My visit with Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde

It's our second last day in Paris and both Molly and I were pretty exhausted from the whirlwind, roller-coaster trip to London. I sensed that she may feel like hanging around the flat for the day recuperating but although I was somewhat tired, I needed to make the trip to Père Lachaise Cemetery where there are many notable and famous resting places.

Most importantly, I needed to visit Jim.

When I was about 17-18 I was fascinated with The Doors, their story and that of Jim Morrison. I was experimenting with poetry at the time and influenced by their lyrics. When I was 18 and visited Oceanside (California), I had a chance to visit Los Angeles. My first priority was to walk on Venice Beach and visit the Hollywood Bowl before any Hollywood touristy stuff. I distinctly recall driving into L.A. around 9am with the morning sunshine filtering through thick smog as the car approached the familiar skyline. In the back seat, I had "L.A. Woman" just starting to play on my cd player. It was a perfect moment.

Jim Morrison was a charismatic, enigmatic rock (& blues) singer/performer who wrote some fantastic songs and poetry. Like several other talented people who were presented, plied and subdued with excess or who used what was available to cope with sudden fame and wealth, it is sad to me that he died in a bathtub in a Paris hotel.I recall having a poster of his grave in my bedroom. I found it beautiful.

I was glad for this time to myself today to be completely absorbed in my own personal mission.

Just one of the beautiful pathways lined with mausoleums

My confidence in using the Metro made it an easy 15 minute trip to the East of Paris and I was directed to the Administration office to pick up a map of the cemetery. The map is a paper print-out with notable graves marked as numbers on each zone in the cemetery. The cemetery is huge by the way--110 acres.

It was raining. The kind of rain where you need an umbrella, but there's no wind and it's not bouncing up off the ground. It was the absolute best weather to visit a 211 year old cemetery. The main pathways are all cobble-stoned and only in some areas are the cobble-stones smaller and a little easier to traverse. A good portion of the cemetery is uphill and there are many winding paths and intersections.

Blossoming trees in the cemetery

I knew that Jim's grave was not immediately noticeable and you had to look for it. As I made my way a second time through the section I thought he might be in, I turned a corner and saw a grey metal barricade linked to a couple of others and knew right away that I would find his grave there.

I was the only one there. I almost started to well up a little bit and snuck through an opening in the barrier to get a little closer to the site but a cemetery security person happened to be silently lurking nearby and asked me to step back behind the barricade. I apologized and stepped around it and stood for a while looking at it and remembering what he brought to those teen years of mine and how I was shaped by discovering his music and poetry.

Edith Piaf

Moving on, I took some general interest photos trying to capture the beauty and history of this cemetary and later on was asked by a girl carrying a camera if I'd found Edith Piaf's grave yet. I was in fact in that area and together we Googled on my phone to get an idea of which markers were nearby and we were able to find her headstone. We were her only visitors at that time and each took some photos and went our separate ways after she had directed me to where I could find Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Wilde

The time had slipped by and suddenly I realized it was 5pm. I must have been there a good 2 hours carefully walking on wet cobble-stones protecting my camera from the rain under my umbrella while clutching an ever-dampening paper map. Paris rush hour was something to take into consideration, so I started making my way back to where I thought the entrance was. I walked for about 10 minutes before realizing that I was having great difficulty getting oriented; thankfully my phone was charged and I used Google maps' GPS tool to get myself down to the principal entrance and back to the Metro.













                                       Goodbye Jim. xo.