HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-08-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010. PAGE 5.
I’ve got my first stop picked out for my next
visit to Paris and it’s not the Louvre, the
Eiffel Tower or a café on the Left Bank.
It’s a leafy 109-acre sanctuary in the 20th
arrondisement – Pere Lachaise, the most
famous cemetery in the world.
Darned near everybody who was anybody is
in there – and not just those of the Gallic
persuasion. Oscar Wilde is buried in
Pere Lachaise along with Proust, Balzac and
Colette. Gertrude Stein, unlike her
pronouncement on Oakland, California is
there, there; so is Isadora Duncan.
Artists? Delacroix, Dore, Pissarro, Seurat.
Composers? Chopin, Enescu. Entertainers?
Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, Sarah
Bernhardt, Maria Callas. There’s even plot
space for a hell-raiser like Jim Morrison of
The Doors.
Pere Lachaise is probably the ultimate trip
for cemetery cruisers, but truth to tell, I don’t
need to visit a celebrity graveyard to enjoy my
darker side. Pretty well any marble orchard
will do. I love the cemetery ambiance,
although I don’t usually admit it out loud – not
after I blurted it out at a cocktail party one
evening. “What are your hobbies?” a woman
asked. “Walking”, I said. “Me too,” she said.
“Where do you hike?”
“Cemeteries mostly,” I said. She looked at
me woodenly and muttered: “You’re creeping
me out.”
Her loss. Cemeteries are splendid places to
perambulate at leisure. Generously treed and
lovingly landscaped, devoid of vehicular
traffic and commercial eye clutter – and of
course, pleasingly silent.
Why not? Everybody’s sleeping.
And unless there’s a funeral in
progress, most cemeteries are deserted.
I can’t for the life of me understand why. I’ve
walked in unfamiliar cemeteries for
decades and never once been asked to leave.
As long as you don’t bring a picnic and a
boom box the authorities won’t bother you.
And it’s not as if the residents are going to
complain.
No need to bring along a paperback
or a newspaper, there’s plenty of reading
material in the cemetery, much of it poignant.
The information is Hemingwayesque –
simple, but freighted with meaning.
A cracked marble stone tells you that the
woman beneath it was born in 1899, died
1918, along with her infant Melissa.
Hmmm….The Spanish Flu pandemic? Or did
she die in childbirth? Only nineteen years old.
Was her husband overseas? Missing in action?
You can almost feel a short story writing itself.
And then there are the epitaphs. Most of
them are generic and clichéd: At Rest; Gone
But Not Forgotten; Asleep in the Arms of
Jesus; Ready to Meet My Maker. Those are the
boring ones. They sound uninspired,
mechanical; the mortician’s equivalent of the
Hallmark Card.
But some folks, bless ‘em, realize that the
blank space on their tombstone represents
their last best chance to sum up in a few
chiselled words, what their whole life has
meant to them. An epitaph is the ultimate in
afterthoughts.
Some are gloomy – the stone over poet
Charles Bukowski’s grave reads I NEVER
LIKED IT ANYHOW. W.C. Fields gravestone
is popularly believed to say ON THE
WHOLE, I’D RATHER BE IN
PHILADELPHIA. A flint-hearted, defiantly
anonymous Vermonter saw to it that his
tombstone read:
I WAS SOMEBODY. WHO, IS NO
BUSINESS OF YOURS
Other epitaph writers choose to leave us
with a smile on our faces. Johnny Carson’s
choice? I’LL BE RIGHT BACK. Phyllis
Diller wants her epitaph to read I DIED
LAUGHING. Larry King has opted for HE
FINALLY MET A DEADLINE.
Canada’s own W.P. Kinsella has his afterlife
all planned out. He intends to spend it
under a stone with the inscription:
AT LAST, TIME TO CATCH UP ON MY
READING.
There is reported to be, in (where else?) the
Boot Hill Cemetery in (where else?)
Tombstone, Arizona, a headstone over the
grave of one Lester Moore, an ex-Wells Fargo
cargo agent that reads:
HERE LIES LESTER MOORE
FOUR SLUGS FROM A .44
NO LESS, NO MORE.
Leave ‘em laughing – good advice for
comedians and cadavers alike. I reckon the
only big mistake an epitaph writer can
make is to take him or herself too seriously.
The robustly ego’d author Vladimir
Nabokov penned his own epitaph in his book
Pale Fire. “Other men die,” wrote Nabokov,
“but I am not another; therefore I’ll
not die.”
But that’s not the tale told by a tombstone in
the Cimitiere de Clarens in Montreux,
Switzerland tells. It reads:
VLADIMIR NABOKOV 1899 – 1977
Arthur
Black
Other Views Confessions of a cemetery hiker
Dirtbag, creep and jerk are all names that
would be used to describe a middle-
aged man who decides to bail on his
wife while the couple is in the midst of trying
to have a child because he simply isn’t happy.
He’s decided that the family life just isn’t for
him and he wants to move on.
Now, I’m proud to be a man, which isn’t a
slight against women, who I’m sure are very
happy being women. But I particularly like
being a man and all that comes with it.
And admittedly, in many cases, we, as men,
tend to get the long end of the stick on many of
life’s so-called double standards.
So I guess I got a little annoyed when doing
my weekly duty on The Citizen’s website,
writing a synopsis for the new Julia Roberts
movie Eat Pray Love, based on a real life
memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert.
The book is nothing new, it has been out for
several years now, but the movie has just begun
to grace theatres around the world.
The book had been criticized by some for
being a never-ending spending spree of a
privileged woman, but it has also been praised
by many critics, not the least of whom was
chick-lit guru Oprah Winfrey, who dedicated
two full episodes of her show to the book.
