The Eternal Embrace

More than a thousand people so far have lost their lives in a  building collapse in Bangladesh a little over a couple of weeks ago.

Among them, this anonymous couple, frozen in an embrace even death could not break.

The photograph is poignant, yet, despite the tragic context, it is also strangely, hauntingly...beautiful. It echoes the recent discovery in Romania of a pair of skeletons - dubbed as Romeo and Juliet - holding hands since they both died sometime in the Middle Ages.

And, even earlier than that, the "Lovers of Valdaro": a Neolithic couple buried together in an eternal embrace.

No one knows if that Bangladeshi couple were lovers, husband and wife, co-workers, or even complete strangers. But when tragedy befell them, at the very least - and I'm aware this is cold comfort for those they left behind - they had someone to embrace them in the end.

Rest in peace. Love forever.

Père Lachaise, Part 2 : The Celebrated Dead

If there is anything like a cemetery for the stars, you can't get any more prestigious than Père Lachaise. As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the come-ons to get people to start burying their dead in Père Lachaise was the inclusion of notable celebrities among its inhabitants.

The plan succeeded beyond all expectations. If Hollywood has its Maps to the Stars' Homes, in Père Lachaise, you can buy maps to the stars' graves.

And oh, what a constellation it is. Its resident luminaries - a cross-section of artists, writers, politicians, and other cultural influencers the world over-  read like a Vanity Fair Who's Who spanning the centuries.  Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Maria Callas, Frédéric Chopin, Colette, Honoré Daumier, Isadora Duncan, Max Ernst, Victor Hugo, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Marcel Marceau, Charles Messier, Modigliani, Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and lover Alice B. Toklas, among many others.

Like his famous ètudes, Chopin's final resting place is a study in restraint and simplicity. Devotees leave blossoms on his modest tomb as tokens of their respect and love for the great composer.

But over on the rock-n-roll side, things are a little... different. One of the most famous celebrity graves in Père Lachaise is James Douglas Morrison's. Better known to the world as Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors.

Unsurprisingly, Jim Morrison's grave is one of the most-visited in Père Lachaise. As a matter of fact, it's so popular that authorities have been hard-pressed to prevent the rampant vandalism that occurs with regularity there. So much so that the relatives of the inhabitants of the adjoining graves have filed complaints with the authorities.

Proof that even in death, sharing close quarters with celebrities isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Despite steel barriers impeding (but not quite preventing) people from actually walking up to it, Morrison's grave is littered with shells, cards, letters, flowers, and liquor bottles left by visiting devotees. There used to be a bust of Morrison marking the site, but over the years, people defaced the sculpture until it was finally stolen in 1988.

Other Morrison devotees have taken to writing graffiti on the trees near the gravesite.

In the 1990s, Jim Morrison's father placed a flat stone on the grave, bearing the Greek inscription "KATA TON DAIMONA EAYTOY." Perhaps due to Morrison's ultimately-destructive personal demons, the inscription has been translated as "To each his own daemon." But there are others who believe the real meaning is "true to his own spirit."  

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Another famous "resident" of Père Lachaise is the Irish playwright, author, and pundit Oscar Wilde.


Larger-than-life, his grave could only be larger-than-death.

After his incarceration for "the love that dare not speak its name," Wilde immediately fled to Paris, where he later died of meningitis, alone and destitute. Ever the wit, upon being presented with a massive medical bill, he is said to have replied "I am dying as I have lived - beyond my means." 

And of course, there are his supposed famous last words. Wilde, a lifelong aesthete and champion of beauty, is said to have risen from his deathbed, looked around at his cheap Parisian hotel room, and then, pointing at the tacky decor, declared that "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."

Friends put up the money for his plot in Père Lachaise, and young sculptor Jacob Epstein created the massive granite Art Deco angel keeping watch over the grave. 

The angel, in true Wilde fashion, has a scandalous little story of its own. Apparently, the sculpture originally came complete with an oversize stone penis, which scandalized Parisian do-goodniks so much that someone broke off the offending appendage sometime in the 60s. This being Paris, unconfirmed rumor also has it that the angel's missing genitals were used for years by the cemetery's director as a paperweight.

Like Jim Morrison's grave, Oscar Wilde's final resting place has also given birth to a tradition: the leaving of kissmarks on the angelo castrato . In the 1990s, public interest in Wilde's tomb grew, attributed to the Hollywood film about his life released in 1997, as well as his death centenary in 2000. The leaving of lipstick marks on the granite monument became an act of devotion to the great and fallen hedonist.

Sadly, Wilde's descendants have recently put a stop to this tradition by cleaning up the statue and installing a 7-foot plate glass wall to prevent any more devotees from planting their kisses and "destroying" the monument. 

Yes, even after death, party-poopers still rain on Wilde's parade. So now, we can kiss the tradition goodbye.


Boo! Hiss!

Père Lachaise, Part 1

Despite the sadness they hold, cemeteries can be beautiful places. Serene and peaceful, they can lend themselves to quiet reflection. Even moments of clarity, when life itself becomes too cluttered and noisy with the business of living.

With that, I'm sharing some pics I took last year of the lovely Cimitière du Père-Lachaise, or simply, Père Lachaise.


It says a lot about Paris that something as macabre and mundane as a cemetery can be a famous tourist attraction. But Père Lachaise, of course, is no ordinary necropolis.

Built on a hillside, Père Lachaise aka Cimitière l'Est (East Cemetery) is Paris' largest and is supposedly the most-visited cemetery in the whole world.

Its Wiki entry states that the cemetery owes its name to Louis XIV's confessor, Père Francois de la Chaise. At the time of its opening in 1804, Père Lachaise was considered too far from the city proper and thus had few interments.

