5: A Graveyard and a Cathedral

Early morning at the Café I get another double, then plain croissants – learning to say “sept” it’s ce-mented in my head. In our hotel room we have nutella to accompany them.
The train: the false plan for the day….
Switch – no switch – 3 all the way to Pere Lachaise. Which is the cemetery.

Walk down Le Republique –
Left on Saint Ambrose around church, cross Voltaire to Boulevarde Richard Lenoir (Place des Vosges) cross the seine at Pont d’Austerlitz.
Work way through garden, to right towards Pantheon. Towards Boulevard St. Michel – Right.
Keep on towards the St. Germain and keep on until the seine, we cross with Notre Dame on our right.
Cheep food today (courtesy of my brother’s rarely used guide book): NE of Bastille Babylone: 21 rue Daval, flickering neon sign, checkered tile floor
Tricotine: 15 Ave. de Choisy, just south, bottom left corner
I watch the metro car attached behind mine dance to the underground rhythms of Paris. The man sitting beside me reads the free paper I was reluctant to pick up. Noticed the hawker above ground at the metro station and ignored. There are hums beneath the surface. Vibrant energy of staying in ones own world. Gray coats shimmer cotton, small squares on blue shining from so many travelers polishing. I want to see Parisian youths running down these tunnels with spray cans, so in my head I do. The sea green, forgotten crayola color of the train’s exterior.
And more seats are polished.
Fix your hair on glass interior reflections provided by tunnel.
Twelve stops to go. Before I lift the handle small and aluminum cousin. I try and fail to smell the tunnels – try and imagine an open briefcase flying apart covering the link the carriage with debris zero gravity, and succeed. My leg is writing table, bench, swift subtle perfume of a handbag and cheek. Try to learn as much as possible from a rabbit getting shocked. My mother asked if I’d ever eaten rabbit. I also like quail. Breathe into open movement of two trains passing.
Breathe out allergy and distress.
Nap lightly. Resist the urge to dance in an open space moving unknown kilometers per minute.
Like cells floating, more immeasurable.
A little.

Zoo voodray un café grande.
Grwaand. Throat scratch slight.
e sept croissant.
I like the man at the café I’ve adopted for mornings. A friar’s crown of hair and substantial paunch. He chats lightly and has the slightly big, slightly bulbous nose I have associated with middle age French man preconceptions. Two and two sugar.
Back in carriage the stops get closer. The train stopping more movement for passengers.
I watch Asian women speak French.
Yesterday early evening walking from the RER a troupe of dozens of Spaniards were dressed in period clothing. White leggings.
White wigs.
A young blonde retriever gets on the train with a cute girl in her twenties. He is extremely well behaved. The next stop a man with long hair and a gray hard shell suitcase gets on. I listen to a Bjork song I heard a French “American Idol” singer perform last night, and wonder how many Parisians will listen to it today for the same reason. French Idol?

At the graveyard I observe tombstones. Marvel at the fact that this is a major tourist attraction. How many cemeteries have gone unnoticed through the centuries and centuries? Where will I be buried? Will there be visitors….I have friends whose graves I have not seen.
Goublier – composers the two of them.
Gericault.
My mother:
“I bet people dump black cats here all the time. How could you not?” she said, “If I lived here I would drop off dozens and feed them every day,” she laughed, “that way they’d never go away.”
“How could you not?”
The question reveals a deep irreverence present in my own soul. Passed down and loved. Used gratefully. The obviousness of pestering the superstitious.
There’s a man with a wild beard, I notice beards now. I like them. My sister takes pictures of me writing.
She says there are too many shadows and tells me to scoot over. I move into the sunlight and write this line, so I’m not just posing for a photo. Sitting on the lip of a fountain after wandering only minutes and minutes amidst death and memory. Ancestry forgotten. Foul play and old age and fortune and stain glass windows.
“I wonder how many people have had sex in the open ones…” I say to my father.
“Oh yeah.”
“What if you got hit by a car in here and died….”
“That would be (indistinguishable word)” laughter.
“Wait, did you say ‘ironic’ or ‘erotic’?” I ask him.
And we laugh more.
I enjoy these type of exchanges with my father. My mother smiles at us, and I’ll bet she wondered the same thing.
“Balls, we’ve been here long.” Says Dad.
My brother and sister are posing in the sunlight leaning against houses for the dead, we find it amusing because people stop with maps open wondering why these two would be fashion models are posing here. “There’s good sun.” says my sister. Their maps flutter in the breeze, a rip off of souls and pidgeons. The noise like a rat falling through a tree. A maintenance detail passes by, small truck loaded with branches brooms vests shovels weed killer.
“That’s not a high five, that’s London Bridge.”
Mom – “I’m a little munchkin.”
We move on from the cemetery and walk and walk until we are in the neighborhood of the modern art museum. Perhaps we had a pastry on the way.

Hausey – Leplat: A Normandy artist. The man working with horrible body odor told me you can’t find him on the internet “this is his main gallery.” The man came down from upstairs as my sister and I looked around the gallery. I was attracted by the aforementioned artists sculptures, mostly pigs, made from burlap and nails.
Galerie Lisette Alibert. I haven’t tested the man’s word, haven’t looked him up yet.
Brown woven animals.
Here I should insert some allegory to “Femme Pressee” by Francoise Abraham and,” Elan.” Like, your body moves with the mystery of… Or, I long to caress your curves, stretching them all into an F. Abra-ham sculpture. Let me surf the waves of your corpulent body. Call me Francoise as I move my hands giddily along the endlessly smooth contours of your femininity.
Maybe.

We sat down and had a small lunch. My sister and I shared a hot dog ensconced in bread with cheese and an odd relish. Then we walked until I listened in the sun and cold wind to Notre Dame chime three. Sitting beside me in the square facing this great cathedral is a man with fluffy white and gray facial hair. This area in front is full of people not only from around the world, but mostly France. It is a Thursday. Dive-bombing pigeons harass the unlucky few, reciprocating the attacks are small children chasing the ground units. Little shoes stomping toward the birds’ ugly feet.
After exploring the cathedral’s interior and marveling at various stain glass, I think. And exiting I strike up a conversation with my brother about the afterlife, sprung from our observations of the lighting shapes colors through old windows. The shadows cast and rays of sunlight traced with dust, more visible than your hand in front of your face.
So: Our eyes are light-gatherers. If the spirit is going to operate on a different plane than the one we currently know, then after death maybe there are no more reflections. Instead, you’re dealing with reality. The straight understanding of the nature of bodies in existence. Our vision is a reflection of light. Perhaps some unfathomable sense replaces what we know now as sight.
…that’s the brief of it.
We share crepes with bananas and chocolate, a small pot of herbal tea, then my parents go back to the hotel and my brother, sister, and I head to the museum.