My daughter and I returned to Paris under the blazing sun of July. We were coming from Burgundy, where I had written a sad, angry note for this column, after the mass murder in Nice, about how our cultural baggage is obsolete and doesn't help us face the horror of our times; about how the myth of Paris had died in our arms. But I was wrong about one thing. Because, although culture in the abstract no longer anchors us to this complex, fucked-up world, there do in fact remain places--a few--from which we can rethink our role in the world and imagine alternate ways of organizing life.