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So, Carolyn, why did you get to bed at 4:00 this morning? Drunk? (not a drop, or I really might not have made it home at all) Laid? (ha--though not for lack of offers . . . if those can be construed as "offers") Might it have something to do with the fact that after my viewing a nice-but-not-worth-the-trip Res Publica in lights near the Pont d'Alma (yes, that pont, of Princess Di notoriety) and missing the Théatre des Champs-Elysées--the whole theater, not just the performance : ( -- the Métro #9 no longer stopped at the ONE station where it connects with #1? Can we say "beginning of a nightmare"? Could it have been compounded by the fact that #9 no longer stopped at any number of stations, including Strasbourg-St. Denis, thus thwarting my hastily-hatched Plan B for getting home as well? That it didn't even stop at République, another large station, but finally let us prisoners off, perversely, at Oberkampf? (I may be ranting, here, a bit.) At which point we reached the streets to discover that NO taxis were in service; they streamed by with their roof lights off (some had actual passengers; some didn't). And me without my cellphone to at least attempt summoning one. Did I mention yet that all this was happening between 2:00 and 3:30?

So How I Walked Home from Oberkampf will no doubt take its place in my personal travel annals alongside the Five-Mile Sprint Across Scotland with which so many of you are familiar. Except that Angus was not entirely stone and concrete surfaces, I had not already walked a great deal earlier during the day and evening, and I KNEW WHERE I WAS GOING. And it was not the wee hours of the morning. The hordes had mostly gone home, but the streets (most of them, but that may really be TMI) were still teeming with night life.

Let me go back a bit here, to say hahahahahaha--right, the lines would be shorter after midnight. The crowds at that point had doubled, at least, and were becoming increasingly raucous. I'll never know what was going on inside the Hôtel Dieu (ha once more, because in precious hindsight, it would have behooved me simply to stand in that huge line and go home), but this was not a problem at the cathedral, because there was by then only a vast mass of humanity inching forward in the dark, free-form, not a line. But we inched fairly quickly, through the right-hand entrance--and it was magical. NOT the music, to me, which would fit right in on NPR's Hearts of Space, but the near-darkness, lit only by spotlights aimed upwards toward the vault, which not only created chillingly beautiful light, but rendered visible a sort of dim, ancient-dusty haze.

And the woman who came and sat beside me, on the chairs set up in the nave, is from Mississippi/New Orleans/Los Angeles, here for a month to work on a screenplay. She arrived the day before I did (i.e., the day I left Houston), and will be leaving the same day I do. She's writing a blog on this same site. We pretty much talked. Or do I need to belabor that? She went forward to take some more photos, and I went out into the night. Anything more I could say would just insult your intelligence by implying you don't realize how--absolutely otherworldly that was, in Notre Dame de Paris, among hundreds--thousands--of people.

And the Métro, even when it was still fully in service, resembled some sort of desperate evacuation. I finally crammed myself onto the third train that came, wedged haunch to paunch (as Tom Wolfe would say) with a mass of Swedes. But by the end (or near the end) of the way-too-long evening, trains would pass with cars full of young people chanting or singing at the top of their lungs.

This afternoon, Sunday (a warm, sunny one at that point), I actually hobbled over to the Musée National du Moyen-Age, mainly to see the Roman baths that are part of it, and the remains of the Abbey of Cluny that are incorporated, but the collection is astounding as well, gathered not just from France, but all over Europe, and including portions of original stained-glass windows from La Sainte-Chapelle (up close!) and the whole cycle of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. Though there was much more to see than my physical condition (pain) would permit, so it was limp to the market once more to replenish, then home. Bruises--actual, visible bruises on the feet, and I think tomorrow may be a home day (except for bread, and probably chocolate), because better to heal somewhat than cause worse damage. Damned fragile, messed-up body parts--not that they haven't taken a pounding.

(And may I here note that the blog site is being very annoying in numerous ways, and what you get to see may not be at all what I intend or plan, because its program seems to have a mind of its own.)

(The irony, too, that the most exhilarating installation I saw the whole time was the very first.)