Moreover, Parisian Catholics refused to bury their dead in a place that had not been blessed by the Church. Thus, in its first year, Père Lachaise held a total of only thirteen graves.

Something had to be done to attract more people to bury their dead in Père Lachaise. And proving that there is nothing like star power even in the afterlife, the cemetery's administrators re-interred the remains of La Fontaine and Molière in Père Lachaise, amid great fanfare.

Over time and with more French notables among its roster, Père Lachaise's strategy worked, and more and more people clamored to be buried among its celebrities.

As proof of its growing popularity, within a few years, the number of Père Lachaise's residents grew, from a few dozen permanent graves to over 33,000 in 1830.

Such was the population boom that the cemetery grounds required expansion five times from 1824 to 1850.  

Père Lachaise remains an operational cemetery to this day and is still accepting new burials. 

As you can see from these pictures, the graves at Père Lachaise range from humble headstones to grand, massive monuments.

People may be buried in any of Paris' cemeteries as long as they lived in the capital or they died there. But Père Lachaise now boasts of a waiting list, as very few plots are available due to its historical significance and popularity.

There are also mini-chapels dedicated to both the well-known and the unknown. 

Many tombs in Père Lachaise are like this "telephone booth" sized structure; just big enough for a person to enter and say prayers and leave offerings for the dead.

Just like some of our local cemeteries, many graves in Père Lachaise contain the remains of multiple family members. This is done to save space in order to accommodate new "residents."

In recent times, Père Lachaise has adopted leases for its gravesites. If a family does not renew the lease, the plot is emptied of its contents and a new grave is prepared for a new inhabitant.

Plots can be bought in perpetuity, with 50, 30, and 10 year lease options. And unlike most traditional Filipino cemeteries, the coffins in Père Lachaise's graves and mausoleums are usually located below ground.

By official count, at least one million people have been laid to rest at Père Lachaise. If we add the cremated remains at the Aux Morts ossuary, the total number of residents in Père Lachaise lies in excess of 2-3 million.


Not bad for a necropolis that only started out with thirteen graves.

Le plus grand faible l'hommes, c'est l'amour qu'ils ont de la vie.

Man's greatest weakness is his love for life.

-Molière

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Père Lachaise text info courtesy of Wiki.

Memento Mori

Père Lachaise, Paris, 2011

"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does."

Hazel Grace Lancaster, The Fault In Our Stars

I recall reading somewhere that we die three times.

First, our actual physical death. 

The second, when everyone we ever knew have all died, too. 

And the third, final death is when our name is uttered for the very last time.

People share a natural fear of mortality, but where we differ lies in the reasons why we fear annihilation. Some of us simply fear the unknown; Death, of course, being the greatest of these. 

Others fear being forgotten; indeed, the thought of no one ever knowing or remembering you once existed is terrifying. To experience and be experienced : that's what make us alive. And therefore to be forgotten - to spend an entire lifetime on this earth without anyone even knowing or remembering you existed - is a particular kind of annihilation. 

That is why people who have been reduced to vegetative states or have suffered some sort of damage that prevents them from knowing, sensing, and experiencing the infinite stimuli that make up existence are considered dead - brain-dead, anyway. For without the "consciousness" of existence - the knowing that one is alive - then one may truly just as well be dead.

To be forgotten is to be reduced to nothingness.



On this Day of Remembrance, I must remind myself that.

Il N'y A Pas D'Amour Heureux

                                          Aragon et Nina Simone:Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux
                                            Vidéo fidjie sélectionnée dans Arts & Talents

Il N'y A Pas D'Amour Heureux was originally a poem written in 1943 by novelist and poet Louis Aragon. It was later revised and set to music by composer Georges Brassens. While the mood of both poem and song is melancholy and pessimistic, Aragon - whose work was deeply colored by his experiences of hardship during World War II - actually focuses on both the negative and positive aspects of love. His point, essentially, is that true love is not free from sadness or pain.


Hence, the titular "There is no (perfectly) happy love."

Rien n'est jamais acquis à l'homme. Ni sa force.

                                             Man never truly possesses anything. Not his strength.

Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur. Et quand il croit

                                              Not his weakness nor his heart. And when he thinks

Ouvrir ses bras, son ombre est celle d'une croix.

Of opening his arms, his shadow forms a cross.

Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur, il le broie.

And when he tries to embrace his happiness, he crushes it.

Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce. 

His life is a strange and painful divorce.

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux.

There is no happy love.

Mon bel amour, mon cher amour, ma déchirure.

My beautiful love, my dear love, my torn heart.

Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé.

                                                    I carry you in me just like a wounded bird.

Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer

And those who unknowingly watch us walk by

Répétant après moi les mots que j'ai tressés.

Repeat after me the words that I have woven.

Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent.

                                                And which have already died in your bright eyes.

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux.

There is no happy love.

Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard.

The time to learn to live is already long gone.

Que pleurent dans la nuit nos cœurs à l'unisson.

Our hearts cry in unison at night.

Ce qu'il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson.

What it takes in regrets to pay for a thrill.

Ce qu'il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson.

What it takes in sorrow for the simplest song.

Ce qu'il faut de sanglots 

What it takes in sad tears

Pour un air de guitare.

For one tune on a guitar.

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux.

There is no happy love.

Unlike the song, the original poem ends on a more hopeful note, acknowledging that sadness, conflict and suffering are integral, unavoidable components of love. And yet,if we are genuinely in love with a person, all the unhappiness that accompanies love becomes worth it.


Supposedly.

Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne soit à douleur.

Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit meurtri.

There is no love which is not pain.
There is no love which does not bruise.

Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit flétri.
Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne vive de pleurs.


There is no love which does not fade.
There is no love which does not live from tears.

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux.

Mais c'est notre amour à tous les deux.

There is no happy love. 

But it is our own love.