Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise...(27/8)

Finally, it is a visit to le cimetière du Père-Lachaise...having planned for a worship to the restland of the elites and sorrows since I first arrived at Paris, it became a journey of rendez-vous of chances and 'oh-i-see'. Worship to the celebrities who rest in peace is simply like a conversion of self-recognition into personal taste and will. Existence, life and death, all is like a sculpture of wild souls. The graves shape the cemetery in a respectful slope of dignity and memory. Climbing along the slanted steps, it is a process of resurrecting the beauty of existence, through forgotten thoughts. Life is symbolised here by an upright representation with words, poems, graphics, sculptures, tattoo, red-lips and most importantly, the other neglectable miscellaneous. As a ritual to end the past, it is a means to cure the incompetent soul with a starless still. Plants generate on the fertile land rich in stories of the underground near the graves, and dust is to dust.

A virtual address at http://www.pere-lachaise.com/perelachaise.php.

The Weight of Life...(12/9)

Finally, I got a chance to pay a visit to the "Cimetière du Montparnasse" last Sunday. It was a quiet Sunday morning, and after an overnight rain, it tracked back to a vividing sunny moment with birds waking up after the storm. The cemetary lies numerous graves of different shapes. Yes, they are really of different colours, design, structure, historic and symbolic meaning...I walked in between for about two hours. It was a feeling of reading old-styled poems rather than frightening in the unknown wierd ground. Along the "trail", I met the past of writers, sculptors, singers, engineers, aviators, directors, merchants, booksellers, publishers, auto makers etc...everyone has had one's role and identity to present in the time of life, at least this is significant to a few other people. Something just like what Mitch Albom suggests in his five persons to meet in heaven perhaps...when there is a grave accompanied by an angel with tears, you know how the life thinks about the death. Seeing the modern sculpture erected on top of the place to rest peace, one can see there was a life with passion and aspiration. The symbol constructed on the grave is like an identity, a last phrase to conclude a life, or a last moment of the once-upon-a-time that is to be memorised by the rest who live on. So what would we want to keep on our grave? How would we identify ourselves to have been? Recalling the film "the Jacket" which I saw recently, Jack Starks in the film said that it would only be after death that we see life. Somewhat true. Have paid a worship during my visit to a number of "celebrities" including the director Jacques Demy, the automaker André Citroën, the founder of Cinémathèque Française Henri Langlois as well as the philosphers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I hope they would not mind letting me to take some photos of this peaceland.
For more sculptures in the area, check: -
http://www.kodakgallery.fr/I.jsp?c=jiw1j59.f1pi2mp&x=0&y=tke1si