Catacombes/Death/Montmartre Cemetery

Tandis que je sois assise dans ma salon, je me trouve orientée vers le soleil. Où que je trouve la << fleur éphémère >>, qui n’a pas de souci, ni peur de mort, d’une beauté universel, je trouve la mort, même hypnotisant. Il faut toujours souvenir la mortalité, sans tomber inconsolable. Ça y est, il est dit, où on peut trouver la vie. Quand la mort ne me fait pas peur, je n'aurai pas d'aucune souci. C'est eux qui vivent encore déjà mort qui me fait peur -- pour qui, j'ai rien que la pitie. Je n'avais jamais aperçu que la zombie est un metaphore depuis aller aux Catacombes. 

En plus, je suis allée à la cimetière de Montmartre pour un après-midi légère, jusqu’à côté de la metro Gaîté. J'y avais écrit le suivant: 

Le train est arrivé comme un vaisseau spatial, le bruit des annonces dès train était 

assourdi par le cabine ci-joint. J'avais imaginé que les gens, en descendant du train, 

seraient habillés aux scaphandres, et marcheraient si lourd et si lent que les 

astronautes. 

C’était ma première impression de la ligne 13. 

Je suis descendu du train à Gaîté. J’ai marché jusque autour du quartier avant que je 

suis allée à la cimetière. C’était calme et tranquille, le visiteur ou visiteuse n’apparaît ni 

souvent, ni jamais. Les arbres étaient libre, en atteint du ciel, sans souci, sans peur de 

mort, d’une beauté universel. 

C’est poétique: entre les tombes il y avait des arbres, des fleurs, et des insects. C’est un 

rappel de la continuité et de la certitude de la vie: que la vie n’est pas faite pour vivre, 

mais pour le sort de la mort, pour continuer la cycle de régénération. Il faut qu’on se 

demande si les arbres sont fait des cadavres, voyant que la terre en est plein.

Est-ce qu’on vit pour mourir, ou meurt pour vivre? La mort m’amène un confort comme 

je promenade entre les chemins étroits, flanqués par les arbres, et les hommes 

disparus. Je continue de marcher, mais je ralentis, promenant d’un rythme soutenu, 

avec prudence de ne pas éclipser l’homme devant moi. La mort n’est pas triste ni 

condamnant pour moi, mais libérant. C’est le terminus, l’atterrissage, l’appareil qui 

rapport la charme de la vie, sans qui nous ne nous comprendrions rien de la préciosité 

dans les moments si ardu et si laborieux. J’attends la mort comme j’attends rentrer à 

New York: avec patient anticipation.

Tandis que j’écris ce pièce sur la mort, j’ai reçu un email dès Uniqlo, un publicité pour 

une robe nouvelle de leur collection d’été. L’amour, la mort, c’est quoi la difference? je 

me demande (au moins phonétiquement, rien). Je vous donne une liste des citations 

dès À Bout de Souffle qui parlent sur ce sujet:

Quelle est votre grande ambition dans la vie?

(et l’homme répond:) Devenir immortel et mourir.

(on peut en lire plus ici)

Ces hommes enterré étaient des humains magnifiques, et puis, à présent, ils sont des 

souvenirs d’une generation passée. 

Une amie m’a demandé de quoi je regretterais si j’aurais dû mourir demain, mais le 

réponse que je l’ai donné n’était pas authentique, et je ne peux pas encore trouver le vrai solution.

La cimetière de Montmartre est belle.

Il y a aussi une sensibilité très bizarre de l’idée de la cimetière. Son facticité la met dans une catégorie comme la reste de Paris: faux. Même que la fine art est appelée l’art plastique en français. Il reste qu’il n’est pas l’incapacité de comprendre (ou prendre soin) de la différence entre vrai et faux, mais une préférence pour la synthétique, et pour la perfection à la clé. 

L’idée de la mort peut souvent inspirer la motivation de faire quelque chose d’importance. Durant la cherche pour la perfection, ou la travaille qui la suite, on trouve quelques leçons et on gagne quelques experiences qui font l’âme. Autrement, s’il il n’est pas la vérité qu’on cherche, on peut voir le version synthétique à la boutique. Ce n’est pas encore le chemin qu’on cherche, mais la destination. De cette façon, on ne cherche plus la vie, l’amour, le voyage, mais la mort, le destin, l’amour. La vie n’est pas le moyen de la mort, la mort est la catalyseur de la vie. 

