.
Or instead, you could choose to experience Montmartre like a true Parisian. Rather than fight your way up the steps, you could make a left, and discover the Montmartre that has charmed generations of painters, poets, and musicians alike.
Click here to read the full text
Just Another Smoker, Unpublished Essay
I slipped into a smoking habit the way that a middle-aged housewife might pull on her aging wedding gown: praying it would fit. Just as she might pull the dust-covered box off of the shelf in the attic and, removing the sour-smelling moth balls hidden within the thin tissue layers, hold the dress up to herself in front of the antique mirror, so I purchased my first pack of cigarettes on a sunny day last spring.
When I was growing up, smoking was unacceptable. Only trashy people smoked, my friends and I agreed. When my backwoods cousins would take smoke breaks on my grandparents’ porch after opening gifts at Christmas, I would roll my eyes and thank God I wasn’t like them.
Until I became exactly like them.
The sun reflected warm rays off of the lake and onto my face as I sat on a cheap red bench outside a European version of McDonalds. Nikki, my traveling companion, and I pooled all of the money we had – a mere seven Swiss Francs – to splurge on an ice cream bar. We sat, people watching, for several hours in between excruciatingly long train journeys, in Lusanne, Switzerland. The crisp spring air kept us shivering until the warmth of the sun coaxed the winter coats off of our shoulders. We talked, the kind of conversation that two friends can only have after having traveled together for two weeks. And when she pulled a cigarette out of her pack of Camels and offered one to me, as she did each time the craving hit, I expected to hear myself decline. “No thanks, I don’t smoke,” I would say. And she would smoke alone, the smoke wafting over towards me, settling on my scarf and coat. But none of that happened. Instead, I nodded yes.
Melissa Lynn Hoffman is the intern at Oregon Quarterly, Senior Associate Editor at Ethos Magazine, and is on the editorial staff of Flux Magazine.
Written by Melissa Lynn Hoffman
PROFile: Alan Dickman, Oregon Quarterly, Autumn 2009
PROFile: Juan Epple, Oregon Quarterly, Spring 2009
Workin' At The Car Wash, Oregon Daily Emerald, July 10, 2009
A Sign Of Change, Oregon Daily Emerald, December 4, 2008
Taking The Right Strides, KD Magazine, Fall 2008
Edited by Melissa Lynn Hoffman
Fighting For Their Shores by Rebecca Brewster, Ethos Magazine, Fall 2009
Embracing Death by Alison Egan-Lodjic, Ethos Magazine, Summer 2009
A Greater Glory by Owen Griffith, Flux Magazine, Spring 2009
A Little Bit of Earth by Kasandra Easley, Ethos Magazine, Spring 2009
On The Path of Musical Rediscovery by Neethu Ramchandar, Ethos Magazine, Spring 2009
Southern Vibes by Rekha Loy, KD Magazine, Winter 2009
