So I went to a cemetery today. It was really nice, I love walking around cemeteries. But when I got to the back I started to feel.. uncomfortable? I got a migraine. I didn’t feel right so I walked back towards the front of the cemetery and when I left that section it’s like my migraine instantly vanished.
When visiting a cemetery, it is considered polite witchcraft to ask permission and make an offering to the gatekeeper of the cemetery. The gatekeeper is considered to be the first person laid to rest in the cemetery, so you’d look for the oldest grave. But if that’s not possible, you can also look for the tallest monument. I’ve been told it’s traditional to knock three times and leave an offering of three silver coins (or dimes). Though I have left other offerings over the years and felt welcome in the cemetery.
For some cemeteries it’s acceptable to greet them instead. A bow and a brief acknowledgement of the passing of those around you may suffice, as some places don’t have gatekeepers. Still, if having the moment to do so, meander until you find yourself at a particular grave. That’s the one you should thank and pay homage to.
And if you only felt that kind of tension in one area of the cemetary, that could be those entities saying “no, not now. Please leave” and that headache was your direction to wander away towards a different cluster.
The grave of Marie Taglioni, a ballerina who pioneered the en pointe style of dance. Young dancers often leave their dancing shoes on her grave.
to some of the comments I’ve seen on this—
Marie Taglioni had a different body from other dancers. Modern ballet dancers end up with ‘bad backs’ because we’re trying to reshape ourselves like her but we don’t talk about it.
Looking at that photo, you can see her sloped shoulders and bent-backwards posture. Her head and upper body look pretty relaxed, but if you try to draw a line down to her feet, there would have to be a deep bend in her lower back. That’s something she’s doing intentionally.
It’s unclear at this point whether Taglioni had scoliosis or some other atypical bone structure. It’s clear from portraits that she always had those rounded shoulders and when she stood naturally, the curve of her spine made her lean forward quite a bit, suggesting kyphosis. Although she came from a major ballet family, as a young woman she was repeated rejected by ballet teachers, who referred to her (apparently to her face) as “that little hunchback”.
Training on her own with her father, she developed a way to tuck in her lower back, raising her arms above her head, which lifted up her ribcage so she looked…kind of more like a typically-bodied person.
But it didn’t really make her look like everybody else. Apparently, the posture (and the hours a day, every day, she spent building the strength to hold it with ease) made her look eerily weightless compared to other dancers at the time. To add to the effect, she built up her calf and ankle strength until she could dance for long periods en pointe, which had previously been a very occasional stunt (which involved a lot of arm-flapping, trying to balance. Her statuesque still arms and sheer strength made it look good for the first time).
Her father choreographed the first Romantic ballets, all about faeries and ghostly maidens, to showcase her floating look. She wore knee-length skirts to showcase her gnarly calves and awesome footwork.
When La Sylphide debuted in the spring of 1832, Paris was boiling up toward the June Rebellion (you know, all that in Les Mis). Her scandalous skirts and the dark, haunting sentiment of her dances spoke to the wonder and grandeur and fear Parisians were feeling as they questioned the fundamental order of their world. (She made Parisian teens feel like you feel when you listen to Les Mis.) She was a big fuckin’ hit, performing in the same Paris Opéra that had refused to enroll her as a student.
You know that most basic image of what a “ballerina” is? Arms up high in that pretty frame that starts to hurt real quick and your butt tucked in and your hips all weird? That position wasn’t part of the ballet canon before Taglioni.That’s us trying to make our bodies look like what Marie Taglioni made with her body because people were assholes to her.
Dancers started leaving shoes for her blessing, in a way asking how they can struggle to do what she made seem natural.
That’s us still telling most people they don’t have “the right body for ballet” while we tell the few people who do that they still aren’t enough, because we want people to look perfectly aesthetically able-bodied while doing the thing that a non-normatively bodied woman created for herself.
I’m not saying able-bodied people can’t dance! But hey, maybe we should think about it before we tell anyone they have to dance or be shaped one way.
(In case you’re wondering, it’s not clear if she’s really buried at the be-shoed grave in Montmartre or if that’s her mama. So that’s one of a couple reasons we can’t figure out whether she had a particular condition.)
Sooo…about that grave in Montmartre… After some researches, I can now say that we are totally sure she is not buried here. We know this because she was primarily buried in Marseilles – and got her mother buried in Montmartre. There is still a gravestone for her in the Saint-Pierre cemetery in Marseilles – however, she is not there anymore!
So I wondered where she could be now, and, surprise, surprise, she’s in the Père Lachaise! Apparently her grandson moved everyone there at some point… That’s so interesting, if I get time I’ll go take pictures of both the Montmartre memorial and the actual family grave in the Père Lachaise… Meanwhile, you can have a look at them on this link, which also recaps about everything I said above but in French…
So if you got a little dancer in your family/friends/acquaintances, please show them the right grave! It would be so nice to see more ballet shoes on it…
today i found out that victor hugo has had more sex than possibly almost any other human that has lived on this planet.
he had so much sex his biographers straight up gave up trying to document all of his sexual partners. he was reported to fuck up to 3-9 times a day. He had a secret sex diary written in code. He had “official” and “unofficial” mistresses. One estimate was that he had ~200 sexual partners in two years.
Icon.
don’t forget that on the day of his funeral all the brothels in Paris were closed because every single prostitute in the whole goddamn city was busy mourning him
The thing about brothels seems to be true (even though I did not find any French mentions of that) but to be fair, everyone in Paris was “busy mourning him”… His funerals are one of the most important events in Paris that have ever happened!
Apparently there was a sort or party atmosphere around the ceremony… At one point the guy narrating says that “Victor Hugo would have liked these “devotion” acts” (meaning everyone lowkey-fucking on benches haha). But all in all, the “obsèques nationales” themselves were pretty solemn and politically important.
This video is pretty neat because of the paintings/pictures of the funerals – the coffin went through some of the most emblematic Paris streets (les Champs-Elysées, le Boulevard Saint Michel, etc) and saw impressive monuments (l’Arc de Triomphe, and of course the Panthéon, where Hugo is buried – interestingly enough, I went to see his family grave in the Père-Lachaise and it’s deceptively simple, just a tiny white stone obelisk), so even if you don’t understand French, you can take a look at it!
this graveyard is close to my grandparents home so I visited it a few times a day and every time i went there somewhere alone the way Id hear a “Mrew!!!” and he would come running to me
Maybe they lost someone special.. and that’s why they stick around at that particular place…Pick them up. Give them lots of kisses.
Victor Noir is more famous for his death and his grave than for his life. He was a journalist who was shot dead. To mark his grave, a bronze statue of the man lying down as if just shot was erected. This statue has since become something of a fertility symbol.
Due to the naturalistic style of the sculpture there is a fold in Noir’s trousers which make him appear to be aroused. Myth says that placing a flower in the top hat after kissing the statue on the lips and rubbing its genital area will enhance fertility, bring a blissful sex life, or, in some versions, a husband within the year. This is located at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris
“Honey our pregnancy test came back negative we have to go rub the statue’s dick again”
I came to visit him last summer and YES people DO touch it! One lady even asked me to take a picture for her, you can see her hand there. I found it sad there were no flowers in the hat in the pictures above so I added one. Also some people also like touching his foot, as you can see on the last picture!
If you ever come to Paris please visit our cemeteries, they are so beautiful!! You’ll find the plans on the Internet for the Père Lachaise 😉 and the guardians or locals are very friendly!
Plume de Lynx 