Cars speed down the narrow cobblestone road outside the hotel. Pigeons peck the ground. A man in an acid green uniform sweeps detritus into the gutter. Foey, Senso, Yolo and indecipherable tags are graffitied in black over the On passé La 6 stenciled on the facing brick wall. A bird chirps in clipped bursts in the tree outside my window. Motos line the alley. The curtains are open and a light is on in the apartment opposite. I now understand the urge to peer into the private lives of others. A woman with flyaway blond hair pulls a small suitcase up the street. The morning air is brisk. Pigeon voices murmur like muffled protests. We are going back to the city of the dead, Pere Lachaise cemetery this morning. I wish to find Colette and Oscar Wilde. My daughter Jim Morrison. An entire city block of marble that holds the bones of the famous dead. One more day is all that is left of our time in Paris. In the Louvre's women bathroom, I felt an urge to take out my pen and write my name in the hollowed out crevice between two marble wall tiles knowing it would be grouted and sealed, so that something of me would remain behind. Surreptitious graffiti as proof that I was here. The city feels familiar, as if we are returning to a place I've been before. Paris feels like home. After we have flown back across the ocean to our desert, the city will exist, in the land of dreams.
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