I live in Paris now.
It's only for a month, but I can pretend it'll be longer.
I've only been here 3 days but I am already in love with the city.
Today I took a stroll in the sunlight through an old and new cemetery. I can see this cemetery from my bedroom window, and my interest was immediately piqued.
If this one is typical of french cemeteries, then they are very different here than back home. It was arranged like a small version of the city, with numbered districts, and named alley's fanning out in all directions from the allee principle. Unevenly tiled walkways shoot off from the alleys and thread their way between plots.
Each plot is for a whole family - and all the crypts are above ground. Some are small huts with ornate doors standing over the spot where the fondly remembered deceased presumably rest. They have shelves inside for flowers or plaques or other small items of remembrance.
Others look like the western idea of a coffin, but carved out of stone, and still above ground. Many of the newer looking ones are done this way, with still legible names carved into their sides and tops. The old ones had tops that were caving in, or had disintegrated over time, with only the shell remaining to keep all the pebbles in line. Many of them had stone flower pots with real and fake blossoms tucked in to make the plot more beautiful.
It was such a peaceful place. I couldn't help thinking that it would be really nice to live in a cemetery. Actually *live* in one, not die and be interred.
And then I realized that I'm a little bit morbid. Who wants to live in a cemetery with all those dead and decaying around them?
Well.... but you are also surrounded by a thousand love stories, and million moments of joy. Remembered heartaches, family ties, and the fond hazy shadows of the happiness of all those lives.
I remember reading Anne of the Island, when Anne goes off to school and the house she lives in is near a cemetery. She and her friends spend a lot of time there - it is used almost as a park by the community - and they make friends with their favourite headstones, and invent stories about the lives of the people who had once lived. Their inventions were likely far more exciting than the real lives had been, but who knows? Why were those epitaphs chosen? Or why was nothing said about someone on their grave?
Here, I didn't see any epitaphs. Perhaps there isn't room on a headstone that has to service an entire famille. But one of them did list their occupations.
There were a few other people walking quietly through the allees, making a pilgrimage to a memory, or perhaps just taking a shortcut.
I found a park bench facing a circle where 5 or 6 allees meet, and took a moment to rest, to bask in the sunlight that had broken through the clouds, and to wonder.
I may go back.
In fact I think I will.
It's only for a month, but I can pretend it'll be longer.
I've only been here 3 days but I am already in love with the city.
Today I took a stroll in the sunlight through an old and new cemetery. I can see this cemetery from my bedroom window, and my interest was immediately piqued.
If this one is typical of french cemeteries, then they are very different here than back home. It was arranged like a small version of the city, with numbered districts, and named alley's fanning out in all directions from the allee principle. Unevenly tiled walkways shoot off from the alleys and thread their way between plots.
Each plot is for a whole family - and all the crypts are above ground. Some are small huts with ornate doors standing over the spot where the fondly remembered deceased presumably rest. They have shelves inside for flowers or plaques or other small items of remembrance.
Others look like the western idea of a coffin, but carved out of stone, and still above ground. Many of the newer looking ones are done this way, with still legible names carved into their sides and tops. The old ones had tops that were caving in, or had disintegrated over time, with only the shell remaining to keep all the pebbles in line. Many of them had stone flower pots with real and fake blossoms tucked in to make the plot more beautiful.
It was such a peaceful place. I couldn't help thinking that it would be really nice to live in a cemetery. Actually *live* in one, not die and be interred.
And then I realized that I'm a little bit morbid. Who wants to live in a cemetery with all those dead and decaying around them?
Well.... but you are also surrounded by a thousand love stories, and million moments of joy. Remembered heartaches, family ties, and the fond hazy shadows of the happiness of all those lives.
I remember reading Anne of the Island, when Anne goes off to school and the house she lives in is near a cemetery. She and her friends spend a lot of time there - it is used almost as a park by the community - and they make friends with their favourite headstones, and invent stories about the lives of the people who had once lived. Their inventions were likely far more exciting than the real lives had been, but who knows? Why were those epitaphs chosen? Or why was nothing said about someone on their grave?
Here, I didn't see any epitaphs. Perhaps there isn't room on a headstone that has to service an entire famille. But one of them did list their occupations.
There were a few other people walking quietly through the allees, making a pilgrimage to a memory, or perhaps just taking a shortcut.
I found a park bench facing a circle where 5 or 6 allees meet, and took a moment to rest, to bask in the sunlight that had broken through the clouds, and to wonder.
I may go back.
In fact I think I will.
Love this! MOM
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