An Earnest Man's Grave . . . 30 November, 1900

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Walking in Père Lachaise cemetery the other day, we came across, through a little twist of fate, Oscar Wilde's tomb, which I had never visited before, in all my many trips to Père Lachaise. Along with Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf, it is probably one of the most heavily visited sites in Père Lachaise, I don't know how I'd missed it all these years. As you are probably aware, Oscar Wilde passed away in poverty in Paris on the 30th of November, 1900, so 110 years ago today. From a distance, I couldn't understand what all the red marks were on the large stone block of sculpture there.
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It was only on closer inspection that I realized that for the most part, the red marks were traces of kisses with generous amounts of lipstick involved. A multitude of kisses decorate his grave ! Oh, what man wouldn't be happy to have so many come and kiss his tombstone ?
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Some graffiti left could not agree on the right wording of a quotation.
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Some of the graffiti, though well-intentioned, was misspelled, the word "coeur" is masculine in French, so it should say "mon coeur" and not "ma coeur". I'm not sure that Oscar would have appreciated such flaws of language.
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I admit I thought it a bit unfortunate that even the epitaph carved in the stone had been written over by inconsiderate visitors. In case you may not have been there to read it, it says :

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"And alien tears will fill for him

Pity's long-broken urn

For his mourners will be outcast men

And outcasts always mourn"

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This is, of course, a verse from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol . . . a dark and epic poem if there ever was one. I think the only piece of writing I can ever recall reading which was longer and even grimmer, if that is possible, was The City of Dreadful Night, by James Thomson. Wilde's prison inspired Ballad was written some twenty years years after Thomson's dire piece of writing came out, one could almost wonder if there was some inspiration found there.
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Even the Sphynx had been kissed . . .
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Before that afternoon and actually seeing Wilde's tomb (seeing is believing) I had no idea that a long-running tradition called for fervent admirers to leave a trace with a well-lipsticked kiss on the monument. But while I was there, three young ladies were carrying out the tradition. Preparing the lipstick:
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Ready !
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Go !

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One of her friends took the plunge shortly thereafter, after testing the effect on her friend's cheek. I imagine it must be a fairly cold surface to kiss.
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Perhaps the most loving of tributes, a bouquet of red roses . . .
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Reflections on Reflections . . .

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While walking and talking with James the other day in Paris, James of Weekend Reflections renown, we wandered into the Buttes Chaumont Park in Paris (where the crêpes of a couple of posts ago were sizzling), and got down near the edge of the pond in the lower part of that lovely Parisian park. Shortly before we had been up at the highest point in the park, the pagoda which overlooks much of northern Paris. We both realized that the reflection of the pagoda in the water could be fine subject matter for future Weekend Reflections posts, so we were both snapping away there by the water's edge. I will be curious to see what James came up with there, but these next are a few of my own efforts.
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The pagoda took on many strange and varied forms in the rippling water . . .
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But suddenly from across the pond the goose patrol swam up to investigate what we were doing there, so intently pointing suspicious black objects at their liquid property.
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One of them in particular was looking intently at me out of one eye, and with the other he was studying the reflection of the water there.
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Then, deciding that I was no doubt up to no good, with one quick splash of a webbed foot, shattering my reflections into hundreds of tiny islands, he calmly paddled away.
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And if you've been wondering all these weeks and months about who the man behind Weekend Reflections is, James very kindly gave me permission to publish these two portraits of him, which I took in Père Lachaise Cemetery an hour or two earlier that afternoon. He is intently focused when taking pictures, highly observant, total concentration, which may explain why so many of his photos on Newtown Area Photo (where Weekend Reflections resides) and on his other photo blog, Something Sighted, are such a pleasure to look at. Thanks again James for a fine day in Paris !
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Let's Talk Turkey . . .

