"Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive"
Jim Morrison

"Lets go for a ride on the subway!"  How many times do you say that in a day?  If I averaged it out, it would be .000131 times a month in a lifetime.  So I checked all the charts, the maps, the weather report, and Marsha's horoscope and we were off to the cemetery on the subway.  

There is some twisted irony about riding the subway to the graveyard.  The weirder part was seeing a young mademoiselle with a pet carrier on the platform of the first leg of our trip.  "Chat ou chien?"   I asked.  I wanted to know if she had a cat or a dog in there, as I am still missing a couple of my furry drinking buddies back in "train town".  Damned if it wasn't a cat!  And it was a white and grey cat that could have been my Dust Bunny, some 7 pounds ago.  Good looking feline.  We do a lot for our pets.  All of us do.  I always thought I was a dog guy.  And then I got a cat..then another.  I am a critter guy, it turns out.  And this young woman was taking her cat, the thinner version of my Jenny-Craig-needing-Kirstie -Alley looking cat somewhere on the subway.  Come to think of it, I have never offered to take the cats for a ride on a subway.

We got to Père Lachaisse Cemetery with out much trouble at all.  Marsha only compared me to Columbus looking for India and finding the New World once on the way there.  She got pictures of two cats as we entered the place.  I first saw a black cat "La Chat Noir" coolly strolling along a road.  I then saw ANOTHER version of my white and gray Good-Year-Blimp cat sneaking up on the black cat.  I am no longer superstitious about Black Cats, but this poor cat should be wary of gray tigers.  This one jumped his ass, stole his lunch money, told the truth about Santa Claus and explained the sounds that his mother made when he was conceived.  The last we saw of these two cats was with the gray cat chasing the black cat into the Crematorium... calling for help from anyone that could keep this graveyard bully from doing any lasting damage.

There is rumor that the whole place is going Condo in the next few years, dead people don't need this nice quality of real estate.  This would make Carol Anne in Poltergeist come back to life, along with Dominique Dunne, virtually killing Dominick Dunne's career as the parent of a victim.  Maybe he could hook up with Nancy Grace and be half of the most annoying pair of Victim Advocates in the USA....but I digress.

Père Lachaisse Cemetery is located on the east side of Paris, almost in the burbs.  As Marsha's pictures show, people have spent a fortune building crypts, statues, headstones and ther monuments to their friends and family.  Oscar Wilde has red lipstick impressions of kisses all over his monument (if that is what you kids are calling it these days).  Ediath Piaf...The Sparrow... has flowers on her grave, as does the Lizard King - Jim Morrison.  His grave is the hardest to find.  the management of the boneyard was not interested in letting him spend eternity there, until they were told that he was also a writer.  Authors get in, with the money needed for the small piece of land.  People are still being buried there currently, as long as there is the funds and they are no longer fogging a mirror.

After a couple of hours there, we stopped for coffee and dessert.  Nothing says cappucino and Chocolate Mousse like miles of tombstones.  The cafe was a Jim Morrison-themed place.  Sort of a Planet Mr. Mojo Rising, but just on a much smaller scale.  Chopin, Rossini, Abelard and Heloise, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde and so many others, and Jim Morrison is the major draw.  And there are flowers form the Lizard King Society of Europe and other folks covering his grave.

After a tasty bit of food, including a great slice of apple pie, MUCH better than any American version I have had (sorry, Mom), we got back on the Metro (subway) and headed to the Place de Bastille in The Marais neighborhood.  This is literally "the swamp" that was reclaimed, and built for folks with money, and later became a strong community of Jewish citizens.  In recent years, the gay population have bent over backwards to acquire real estate in that area and re-gentrify it as an area full of great shopping, antiques and upscale fashion and decor.  We found a 8 foot by 10 foot store near the Seine river and bought Marsha a new ring.  Great lady running the place.  When we established that we were better in English, she said "Sweet Prices" and damned if she wasn't right.  

We walked our ass off, and once again, Madame Magellan cast doubts on my ability to get us back to our neighborhood, or to a Metro stop to take the subway back home.  The subway was almost a NON-choice, as we would have had to do several transfers to travel 20 or more blocks during rush-hour.  So I kept telling my "ever-supportive" traveling companion that it was about 10 blocks away.  And it is more or less accurate if you count the quarter mile long block that we live on in Durand.  And the closer we got, the more doubt was cast that I was clueless in navigating the return trip.  This is possibly the longest walk that we had ever done together, and my legs are a bit longer, and my wife's breasts are a little larger so when speed and pace were adjusted to accommodate our different cadence, her mammaries always seem to be hitting my elbows.

And all the while, God bless her, she kept saying "Those stores on the other side of the street look better than the ones on this side."  She also admitted that she would say the same thing if we were to cross 6 lanes of unpredictable traffic.  She finally understood that there are 2 islands in the middle of the Seine river and that we were on one that she had never been on before, and that Notre Dame was not a victim of Urban Renewal.  It was not on the island that we were on, but another, closer to where we are staying.  Luckily we could window shop to rest our feet.

After a triumphant return to our apartment, walking the closest to a straight line from where we started (hence shortest distance), we poured some wine and planned for some Italian food for dinner.  Dinner was 2 doors down from our place and was good.  Then some guys showed up that looked like they were there to collect the "Insurance Policy" payment for the week.  The pucker factor on everyone's asshole went up a couple of notches.  One stayed behind and ate a dinner, giving the place that special ambiance that one can only get when Michael Corleone walks out of the men's room in the Italian restaurant with "more than his dick in his hand".  It seemed like a hit was in the making.  I think it was the second bottle of cote de Provence that helped that illusion.  

We went for a walk to get some of the food settled, and hoped to see something like what we had seen the night before. Last night we saw a guy, BLINDFOLDED, standing behind his easel, this a brush on a long stick smearing ink on the paper that he could not see and was a mirrored situation to how one would normally draw or paint.  He would shorten the grasp on his stick and draw more as an image of Che Guevara materialized.  About a third of the way into the project, I knew who it was going too be.  Marsha had picked up a postcard of Che earlier in the day to see who it was as she had seen his image on most postcard racks and souvenir stuff.

No real entertainment on the streets, tonight, but great window shopping and people watching.  So we hauled our tired feet and limbs back to 37 Rue de la Harpe and settled in for a night of relaxation.  We have seen more history in 2 days and not paid a dime for entry to any of it.  So much of the art and history here is around every corner and not tucked away in a Museum.  Tomorrow, I cook dinner, and we see more stuff.  What a great day to spend on the green side of the sod, unlike the people featured in today's photo spread.