Fun fact: people stop killing each other when they’re dead.
The thought strikes me as I wander through Paris’ Cimitière du Père-Lachaise, where the graves of Christians, Jews, and Muslims rest in peace adjacent in winding stone rows. In death, we are finally good neighbors.
I’m starting to realize that for a skeptic, I think about religion a lot. Maybe because wherever I go, I’m almost getting killed by it. But whatever. À les morts, rien n’importent.
In the less-distant-than-you-think future, we’re going to switch to skyscrapers for the expired, which will open up lots of real estate (and cut down the commute time for the good ones), but until then I’m content to wander cemeteries like a ghoul.
The departed are just about the only company I can stand lately. It’s because they’re quiet, and they don’t kill each other. I hunt around Père-Lachaise for people I might be related to, and while doing so stumble upon Oscar Wilde’s tomb, which is covered in red lipstick kisses, and Edith Piaf’s, which is covered in roses. I don’t find Savarin’s grave, or Molière’s, Proust’s, Chopin’s, or Balzac’s.
I do, however, find Jim Morrison’s. There’s a fence in front of it, to which people have tied hairties and bracelets—this I dig. There’s a tree beside it lined with bamboo strips, to which people have stuck their chewed gum—this I dig not so much. I scrawl the ratio 5:1 in pen at the top of one of these strips, put my headphones in, and listen to the music of the dead until the cemetery closes for the night and the gendarmes kick me out.
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