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Just a few thoughts about Thanksgiving. I've been thinking alot about the origins of Thanksgiving over the past week, since once again some colleagues at work asked me to explain the meaning of this purely American holiday. In the beginning, if I understand correctly, the giving of thanks in question was that of the pilgrims, early American settlers from Europe who were thanking the local Native Americans in New England for having helped them survive the first few very hard winters in the "new" world.
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And Oh, how we continued to thank the Native Americans over the next few hundred years : Massacres, broken treaties, stolen lands, pillage, plunder, deportation, prison camps, reservations. In a word, Genocide. Genocide on a massive and murderously terrifying scale.
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In fact, what we Americans are really thanking perhaps, is we are thanking ourselves for having been so fabulously clever and sophisticated to have succeeded in becoming the dominant and domineering owners of a vast and rich land, at the expense of those who it rightfully belonged to. They have been brushed aside as mere savages. A footnote in American history books. A disagreeable subject not to be broached at polite dinner tables.
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I for one am sorry for all of that. It happened before I was born, but I am still sorry for that. I would be thankful, on this day of thanksgiving, for anyone who may see this to give a minute of silence to remember what was, and what is no longer. To remember what was destroyed to create this shining nation of freedom... America.
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Now, let's talk turkey. Or turkeys, to be exact. One turkey I have been thinking about since September, when I saw it dead on a road in central Pennsylvania, south of Dubois, north of Indiana. Roadkill is another of my pet peeves with "modern" society. We go racing about in our motor cars like Mr. Toad in the Wind and the Willows, proud, arrogant, careless, and we churn over everything in our path, including millions of animals every year. I always think of their last moments of life, the panic, the pain, the horror. For some it may be a quick end. For others perhaps not.
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This particular turkey seemed to be sleeping in the road. Roadkill rarely looks so peaceful. I don't remember ever seeing a turkey so close up, certainly not one which still had its head, legs, claws, and feathers in any case. I'm not sure that I'd call it a beautiful bird. But it was a bird who lived, and who met its end on the cruel yellow stripes of a country road.
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In America today, where the population is approximately 310 million people, living in roughly 115 million households, according the US Census Bureau, there may be about 15% of the population living in poverty who cannot afford to put a turkey on their dinner table for Thanksgiving, as is the tradition, and maybe another 15 or 20% who do not do so for cultural or dietary reasons, which leaves about 80 million households. If we suppose then that many families get together at the holidays and share a turkey, perhaps we can cut that number in half. Which would imply that roughly 40 million American households will have a turkey in their oven today, getting roasted to a glorious golden brown, giving off mouthwatering odors of roasted turkey.
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That means that in the past days, 40 million turkeys went to slaughterhouses all over the nation, and lost their heads, feathers, innards, claws. Quite a sobering thought, that. An annual massacre of millions of turkeys. So that we can give thanks. Thanks for being alive. Thanks for having food to eat. Thanks that so many turkeys made the final great sacrifice for our Thanksgiving pleasure.
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What Goes Up . . .

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The small white plastic box with blinking green lights on it which ensures the translation of packets of binary data coming over the phone lines to and from our house into intelligible internet pages gave up the ghost some time on Sunday morning, stranding us in the stratosphere with no oxygen, as it were, leaving us with no connectivity to the world wide web for over 24 hours. A pitiable state to be in when one is wanting to blog and one cannot. Such is life, and the death of small plastic boxes. The box has a name, it is called a "Livebox". But this one became a "Deadbox". So today I had to get it changed. In order to get back on line, to get my fix, as it were. In some cases, it is not so easy to recover.
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One never knows upon what one is going to happen when one sets out to simply wander and look. The other day, James and I set out to wander in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. We happened upon a story I'd never heard before. There are a multitude of stories to be found in Père Lachaise, from the famous, Like Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, or Oscar Wilde, to the obscure; but the story of Theodore Sivel and Joseph Crocé-Spinelli was not one I'd ever heard of before. I'll be curious to know if you have perhaps.
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From a distance, their tomb, for they are buried together, looks like this :
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When one draws closer, one realizes that the sculpture on the tomb is of two men, holding hands.
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Someone had placed some synthetic flowers there.
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The two men appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
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It wasn't until I read the inscription carved in the stone pedestal that I had any inkling of the tragic tale memorialized here at their grave. On April 15th, 1875, three men took off in a balloon named the Zenith from near Paris. Only one of them, Gaston Tissandier, lived to recount what transpired. The inscription says in French : "Catastrophe du Ballon le Zenith 15 Avril 1875, Croce-Spinelli et Sivel, Morts à 8600 Metres de Hauteur". Dead at 8600 meters up in a balloon named the Zenith. That is just over 28200 feet. They had set out that day to break all previous high altitude records. They succeeded, but at great cost. No one had ever gone that high before. They did not know that there was not enough oxygen to sustain life at such lofty heights.
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For the advancement of science, so that we can enjoy travelling on jet planes and have an internet that works, some early pioneers paid the ultimate price for knowledge : Morts. Dead.

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One thumb has been worn shiny with being touched by thousands of passers by in a mute token of respect. I touched it too.
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Autumn leaves were falling already that October day, rain had filled the folds of sculpted cloth with pooled water from the skies above.
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Hands clasped forever.