Aux Catacombes, c'est la même idée sauf que la mort est affichée sur les murs, ayant l'intention de décorer ou de adoucir la mort. La homogénéité de la mort se fait aplanir les niveaux de la société, des structures inventé par les gens avec la pouvoir des armées et la dominance des hommes. Dans la cimetière, les visiteurs font le promenade. Il y a quelques gens âgés, qui pleurent par les morts, mais même pour le vie passante, qui est toujours en train de se terminer, mais pour eux, plus tôt.

C'est ironique que je ne peux pas trouver une fin pour cette expo, mais enfin, il n'y a pas de terminus. La ligne continue jusqu'en retour, en commençant de la route encore.

TSAR pt 1

The Sun Also Rises’ Paris is one of a changing landscape: a Paris which had not previously existed and does not survive today. The book is an expatriate encounter with foreign identity, and with American identity. 

The review written by John Atherton asks whether The Sun Also Rises might be more of a Masquerade to Jake’s Paris, a hidden treasure map, where the gold is buried in the experience of looking. The hyperbolic nature of its characters feeds into the mythos of Paris: La Ville des Lumières, which shine when allumé, and blind even those who know their way around the city by heart. My lived experience is not far from the one in The Sun Also Rises; in Atherton’s itinerary, the reader is the tourist, the characters, then, pseudo-tourists, being neither French nor outside of the story. 

Hemingway’s curt voice leaves nearly all of the story up to the reader’s imagination. Paris is a subjective experience, like a belle esprit whose power allows her the ability to manipulate her victim’s perception, not too unlike Brett.

The idealism in the tense un-sexual relationship of Brett and Jake objectifies the hard-boiled masculinity, a term invented by Jack Doyle to describe the man whose interior is as tough as his exterior. Oddly that F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the symbolism of an egg in his The Great Gatsby, after having been in Hemingway’s company, no doubt. 

Joseph Doyle, an English heavyweight boxer whose career as a boxer ended in 1933, whereupon he travelled to America to pursue a career in Hollywood; his alcoholism and gambling problems bankrupt him and seriously damaged his health and he died in 1978. This commonality between Hemingway and Fitzgerald and boxing and Jack Doyle reveals a little of the easily permeable barriers between social groups. 

This hard-boiled masculinity is basis of his character Jake — undaunted, tight — all adjectives to describe the ideal masculinity of the ideal Hemingway-ian hero. The whole books gives the impression of being hard-boiled, its characters, plot, vicissitudes all pre-planned and under control. The conversation in the book takes on the quality of the vaudeville act Abbott and Costello’s tightly controlled comedic dialogue. 

More later. 

Rousseau

post - work so far on fiction piece

Life in the 17th arrondisement is quite strange. When I first got here, I was living in a run-down bourgeois apartment, in a neighborhood akin to the upper east side. Before the summer came, though the neighborhood was black like the rest of Paris. People were quiet, and eye contact was nonexistent. The change of seasons brought the tourists, and now, on my metro ride to school, I am told to be aware of pick pockets in French, English, Chinese, Italian, and German.

Earlier this evening, a man screamed from nearby on the street, “tu m’en fou! t’es dégoulasse!” A few weeks ago, I was up early, and I heard a man screaming at his girlfriend from the street, “si tu n’me veux pas, je te quitte!” I would not be surprised if it were the same man.

Last night at the market, I was waiting in line at the caisse, and a figure came up very close to me from behind. I heard a grumbling baritone voice, and the man in front of me looked behind me expressionlessly. As far as I could see without turning around, I could see a red and swollen hand, and I could feel this person’s breath on my neck. He was mumbling in French, and I could not really understand what he was saying, so I could not tell if he was talking to me, or to himself. I inched forwards towards the cashier, who was completely unsympathetic to my paranoia, and looked at the man in front of me to gauge the disposition of the man behind me. He made eye contact with me momentarily, but looked away too quickly. This confirmed all of my fears, and I immediately started imagining myself with a knife in my back. I was relieved to find that he did not follow me home, as far as I am aware of.

