February 11th Monday

Unfortunately, Adrienne and I had to get up for class. We got up around 9:00am. I had my usual chocolate cereal before we walked to class.

Class with Mme Boussaguet went well. I was glad that we’d changed our flight plans so that we wouldn’t miss it. It’s helpful getting criticism on our research questions.

After class we went to the cafeteria to buy cheap sandwiches. We saw Alberto there and chatted with him a bit before heading home to eat lunch. I had bought a chicken sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and hardboiled egg on it. I drank some orange juice.

Adrienne and I went back toward school to go visit Astrid. She had translated our birth certificates into French so that we didn’t have to pay €50 to have it done. To say thank you, we gave her a pair of earrings that Adrienne had bought at the market in Spain. They’re shiny blue and go with Astrid’s style we think. She was very touched to receive them.

Adrienne headed back toward home. I talked to Heidi on the phone because she’d been thinking of going to the Père Lachaise cemetery and I wanted to go with. I took the metro and met up with Heidi. We took a few different lines out to end up at the cemetery. We popped out of the metro right by a newsstand. Heidi bought a map of the cemetery from the guy here.

We crossed the street and encountered another man selling maps. He was actually associated with the cemetery. I was holding Heidi’s map and looking at it. He saw it and grumbled something about a bad map. We went through the stone archway and up the steps into the cemetery. We looked at the map and I decided that I wanted one of my own as a souvenir. I went back out to the map guy. “Un plan s’il vous plait.” (A map, please.) He asked me which language I wanted. I said that French was fine. He looked at me as if to say “you’ve got to be kidding me.” He took the map and showed me all the features. It had an index of names on the left and right sides as well as their locations on the map. There was a key for the scale of the map. On the back there was a history of the cemetery. He folded it up and grumpily handed it to me, “et maintenant vous avez un bon plan.” (and now you have a good map.)

Our first stop was at the restrooms in the corner of the map near the entrance before venturing out. We looked at names and tried to navigate through the cemetery. The cemetery was built like a little city. There were streets and lanes with names and signs. We started with the mausoleums and large graves that reminded me of houses and mansions before moving to the more apartment-like crematorium. It was kind of like we were looking up people from the past that happened to all rest in the same neighborhood. We started with a visit to Héloïse and Abélard. Heidi told me that they were lovers from the 12th century. They had statues of themselves lying on top of the grave under a large structure.

We walked onward and found that we were near Jim Morrison’s grave. We tried to navigate through the narrow walkways to find him. We must have looked somewhat lost because a construction man who seemed to be working on helping to clean the graves asked us who we were looking for. Were we looking for Jeem Morreeson? We nodded and he cheerfully pointed us in the right direction. The grave was relatively small and tucked back among other graves. It was surrounded by metal guard rails. Heidi and I arrived just in time to see a woman climb over them in order to put a bottle of wine on top of the grave. We waited our turn until we could go up and take pictures. There were lots of flowers and candles there. We felt sorry for his neighbor who looked like he’d had plenty of feet on him trying to get to Morrison.

We moved on and headed to a very interesting section of graves. We were going to see Chopin. There was a statue of a woman holding a harp on top of his grave. It reminded me of a muse. There were some other impressive graves on the same row. One belonged to Denon and had a metal statue which I assume was in his likeness. There was also a grave that had a sculpture that looked like the bottom half of a man’s torso and the top of his legs in a sitting position. Out of the top there was a paint palette and brush along with something that looked like fence slats. It was a very interesting sculpture. I tried to read the name but even though the grave appeared recent, the name had been rubbed out by rain and plant growth.

It was around this point when I was simply struck with the beauty of it all. I never thought that cemeteries could be beautiful. I thought they should be sad and gloomy from the pain of those lost that lingers there. Some of the graves were very recent and had flowers completely covering them. Those tugged at my heart and made me sad. They let you know that someone nearby was grieving. But when it came to the much older graves, they seemed more like monuments in a museum. There’s an amount of distance that makes it more interesting than sad. The cemetery was just beautiful. Since it was afternoon, the sunlight slanted through the naked trees and created beams of light. Some of the graves had trees that had taken them over. The roots covered most of the stone. We also saw some broken graves. The stone slab that covers the top was broken and the pieces dipped into the ground. It was an interesting sight to see the evidence of the earth actually taking these people back.

Some of the other people we visited included La Fontaine, Molière, Sarah Bernhardt, Imre Nagy (revolutionary of Hungary), Allan Kardec, and Oscar Wilde. Kardec’s grave had a small group clustered there. People would walk up and touch the stone. Some would cross themselves. We found out later that people do this for luck. Oscar Wilde’s grave was covered with lipstick marks. I figured that kissing the Blarney Stone was as far as I’d go with kissing stone that thousands of other people have kissed.

We went to the crematorium near the end. We went downstairs to see what it looked like. Each person (or couple) had a rectangular box in the wall where their ashes were placed and then they had a plaque with the names on it on the front. The plaque looked like a little over one square foot. It was much colder underground. While we were looking a man came up to tell us that he was going to close it up in 30 minutes. He said “Well you can stay here if you want.” That idea gave Heidi and me (especially me) the creeps. I couldn’t imagine being locked in such a cold building in the dark. I doubted they’d leave any lights on down there. Someone would probably also be shut in there for over 12 hours. They close it around 5:30pm and I doubt they open it at that time in the morning. Even though we had a half an hour more, we only spent another five minutes before heading out.

It was getting near 6:00pm when they close the cemetery. There were cars and people on little motor-scooters going through to let everyone know that they were locking the place up. Heidi and I made our way out the door with the other stragglers. We considered getting a drink around there but just got on the metro to go home. The cemetery was a ways away from my apartment. We made a few different connections on the metro. When I was walking between one line to my 12 line, my head started pounding and my throat felt really dry. I’d been thirsty walking around the cemetery but I didn’t have anything to drink. I finally got home and chugged a glass of water down.

Adrienne was home and cooked our Basque Chicken blend for dinner. She was very sweet to make dinner and do the dishes while I lied down to get my head to stop pounding. After we ate I showed her some music and pictures from the musical Wicked. Some of the songs had been in my head recently.

I talked to my parents on Skype for a while and read for class. I made it to bed a bit after 1:00am.