Monday, May 5, 2008

Sunday, sunny Sunday

Sunday morning at home, whether here or there, is much the same. Sleep late, read the paper, actual or electronic, laze around doing not much of anything until you feel guilty and go out. Our lunch date cancelled, we decided to go to Père Lachaise cemetary and enjoy the sun and being alive while searching for the graves of those famous people who could no longer do either.

Oscar Wilde, who died in Paris in a hotel that has since made lots of money telling people about it, has a rather strange Modernist gravestone with tributes, names and dates scribbled all over it by visitors, as well as lots and lots of lipstick kisses!


We also saw the large number of memorials and steles to victims of the concentration camps, to resistance heros, to Communists, to the dead of the Spanish Civil War.

There are carefully maintained graves, abandoned ones, lots of sepulchres designed as small buildings for family internment, stones adorned by ceramic flowers, etc. A true city of the dead. It even has signposts.

But not enough of them, as we got separated and lost for a while and finally gave up the ghost so to speak and left for a late lunch.

3 comments:

Jo said...

So glad you are having sunshine to better enjoy Paris. Our Google gadgets show 72 degrees and a sun symbol for Paris - warmer than the Bay Area.

Loved the image of a little line of telephones and chargers all waiting to be juiced. Wow - could we identify with that!

Is the photo in the Getting Connected piece the Square du Temple?

Shelli said...

Hi Jo-

The picture was taken in the Parc Montsouris. Thanks for visiting!

Jo said...

Of course, the Parc Montsouris. Should have realized it was too hilly to be the Square de Temple.