Everyday is Halloween

"Wow, Mark! What a fancy new page you have got going here? What's that quote beneath the blog title? Is that Greek or something?"
Yes, yes, the page has been updated. It was getting a little old and needed fumigating. So, nothing has changed except the look of the page.
I would like to thank everyone for reading and for all the encouragement. I would like to say that it has really propelled me to write more over the past few weeks. So, that in mind, I would like to say that I will be writing much more now and to keep all the comments (good, bad and otherwise) coming. I would like to update this blog on a daily or every other day basis, so when you check, make sure that you check the previous couple of entries also so that you don't miss anything that I have taken hours to write. Yes, these entries don't just fly out of my head and onto the page, you know. Some, like "Vignettes," took me several hours to write. So before reading this one, make sure you read "My wife and me and Paris makes three," the entry just before this one.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS!!

What romantic reunion in the city of romance and light is complete without spending a day with thousands, nay, millions of dead people?
Yesterday, my loving wife and I walked ourselves down to the Parisian catacombs. I have been there only once before, the first time I was in Paris (with my friend Sean), but Ruta hadn't even heard of them before. In Paris, they say that you can only really get to know the city once you are past the front door- the front door being the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, etc etc etc. These are places the everyone goes, and should go, but the city, the real Paris, lies beyond these. If someone went to Chicago and only saw the Sears Tower and Navy Pier, or went to New York and only saw the Chrystler Building and the Statue of Liberty, would you say they had really seen those cities? Of course not. Paris is in the allies; she's in the crazily concocted rues that wind in fits and starts off of the main streets; she's in the drastic interplay of light and shade, of sun and cloud, of day and night that transforms the city from an open playground of art and life in the day, to a seductive and dangerous atelier of sex and sin and all things sumptuous by night.
So, off the beaten path we went, and down down down into the dark.
Paris is, in truth, an ancient city. The island on the Seine that is now home to Notre Dame was where the original tribe of this area had settled. They called themselves the Parisii, and when Rome came by the check out the neighborhood, the Parisii were among those who found themselves speaking Latin all of a sudden. The point? This place is really, really, really old. Since ancient times, those who lived here have dug underground for limestone to build bridges and roadways and such above ground. So naturally, underground tunnels have formed all over the place. When mining was banned in the 19th century, these tunnels were exposed to a very 21st century business term: reappropriation.
When the Nazis came along to check out the neighborhood, the French resistance used these tunnels as a place to meet and plan and speak freely. The Nazis themselves used a small portion for that same purpose. These are long, low tunnels; they are dark and wet, and they are far below the subway system. When you descend to the tunnels, it is a good 10 minute walk down a narrow spiral staircase before you reach the first room. Ten minutes may not seem like much, but imagine walking for ten minutes in a given direction, say out your front door. How far you could get from home is how far down you go for these tunnels. It is a long walk down.
But before the resistance or the Nazis came along to party like it was 1899, another group of people were here. When the French revolution was going on, people were just losing their heads about it, literally. Turns out, you cant just throw rotting corpses into the same ditch that might be really close to your underground water table. I mean, I don't know about you, but I just don't go for dead Aunt Tammy rotting into the same water I use to brush my teeth. That's me. Anyway, lots of people were getting sick, so the government at the time, in the middle of the night, moved thousands of corpses from cemeteries to the tunnels, and stacked them there.
And that is where they stay to this day. For a good 45 minute walk, there are millions of bones, just piled on each other, on either side of the tunnels. There are skulls upon femurs upon hipbones upon tibias upon skulls for what seems like forever. And unlike American museums, there is no glass between you and the bones. These are right there for you to trip over and fondle and slip into your backpack (as two very unrespectful people did that day. Two skulls were recovered from visitors leaving the catacombs. What is wrong with people?).
We walked through this place in awe. There are listings of those that we know from history are buried here; too many to name, and so many are obscure anyway, but they include such famous names as Robspierre and The Man in the Iron Mask.
