Thursday, June 15, 2006

What Cheers Me Up

The picture shows a sign pasted on a tombstone at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. Basically I think it is saying that the gravesite is considered abandoned and will be reclaimed to bury someone else unless you pay up. Actually it doesn't say anything about paying up. I'll appeal to the French language experts reading along. Still it was jarring to see the disrepair and the labels slapped over them.

No, that doesn't cheer me up.

But something has and does. I think it has to do with beginning to figure out how to simplify and get rid of some stuff.

Or it may have more to do with listening to jazz. We've wandered into the Elephant Room three times in the last week or so. And I bought one band's CD at one of the shows and listened to that a bit in the car. Jazz cheers me up.

Movies don't always cheer me up. Especially some movies. I like to watch them. I'm sometimes educated or entertained. Sometimes I'm disturbed and upset by them. Rarely cheered up. Except for some food movies. Even sad food movies like Big Night can cheer me up.

But it's the jazz, I think. Or the getting rid of stuff. (Actually more like planning to get rid of stuff. Does that count?) Or just giving in to the way things are. Or maybe it's getting out on the tennis court or getting some exercise. Maybe it's knowing that everyone has problems and, really, I have less than the average person.

Sometimes I think that chemicals (or electrical charges) flow in the brain giving one the gamut of emotion from euphoric to depressed. And that what happens hasn't much to do with it. Unless what's happening is jazz.

2 comments:

Tomate Farcie said...

You pretty much got it, including the part where it doesn't say anything about paying.

Everything about this picture is depressing. How sad is that to see that even the dead can get evicted from the premises they occupy.

good post!

Anonymous said...

Bonjour,

You're right with the meaning of this sign.
Such message is used in all cemeteries in France, when graves are obviously abandonned.
It must be posted for at least one year. Then, if nobody contacted the "cemetery manager" (??), it can be emptied and reused...
In terms of "paying something", you can "book" a place in a cemetery for what is called a "concession perpétuelle" - in fact, I think, 50 years (but used to be 99 years) - by paying a relatively small yearly fee (depending on the city). At the end of this period, if you (or your family !!) doesn't renew the "concession" nor keep maintaining the grave, then will appear the sign you photographed...