Writing with the ghosts in Pere Lachaise

There was other stuff that happened today, too, but that was my favorite part.

I'm only going to give a brief sketch since it's one-thirty in the morning:

In the morning, I think I accidentally aided a fare-jumper on the metro on my way out to the Petit Palais (why I didn't just walk I'm not sure). There, I learned that despite the fact that the museums are free, you still have to pay for the expositions even if you're under eighteen. A little annoying, but for all I've gained in culture from the museums of Paris, I can cough up eight euros in return. The exposition was fabulous, very worth the money: it was a collection of the works of William Blake, an author who I really don't know well enough. His artwork was beautiful, though. Very, very, very Romantic. The Romantics make me smile. I adore the style about as ardently as I disagree with it. Anyway, Blake is brilliant, the exposition was very well-done, and afterwards I hung around the museum for another hour looking at artifacts from ancient Greece until I was ready for lunch.

I took the metro out to Parc Monceau and, after painstakingly choosing a place to get a panini, I sat in the park for about an hour or so and wrote poetry (I ate beforehand, if that's not clear...). Once I ran out of things to say and when the soccer game on the field to the left started launching projectiles perilously in my direction, I decided to head up to Montmartre since I'd heard there was a museum of Salvador Dali's work there, and besides, why not?

So I spent the next couple of hours wandering around Montmartre, and eventually did find the Salvador Dali museum, where I proceeded to fall in love. I knew his work vaguely beforehand, but now after having seen more than just 'The Persistence of Memory' and 'Bacchanale' I think it's safe to say that he's among my favorite artists if not my very favorite artist.

After that, since I still had some time to waste before everyone came home, I went out to Pere Lachaise, found a bench after wandering around the gravestones for a while (I found one with a copper pelican on top, but I'm still kicking myself for not going back and figuring out to whom it belonged), and wrote poetry for the rest of the afternoon. In the meantime, about three different people asked me if I knew where Edith Piaf's grave was-- strange only because she was the -only- person people asked me about. And there was also a drunk guy near the entrance who saw me photographing some birds in the trees shading the main avenue, and we had a brief but interesting conversation on what kind of bird it was I was photographing (we decided it might be a kestrel-- "Which isn't an eagle, but they're in the same family, I think"-- and then I quietly excused myself and went the next several alleys over). I was so engrossed in my writing (after the interruptions) that I stayed in a full half-hour after closing; luckily, there was a maintenance person who saw me running from entrance to entrance and kindly opened one of them for me.

So I took the metro home at rush hour and got home around sunset after getting momentarily lost on the way home. For dinner we had cheese I think in every single course, which was wonderful, and then we went bowling.

I'm terrible at bowling. My overall score was a twenty. Anything that vaguely looks like a sport is evidently too much for me.

And now it's two in the morning and I'll write more tomorrow, if life permits.