When wandering, I don’t make my destination often. I’ll resign to walking around until I get hungry, or bored. On these walks, I catapult myself in the direction of some landmark or monument, usually a museum or a park. If I don’t make it within 30 minutes of arriving, I detour to the first alley which presents itself to me. 

In these movements around the city, I find myself walking around the neighborhoods that I have learned about: the Absesses, Pigalle, Montmartre, Quartier Latin. I try to imagine the people and energy of the temps perdu. It is not particularly difficult, not much has changed. 

Walking down the Canal Saint Martin, I watch the tour boats travel through the canal. Built in 1802 by ordain of Napoleon I, the canal runs from the Canal de l’Ourcq to the Seine. The locks are rusty, and some of them spit water where the pressure has forced the gates slightly ajar. The stretch closest to place de la République is very attractive, and when it is warm the banks are occupied by teens and young adults drinking and smoking weed. 

A friend and I once met some kids in a band there, and we sat and played music and talked about music. They invited us to see their friend’s band play, and we agreed. We met them there around 2 am. They were light and heavy, at the same time, and I went home too early.

I walked back from the Canal Saint Martin towards home one evening, around 8. It was warm enough, and I had a second layer. I chased the sunset between the buildings, where the light would flow out from between the boulevards. People walked with their heads down, the sunlight cascading off of their backs, landing everywhere except for directly in front of them. At Chatêlet, I took the train home.

the feast stands still

À l’arrivée de pâques, et le fin de carême, j’ai commencé de penser sur les implications religieux dans le titre A Moveable Feast. Pourquoi Hemingway, un homme qui se semble athée, sans aucun impression d’avoir les tendances religieux, a choisi ce nom si connoté pour sa mémoire, m’intrigue. Il n’y a pas des leçons morales religieux dans son livre, sauf les empreintes de l’ascétisme, suivi par les périodes d’indulgence et de luxe. S’il n’y a pas des leçons si religieux prescrit par Hemingway, il y a beaucoup des traces religieux dans ses actions. Par example, le Bel Esprit, qui était fondé au nom de l’honneur des hommes, est un caractéristique de la fraternité, nommé par la religion abrahamique. Ezra Pound se semble un homme sans religion soi-même, mais son caractère est augmenté par les bons mérites qui sont imprégné par la religion, comme Hemingway.

With the arrival of Easter, and the end of Lent, I began to think about the religious implications in the title A Moveable Feast. Why Hemingway, a man who comes off as atheist, without any impression of religious tendencies or habits, chose this name, which is so heavily connoted for his memoir, intrigues me. There are no religious lessons in his book, save for traces of asceticism, followed by periods of indulgence and luxury. If there are no religious lessons prescribed by Hemingway, there is a religious hue to his actions. For example, the Bel Esprit, which was founded in the name of the honor of men, is a characteristic of the brotherhood which abrahamic religion teaches. Ezra Pound seems a man without religion himself, but his character is augmented by the lessons which are steeped in religion, like Hemingway.

Teju

I’ve gotten into the habit of taking walks in the late afternoon, after I’ve finished with the mundanity of sitting at home doing the same repetitive work. I walked up towards Monceau Park, following my intuitive sense of direction. There, there are runners with their neon shorts and matching neon shoes, imitating the American tendency to make a neon sign for everything.

I thought back to the New York skyline, where energy is radiating from everything. There is a bagel shop on 9th and University, called Bagel Bob’s, where I would get dinner on occasionally, after my allergist appointment. I would sit and eat watching the rain, and the people passing by with their temporary umbrellas. Sometimes when it rained I would take my longest walks — often to Central Park — with the intention of getting wet.

In November, when the weather just started to turn, I would walk up 1st until it disappeared into wasteland, then make a left onto 27th or so, and walk to 3rd, and then right, all the way up to Central Park. I walked past trash cans, overflowing with Subway and Starbucks cups. On trash day, there would be black bags piled high like the Pyramids, excessive waste entombing the concrete below. Often I wonder if trash is a product of New York, or New York a product of trash.

The sound of children’s laughter caught my attention, and there, at the entrance of the park, was a swarm of pre-teen aged children, fettered to their school. One girl walked through the park entrance to be greeted by some friends sitting on a bench to her left. She waved hello, then moved forward towards another group of girls who were smoking. I watched her navigate the sea of pre-teens to her friends, then I watched her sit down with them.

