Jour de la Mort(alité)

---

C'est ici l'Empire de la Mort. This is the inscription above the entrance to the Catacombs of Paris. Built in the late 18th century to accommodate the dead of the condemned inner-city cemeteries, the Catacombs are an underground labyrinth of passageways lined with over 6 million deceased Parisians. We descended into the damp, close, dark, down, down, down the winding stairs. And still the stairs continued. I must say I felt a bit like Dante, but I didn't have the luxury of a poet-guide. Instead Sophie, three of her friends, and I were left to our own devices as we followed the seemingly endless twisting tunnels. Suddenly the tunnels opened and there it was, the entrance to the Catacombs themselves, with the fore-mentioned inscription above. What followed was surreal and eerie in a way that only being surrounded by millions of dead can be. The bones were carefully placed and arranged with the ends of the femurs and skulls placed in patterns along the walls. It is quite beautiful, in a morbid, I'm-so-very-glad-there's-no-flesh-left-on-these-bones sort of way. Word to the wise though: if you are planning on visiting the catacombs of Paris, I suggest you bring a tri-pod, as flash photography is not allowed and there is not a lot of light down there. There are people who work there just to tell you not to use flash and they will suddenly show up out of nowhere to yell at you, so no, you won't be able to get away with it. My pictures were taken using a tri-pod on the 15 and 30 second exposure time.

After our jaunt through the underground "empire of death", we decided to make a day out of it and go visit the Père Lachaise cemetery. Might as well have a theme for the day, right? This is the famous cemetery that houses the remains of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Chopin, La Fontaine and Molière, to name a few. It is quite beautiful, a little city of the dead. As we walked through the cobbled streets I thought how everyone here was once wealthy and powerful within their realms of influence, and now they are only a name carved in stone whose significance has been forgotten by all but a few. Crows were everywhere, just like a Disney cartoon. Oscar Wilde's grave was covered in lipstick, and I kissed it too, though I didn't mean to. I was posing for a picture and lost my balance, so I won't be surprised if I get mono or something. Because Sophie and her friends are all fashion models, we were posing for photos all over the place. Or maybe it was just because we are all gorgeous babes and Francisco had a camera, either way, quite fun.

Fountainbleu was something else. The exchange program had arranged a tour for us on Saturday, meeting bright and early at 8:45 am. I would have been on time had the Pope not messed up the metro schedule, but as it was everyone was late and we didn't leave until 9:20 or so. The "Chateau des siecles" sits in the middle of the tiny town of Fountainbleu, a jewel tucked into the protected forests surrounding Paris. Decadent is a good word to describe the Chateau, or perhaps luxuriant. A favorite vacation spot for the French royalty for over 800 years, Chateau Fountainbleu is indeed a house of the centuries. Every room bears marks of its former inhabitants. Luckily there was a modern art exhibit in the Chateau to help break up the gilded decadence with a bit of absurdity. My favorite was the helium cat floating on the ceiling of the Queen's stairway, or perhaps the elephant standing on it's trunk in the middle of a grand hall. I thoroughly enjoyed the juxtaposition of old traditional luxury and modern absurdity, though our guide didn't seem to share my sentiments. She seemed to be a little pissed at the whole thing, actually, and kept assuring us that the exhibit was only temporary. There is a temporary exhibit of Jeff Koons at Versailles right now that I would like to see, as there are only so many old guilded royal mansions I can take, but modern art is always interesting.

After our tour some of the other MICEFA students and I lunched in the gardens, taking turns posing like the statues. The gardens at Fountainbleu are amazing, half of them are in the traditional French style, highly manicured and ordered, and the other half are in the more folksy-English garden tradition of winding paths through more natural looking terrain. Really lovely place to picnic, I hope I can return sometime in the next month or so because I can imagine that it would be fantastic when the leaves change color. Well, I'm sure it would be beautiful no matter the season, but I love the colors of fall, watching as things change before my eyes. If I don't return, I won't be too heartbroken. At least I can say I've seen it, I have picnicked in the gardens of the "House of the Centuries".

---