However, as I understand it, Gilbert was
unhappy with her marriage and as Wikipedia
has it, she began having an affair, eventually
filing for divorce from her husband in the
midst of the pair’s efforts to have a child.
Her subsequent relationship didn’t work out
either and hot on the heels of cashing a large
cheque from her life as a writer, she took off
for a year-long trip of self-discovery where she
found solace in food, prayer and love through
a trip to Italy, India and Bali.
So I asked the first logical question that came
to my very male brain, which was, “what
would happen if a man wrote such a book?”
My thoughts on that are that it would be
entitled Midlife Crisis and that stocks of torch
and pitchfork companies would skyrocket.
I am not questioning someone’s right to
leave a relationship in which they are unhappy
since I have known women extremely close to
me who have been unhappy in their situations
and have done the absolute right thing by
leaving. I am simply questioning whether a
gentleman with similar feelings of unhappiness
in the exact same situation would be afforded
the same courtesies if he made the exact same
decision.
My guess is the aforementioned man
wouldn’t be afforded the same courtesies, and
that a memoir of his journey of self-discovery
would not be featured on Oprah, unless for
reasons other than to give it a glowing review.
If Gilbert was lost and unhappy, then she did
the right thing by moving on with her life and
if people find that inspiring, then that’s great.
Inspiration can take some funny forms and
people never know who the next person to
inspire them along life’s path is going to be.
As Oprah would know, another author,
James Frey inspired a nation with his tale of
redemption after extreme drug addiction and
alcoholism with his book A Million Little
Pieces, a selection from Oprah’s Book Club.
A few of those pieces, it turns out, were
slightly exaggerated, and as soon as she found
out, Oprah had him on the show to scold him,
because nobody cheats and lies to Oprah.
Sure, James Frey got two episodes of Oprah
dedicated to him, but they had a slightly more
sinister tone to them.
In some worlds, I suppose, lying and
cheating just don’t pay. In others, however, it
looks as though it can be a solid career move.
Hudak needs to lighten up
Eat Pray Puke
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative
leader Tim Hudak needs to put new
life in his campaign to replace Liberal
Premier Dalton McGuinty and he should start
by lightening up a little.
Hudak was chosen a year ago to lead the
party that once dominated the province, but he
has never given the remotest idea of any of his
personal, as distinct from political,
characteristics.
Hudak’s first words as leader were that the
province had undergone a “summer of
scandal,” which fairly summed up a series of
incidents in which McGuinty spent hundreds
of millions of dollars on computerizing
information on residents’ health, helping
immigrant organizations and managing
lotteries, but steered much of it to overpaid
consultants who often were Liberals.
Few days passed without the Conservative
leader being able to accuse McGuinty of
“cooking up another sweetheart deal” for
Liberal friends.
Hudak has constantly attacked McGuinty’s
harmonizing of the provincial and federal
sales taxes, which expanded them to many
more goods and services, as a “tax grab,"
which in many ways it is.
Hudak’s fury has been increased because
McGuinty agreed with the Conservative
federal government the province would have
to pay a huge financial penalty if it wanted to
withdraw.
This condition has made it virtually
impossible for the Conservative leader to
promise to cancel the arrangement if elected
premier, and he calls it a “poison pill" and a
bribe, which is a unusual criticism for one
level of a party to level at another. Hudak has
been made to look a ditherer through no fault
of his own.
When McGuinty announced a record $20
billion-plus budget deficit, Hudak recalled
bitterly an incoming Conservative government
under premier Mike Harris was forced to
“clean up the mess of debt" left by a
New Democrat government in the 1990s and
newer Conservatives would have to clean up
an even bigger mess. Hudak said Ontario has
fallen apart and “its people are afraid of the
future.”
He complained McGuinty forced factories
to close while focusing on such frivolous
issues as banning pesticides that remove
dandelions from front lawns.
The Conservative leader called McGuinty’s
promise to review his decision that allowed
stores to charge so-called eco taxes on
products that can cause environmental damage
“a shell game,” because McGuinty will force
consumers to pay in the end.
Hudak said McGuinty as premier has
accomplished nothing positive and has “a
reckless, failed government.”
Hudak constantly derides McGuinty as “the
nanny premier,” because he has brought in
many laws to protect residents Conservatives
claim are unnecessary, and predicted his next
will ban people walking and chewing gum at
the same time, a parody on a U.S. president
who opponents claimed was not smart enough
to do both simultaneously.
Hudak has a total right to make his
criticisms, some of which are exaggerated, but
many of which are close to the mark.
His job is to oppose and he would be
neglecting this responsibility if he failed to do
so. Focusing on these serious faults of
McGuinty also is his best hope of bringing the
Liberal premier down.
But Ontarians usually elect a premier in
whom they also feel some comfort. The
toughest talking contender for premier in
recent years was Harris, who was elected on a
clear, well documented platform of cutting
government and taxes and not on personal
traits.
But even Harris showed a wry sense of
humour at times, calling himself, tongue-in-
cheek, “The Taxfighter” and “Mike, the guy
from next door," trying to show he could relate
to every voter.
Harris even occasionally praised New
Democrats, trying to suggest his views were
balanced.
Other political leaders are out on road trying
to show they are human, Conservative Prime
Minister Stephen Harper playing the piano and
Liberal federal leader Michael Ignatieff
strutting a decidedly unacademic calypso. It is
about time Tim Hudak started loosening up
and it would not hurt if voters caught him
smiling.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
A successful person is one who can lay a
firm foundation with the bricks that others
throw at him or her.
– David Brinkley
Final Thought