Father The Chair
Damn hot day. I rested in peace in the shifting shadows of Cimtière Père Lachaise. Took a picnic, principally chocolate and cheese, a notebook, The American, and spent a day with dead people. Compared to company of strangers constantly attempting to intrude on solitude by Seine, the graves were a relief. Besides, best minds of many generations hang out at Père Lachaise. There lies everyone from Eloise and Abelard (united in death like she romantically hoped) to Jim Morrison. To fit the 12th to the 20th century in one place, they don't waste land like in the wild west. There's no grass, the hair or tongues of dead people as Whitman had it. Tombs crowd together but are much more ornate than the average American afterlife, as if like all things French from dense pastries to elephants' trunks unrolling down elegant facades, they've made the effort to enjoy every inch of life or death they get. I appreciate the effort. No room to be decadent with large plots of land, wealth or art gratifies its vanity in elaborate sculptures and stained glass windows. It's a strange sort of place. The grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. According to Marvell. I marveled at sightseers paying pilgrimages to their personal gods. They wandered, maps in hand, glancing at street signs, hunting corpses, digging the depths of the cemetery for celebrities. Women caressed the bronze breast of Kardec and left flowers for poor Apollinaire. People posed by Piaf and piled rocks on Proust, a Jewish symbol perhaps trying to claim the poet from the cross engraved on his simple black marble slab. Lipstick kisses covered Wilde's tomb. Marvell was coy, but not quite right. Couples strolled hand in hand. I wondered if they noticed so much mortality surrounding them and thought they might like to be buried together like Eloise and Abelard or de Beauvoir and Sartre. Worried who would die first and thought with some solemn sadness of sonnet 64. Or if their relationships were mortal, would not make it through strained silences, hurtful insults. If a few years later they came home from holiday, hung up phones, moved out and on in their own series of courting, loving, leaving leading to distant deaths estranged from someone they once kissed on a path in a graveyard. Baby strollers also seemed odd unless you were thinking of Beckett's image of a difficult birth astride a grave. The gravedigger puts on the forceps. The crying baby carriage had a passing premonition but was pacified. Parisian old men seemed only ones aware the place was not just for visitor but became a permanent residence. They patiently hung around on benches or offered information to treasure seekers of tombs. They'd taken the lay of the land, figured out where there were respectable neighbors, which streets were quiet and got the best shade. After looking around for Corot, Hugo, Chopin, Molière, I did the same for a temporary stay. Spread out a blanket on a sweet flat tomb towards top of the hill with Paris spread out before me like for Jules in Ferragus. Behind me was Monument à la Douleur. Perhaps too symbolic a reading, but as I irreverently dipped a spoon into royal chocolate mousse I reflected I was sitting in happiness. The some kind of wonderful quiet ecstasy that I've settled into in Paris. Random eeping often erupts but there's also a steadier, heady yet whole-hearted enjoyment that I reflect on in idyllic stillness as the clouds pass slowly between the trees gradually growing at the rate corpses decompose. I would write more, about the curious conventions of French tombs or the cobwebs collecting sunlight or my conversation with the woman with the watering can, but it's too hard to sit inside at a computer in Paris. Out tonight and to Normandie tomorrow to enjoy the heat au plage.
