immortality

I don't know what's more unsettling, the inscription ("Consume and be silent") or the Hitler mustache on this recent vandalism at my metro station:Very interesting. I actually didn't see the Hitler mustache until I uploaded this photo onto the laptoppy. I like seeing reminders here and there to not be such a consumerist. A couple days ago I saw some really nice boots that I thought would look great with jeans, and all the Parisien girls here wear boots. Now I don't want to buy boots so much. Or anything material right now for that matter.

Okay. Dead people. I just went and saw some famous dead people here buried at Pere-Lachaise cemetery with my friend Kristen. I actually like cemeteries, and this one is huge. 105 acres. We bought a map of the cemetery from this total douchebag who hates America and kept spouting off stuff while we walked away.

I went to see this guy, Georges Melies, one of film's earliest contributors:He did A Trip to the Moon. If that doesn't help, it was the inspiration for The Smashing Pumpkins' music video to "Tonight, Tonight". Youtube it, and you'll know. You've probably seen that. Saw him, Oscar Wilde, other French writers and philosophers whose work I don't know, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison. I want to go see Chopin next time.

What attracts me to the dead and to cemeteries is this idea of immortality. We either leave behind a familial legacy, a body of work to be remembered, and/or a headstone with our name on it. I'll be lucky to have all three, but I bet the majority only have 2 of these things. Wait, I can't do that first one because my future children would have my husband's last name, not mine. Dang, so I'm already down one!

Anyway, I want to be immortal. I don't want to be forgotten. When I die, I want there to be something that'll tie me back to the living world other than my tombstone in some cemetery and my body rotting in the cold earth. This is why I write so much, why I want to make films. Why I take photos. These words, these photos, these memories--they all mean something to me, and I want them to mean something to someone too. So that way I live on. Am I obsessed? I think so. It's a lifelong obsession hidden beneath everything that I create.

UPDATE: Added "paris - film" album to show my collection of crews filming in Paris. Added "paris - grim" to show my recent visit to Pere-Lachaise cemetery and my future visits to the catacombs and other cemetaries. Update to "graffiti" showing the anti-consumerism vandalism and update to "mes choses" showing my tiny cell phone.

Also, I've added another blog to my list of friends who are spending their year in Paris with me. They're not as crazy as I am, blogging as much as I do, but they are keeping a record of their time here, and that alone is a good thing. Check 'em out. Because not everyone is having the same experience as I am. I'm not an au pair like Kathy, and I don't go to Erasmus parties like Romina. No, I go to cemeteries, and I sit along the Seine reading Salinger like the loner that I am. That's my experience. That's where this blog is coming from. Read their side of the Parisien student lifestyle.