Along the tunnels are little poems and sayings written by priests or poets of the time: "Death is forever ahead or behind us. But in this place, it is here with us now, and already gone" or "The eyes of God are watching us, and his ears are open to hear our return to our right of glory." Its a really cheery place; oh, how we laughed and laughed!
But seriously, we met a man in the tunnels from Australia who asked Ruta if she had heard what was going on in Myanmar. Its not on the news here, and I guess not in the states, but it turns out that Myanmar (Burma to those not in the know) is run by a group of military generals. The Buddhist monks there have been staging protests for a while now, trying to get the current regime to promise to switch to a democratic style of government. The monks outnumber the military by 500,000 to 400,000, but they will not be violent. Their protests are peaceful.
They are doing no harm, other than speaking their minds.
This week, the military decided it was best to start firing into the crowds of peaceful protesters.
We walked for forty five minutes through endless numbers of 18th and 19th century bones- people who had died for what they believed in the revolution, for what they believed in the occupation, for no reason other than their time had come. People were executed in the French revolution for simply being with the wrong people at the wrong time; one man who published a journal on human rights was beheaded while screaming his wife's name because it "threatened the state."
It is easy to look on a million bones from 200 years ago and think about how long ago the oppression of the world wars were, but those bones were a reminder of how real our cruelty to each other is. When speaking your mind or just peacefully sitting at a protest to say "I don't like this" can get you shot... we must remember that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere, that we keep catacombs of the innumerable dead to remind us of how very, very little progress we have made.
To cheer up after the catacombs, we thought it best to head to Montparnasse Cemetery. Yeah, I know; we're weird. Its a really old cemetery and kind of the place to be seen if you're dead. We sat and talked and planned the rest of the day in front of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoire's grave. Sartre, people, Sartre... you know, "No Exit" Sartre? OK, whatever, anyway...
It is amazing to just go hang out with famous literary characters or political figures or comedians or artists or actors or whomever and KNOW what a difference these people have made. It is because these people spoke up and LIVED their LIVES, instead of staying home with the desperate housewives that we have the little change and progress we do have. I am grateful for them.
Ruta told me that she was recently at a wake (I swear, we do happy things; its not all wakes and cemeteries and catacombs) and was talking to a man who told her that the French hate us. She said, "No, my husband lives over there, and he says that they don't." This person told her she was wrong, and that the French dislike for Americans goes all the way back to Vietnam and Cambodia and such. OK, well, I am here to say again- what the f*** ever. The French don't care anymore about us than they should. They care that we have invaded Iraq; they care that we wont sign the Kyoto Protocol (look it up), and they care that we seem to be using more and more of the world's resources without giving a damn. But what do they know? They're just the fricking greenest country in the world, and also happen to be independent of middle east oil.
They have also given the world Camus and Sartre and Monet and Manet and Caillbotte and Eiffel and Marcel Marceau and Renoir and Escoffier, etc etc etc...
They don't seem to be holding on to any antiquated notions of cross cultural disdain, like we are.
And that is really the point of this whole blog entry.
Its time to fess up.
As I write this, my wife is out walking the streets of Paris because she wanted some time to just be inspired by the city. No matter that it is grey and cold and raining, she is out there living her life, not worrying about the money or what people will think or whatever; she is living her life, and if we all just got out of the house and stretched our arms in the sun once in a while and woke the fuck up, we might realize that there is more going on in the world than our little concerns and our held-on-to animosities.
There is work to be done; there are people who are desperate to be loved. There are those of us who are holding back our capacity to love someone else, and in doing so, we are killing each other or tuning into sitcoms to tune out to the fact that we don't want to know that the world is suffering around us, and we are doing nothing.
And until we do something, anything, for the people around us, for the person sitting across from us, to the person just next to you RIGHT NOW all we can hope for, is the promise of a longer tunnel, a longer tunnel full to the brim with bones.