Incroyable

Work, schmerk...I went to the Louvre this evening.  Right now I feel almost as delighted and romantic as Kierstin always does; the world is a wonderful place.  Especially the bit of the world that's lucky enough to be Paris.

The evening began with rain and more rain, as I took the Metro to meet Kierstin, Linda, Mir, Drew, and Caleb at the mini-Arc de Triomph outside the Louvre main entrance.  Hastily finishing off between us two baguettes with jam and Nutella for a light dinner, we joined the almost-nonexistent line to enter the Louvre during its extended Wednesday evening hours.

After waving around some carefully-selected identity cards (our international student IDs and the Cité Internationale cards) we managed to get in free.  I think this is going to be a Wednesday night tradition.

We split off into smaller groups as we wandered - Mir and Linda and I stuck together and took our sweet time looking at statues.  I have no desire to rush through the Louvre, not when I can return several more times before the end of July.  After a time, it became clear that the theme of this particular evening's browsing was majesty, scale, and opulence: we walked through hall after hall of statues, high and arching marble halls or gilded with fresco-ed ceilings and carved angels pointing through doorways.  How will I ever be content with mere paintings now, such flat and limited things, when I've seen statues in the Louvre?  It staggers me: the sculptor took a chunk of stone or metal, a lifeless, heavy thing, and saw somehow what it could become - saw it, and had the skill to coax his vision into being.  Graceful clasping hands, Mercury poised - poised - on one foot, balanced and springing eternally into the air, airy lace collars carved in marble, a stone veil falling over a woman's face so thin and sheer her features are still clear, Perseus swooping down to rescue Andromeda, chains of stone caught mid-swing forever -

Pictures are almost entirely useless, but I took many, mostly so that years from now I can look at them and remember when I saw the real thing.  I'll put a few here, but they do not begin to capture the wonder of being there in person.

Linda is waving at me - and the crown on the right is supposed to have been Charlemagne's.

Oh, her?  She's just the Venus de Milo, that's all.

Just as the museum was closing, the room here was entirely empty apart from our small group.  Incroyable indeed.

And then!  Leaving the museum, we encountered a sunset beyond description.  The world is a wonderful, wonderful place.