I walked further to the Jaurès stop, where I took the Metro to the Bastille to get some produce for the week. At the market, there were men shouting the prices of their fruits, luring customers in with their low prices and their plentiful fruit displays.

to be continued

Henry Miller

Henry Miller’s mind is Paris’ ancient labyrinthine geography. As Miller decides for himself in the Tropic of Cancer, “I made up my mind that I would hold on to

nothing, that I would expect nothing,” establishing himself as a self-directed buddhist and a bit of a obsessive existentialist. Emily described him as “self-indulgent”, which I took to mean gluttonous, lustful, etc, when in actuality, she had meant it in the sense of indulgent in one’s self, more commonly known as egotism.

At one point, reading something like this would have installed in me confidence in knowing that my own similar thoughts and epiphanies had registered in other people as well, allowing me to breach out of my shyness and verbalize if not put into practice those ideologies. At this point in my life, reading this is not only boring but also a little disheartening, as I ask myself, is this all there is to learn? I know, of course, that there are thousands upon thousands of textbooks and continuous research, entire fields dedicated to finding the truth behind our world and the mysteries within it, yet the more I learn, the more I realize the triviality of information. This is among many reasons why I appreciate Lang so much, as it esteems informed opinion over excess of facts. Facts are false and often skewed by time, however truth is eternal.

Several questions arose in my mind when I was reading the excerpt from Henry Miller’s Walking Up and Down in China. Had Henry Miller just come to this state of understanding when he wrote this excerpt, or had he been harboring them until this point and finally got the drug-induced opportunity to write them? Had he read about the ideas? Did he come up with them himself? Are these realizations simply universal truths that are accessible to everyone, yet accessed by only some?

While reflecting on Henry Miller, I got an urgent craving for Nirvana’s Come As You Are, which makes me wonder if Miller and Nirvana have some kind of latent relationship: perhaps Kurt Cobain’s, “I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not” philosophy, which Miller most definitely would subscribe to were he had been born a century later. In fact, I would rather say Miller is the Kobain of his generation, though I’m sure that’s an offensive statement to some. 

In recent weeks, I have felt a return to a version of myself which was very fondly missed. Perhaps it was the decision to be this person that I made, or the decision to follow the fondness of the heart, rather than the logic of the head, an idea which Miller brushes upon.

The following excerpt, the essay titled “The Sexual Geography of Expatriate Paris”, was a bit shocking and focused more on the sexual aspects of Anaïs Nin’s writing, rather than the emotional aspect of her overt sexuality, seeing her lewdness not as a manifestation symptomatic of her extremely strong interpersonal intuition (Nin was a Pisces sun, and a Libra rising), but as sexual explicitness for the sake of shock and awe. As an Aries, it is understandable that Donald Pizer simply does not understand such fluid boundaries between emotional and sexual desires, but instead sees it as, “a fusing of sexual and artistic expression,” (Pizer, 173). As a Libra rising, Nin’s expression is guided by Venus, and her life-long quest is to have a deep understanding of her ineffable emotions.

I think it is wrong of Pizer to characterize her writing as about her sexuality, but instead about her deep emotional pull towards Miller and his wife June, probably for the same reason anyone else is drawn to Miller, because of his essence of being, which is conveyed in his writing, and which separates him from any other author I’ve read. In my opinion, this ability that Miller has to express not his opinions or his thoughts, but himself, is what constitutes a truly great writer; Miller’s literature is like a horcrux in which he has eternally stored a part of his soul.

I do not wish to relate this to myself because I cannot do so without revealing much more of myself than I wish to right now on this public forum, but I most definitely feel a strong connection with Miller’s realizations, especially those about the future and the past, and those about metaphysical phenomena which are scoffed at by many. I do not consider myself a religious person in the sense that I have learned it to mean, but I know, secretly, am a very religious person as is Miller, and as is Nin. Again, not in the sense that I, or anyone else for that matter, would think it to mean. It is a subjective and florid religion, one with no definition and no gospel, no veda, no scripture, no psalm, though it is expressed in everything and everything is expressed in it.

Henry Miller is fearless.