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If you would like to read more about what happened to Croce-Spinelli and Sivel, there is an interesting article from the April 16th, 1875 New York Times on line here.

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Il y a un article en français sur le sujet du catastrophe du Zenith ici.

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The Crafting of Crêpes . . .

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While strolling with James the other day in the Buttes Chaumont park in northeastern Paris, I was starting to feel a little hungry after about four or five hours of hiking the paths of Père Lachaise Cemetery and the back streets of Belleville, when we got down near the pond in the park and I smelled the unmistakeable odor of crêpes being cooked. Not surprising they could be detected at a distance, given all the vapors they were giving off while being cooked. There was such a long line of people waiting patiently for their late afternoon snack, that I decided simply to take photographs of the crafting of crêpes, and imagine eating one. And I didn't want to spoil my appetite for dinner either. In any case, it was quite enjoyable watching a crêpe artist work her magic in the rising steam. The final product looks tasty ! Grand Marnier anyone ?

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Pendant la promenade l'autre jour avec James dans le parc des Buttes Chaumont, au quartier nord-est de Paris, je commençais à sentir un petit creux, après quatre ou cinq heures de marche aux allées du cimetière Père Lachaise et les rues perdues de Belleville, on arrivait près de l'étang et je sentais d'un coup l'odeur inoubliable des crêpes en train de cuire. Pas surprenant que cela se sentait de loin, vu toutes les vapeurs que cela faisait en cuisant. Il y avait une queue tellement longue de gens qui attendaient patiemment leur encas de fin d'après-midi, que j'ai renoncé à en manger une, et décidé juste de faire des photos. Et je voulais quand même garder mon appetit pour le dîner plus tard. (très sage, n'est-ce pas ?)(ou idiot ?) En tout cas, c'était un plaisir de regarder cette artiste en crêpes faire sa magie dans les vapeurs qui montaient. Le produit final a l'air bien savoureux. Quelqu'un souhaite une goutte de Grand Marnier avec ?

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Seen Better Days . . .

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As you know by now, during the last six months which lasted from mid October to early November of this year, France went through a major crisis, and as a result decided to change the government, consequently the former prime minister has become the new prime minister, and the old president is now the new president again. We can all rest assured that there will simply be more of the same for the next six months until Christmas, at least.

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One aspect of this latest crisis, which was crisis number 2742-2010 (the 2742nd crisis of 2010 here, there having been at least 1375 crises linked to the French national football, errr, soccer team earlier this year) was that a relatively small group of people who feel that the retirement age should be advanced to age 47, and who were upset that the old government (nothing to do with the new government) had pushed through a reform which would change the retirement age from 60 to 62, decided to hold the entire country hostage, which is what usually happens during every third or fourth crisis here, and shut down all the gasoline refineries, and blocade all gasoline depots such that no gasoline was available in gasoline stations.

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The end result was that for ordinary citizens who needed to drive to work, it became very quickly impossible to do so. This is normal. This is called "putting pressure on the government". But the new government has put that behind them. For small business people who needed to use their vehicles to make deliveries or go work at customers locations, many of them simply had to go out of business, and become retired early. This was part of what the protesters who wanted earlier retirements intended to achieve. They succeeded.

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For many others, who ran out of gasoline while trying to make one last futile search for the precious liquid at early hours in the morning, they simply had to abandon their cars by the roadside and walk back home. Many such cars were then torched by protesters. That is normal, burning cars has become the French national sport. They are very good at it. If I told you the number of cars burned in France last year, you wouldn't believe me. So I won't. But just imagine a very large number.

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The next few photographs were what could be seen along any French roadside over the past few weeks. This is normal. The new government says they are going to clean up the mess caused by the old government. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
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From An Incurable Cataholic . . .

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Posting the picture of the kitten in the post below this one reminded me that I had heard a few more meows from the archives, echoes of meows perhaps, as these cats were photographed back in 1991, and are probably resting in cat heaven right now. But looking down approvingly at being remembered here. And as the previous post was rather alot of reading material, I think I'll just let you chill out with the kits here today. Just don't get catatonic on me.
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Oh, and I'd like to say "thank you" to the one who showed me how to simulate old film effects, they seemed appropriate here. I am most grateful.
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Hey, what going on here ? Looks like this place is going to the cats ! That won't do !
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Grrrr, those cats, they make me so mad, hogging the limelight like that...
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