Au Père

One of the strange touristic highlights of Paris is its cemeteries, the most famous and the largest of which is the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise... but it's not just for the morbidly inclined.

Perhaps it's the peaceful atmosphere, but when the weather is nice some Parisians come here for a stroll or spend a whole afternoon reading on one of its park benches.

It was a pleasantly balmy spring day when I finally convinced H to come with me to the cemetery. A gentle breeze made the leaves quiver in the trees and my goth self shiver with excitement.

 
Anyone can come inside and detailed maps are downloadable from the web. We got one at the entrance (because I forgot mine at home!) for about 2 euros. It's highly advised that you either have a good sense of direction or a map because the place is HUGE (43 hectares to be exact), and you can lose time just trying to figure out where you are.

It is so wide and so old that there are sections where you can forget you are in Paris.

  

In fact, if you're not paying attention, you could become lost. It's one of those places I could see myself spending hours just exploring, going up and down hills, reading epitaphs and staring at the lovely monuments to the dead.

Going up.

Going down...

Going up.

Going down.

Going nowhere.

The cemetery boasts of beautiful architecture from bourgeois families trying to outdo each other since the early 1800s, when Napoleon-I turned the former Jesuit hospice into a cemetery (then called the Cimetière de l'Est).

Bourgeois fer realsies.

Chilling effigies of Grief.

But the biggest attraction are the famous artists, celebrities and political figures buried here.

The most crowded areas were the tombs of La Môme...

And the larger-than-life frontman of The Doors.

(Whose death anniversary was, incidentally, just this week.)

In fact, some come to Paris just to pay him homage. To control the crowd, metal fences were installed... not that they help much. Some fans took to vandalizing the tree just across his tomb to scribble messages of undying love.

But there is no bigger monument of worship here as the sculpture of Sir Jacob Epstein for the final resting place of author, iconoclast, outcast Oscar Wilde...

The sphinx used to have a penis, but someone took it.

Whose tomb is covered in kisses.

From a new generation of outcasts from around the world.

Which is perhaps fitting for the man who wrote the verses:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

The crematorium.

But more than a place of pilgrimage for fans of the long departed, it is a place that affords one the opportunity to reflect on life.

To see the forest for the trees.

And think about who you want beside you until the very end.

"You and Me"

La Tristesse

I've always found sadness profoundly beautiful, and ironically, summer has always been a sad season for me. It makes me struggle with a bout of existentialism, which can get embarrassingly emo.

Confusion? Argument? Revelation? Moment captured at Breakfast In America...

after time spent at a limited-time-only exhibit on impressionism made us think: BURGERS.

Ever since I stared up at the ceiling during summer break between grades two and three and suddenly becoming conscious of the long road ahead, suddenly realizing my youth is fleeting, suddenly imagining the challenges that lay after, of entering a good university, finding a job, raising a family and growing old, of watching my parents whither away, and me following suit, or perhaps failing one (or all) of these steps and ending up without any clear direction, realizing time is ephemeral and chances lost are impossible to regain... ever since that summer night I've had an obsession with impermanence. There are no pills for eight year-old life crises, so my father put a Nikon SLR in my hands instead.

A kiss, a transitory display of affection, a short-lived moment, a speck in time.
Memories of it, however, are not.

We borrowed L's car at the start of this week so we can see H's relatives in the north before our so-called "big trip." It was bittersweet. Like any family, theirs had its share of misfortune and heartbreak, with some of the drama continuing up to now. But it was a chance for him to mend ties with estranged kin and say a proper farewell to those too sick to come to the Philippines, with a promise to return in perhaps a year or two. To H's shock, instead of saying "au revoir" his bedridden great uncle bid us "adieu," which is an archaic way to say your final goodbye.

The seaside cemetery at Sainte Marguerite sur Mer.

After two days of being fattened up by H's granny and her patissier husband, we went sight seeing in ancient Normandy and ended up at the door of H's friend near Deauville. The morning after, their cat proffered an unnecessary display of homage to me: a dead bird. H was doing the dishes so I took the little sparrow outside for a funeral. It was so fragile; with eyes half open and one inadequate claw bent, it looked oddly peaceful to me. So I took a picture of it. (If you are disturbed by death, the next image might shock you so look away now. But if you've helped an injured bird before then the sight should be familiar.)

Sorrow for Sparrow.

When H saw me taking pictures he asked if I was sick or something...

Sick?! Where did THAT come from?

I had to make him understand why I found it lovely. I had to explain what his wife found so moving in  snapped claws and that frail, lifeless shell that it had to be immortalized in pixels.

It is not the residual of time served in prime time TV pornography journalism, I'm not even going to hide behind the all-encompassing excuse that is art.  Call it morbid, but the thought of death makes me appreciate this brief life even more. It is the sadness, la tristesse, that makes you want to drink up every minute of happiness without wanting to waste a drop.

Without it there would be no poetry, no art, no excuse for religion. Paint would never meet canvas to immortalize the ephemeral. Earthly man will have no desire to dream or hope. Without sorrow there is no joy.

And that is just sad.