Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris

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I recently saw a documentary film directed by the director Gay Dillingham about Timothy Leary and Ram Dass called Dying to Know, followed by a question and answer session where we talked about Life, Psychology, Psychedelic drugs, and Death.  The film really shows how people can foray in to the realm of experiencing death, in order to prepare for this most profound and absolute of transitions.  It is the Spirit that makes the journey, and perhaps the most important thing we can do in our lifetimes is to prepare for departure.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUPpypqWNgM

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Today, Friday November 13 there were a series of attacks on civilians in the magical city of Paris.  Without delving in to the horror, which followed suicide bombings in Beirut this week, and blasts at a peace rally in Ankara, Turkey a month ago, there seems to be a desire for people to inflict great pain on others to remedy some great injustice.  There is endless strife and conflict all over the world, and the media brings it all in to our conciousness.  I feel very sad that kindness just doesn't come naturally for so many people.  We violate each other, often out of revenge, or simply because of the power of the military industrial complex exerting its desire for profit.  We've been warring since the dawn of civilization, expediating death for tens of millions of people.  If you study the history of Paris, it is one marked by a history of tragedy, littered with death.  But the way we view death is an everchanging concept.  From experience I've learned to accept it, in part to pad the shock.  My Earthly body will end up in an urn someday and hopefully be sprinkled about the world in places I have loved in my life of travel.  As for my soul, I'm working to make sure its ready.

Bare trees framed in a broken stained glass window

They say the mind lingers for almost an hour after the body dies, transitioning to another realm, whatever that may be.

While mourning the shootings and bombings in Paris this evening I went back in to my picture files to a gallery of images I took at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in December of 2012, on my first trip to the French capital.  This was the first municipal and first garden cemetery in the city.  It was established by Napoleon in 1804.  Napoleon decreed that cemeteries be built in cities throughout his empire for health reasons as the old city cemeteries filled up.  During plagues and epidemics the bodies of the dead were often piled in public squares for lack of a place to put them.  These cemeteries outside the cities greatly reduced the outbreak of epidemics.

City of the Dead

A lavish bouquet carved in marble

Being a garden cemetery gives Père Lachaice the look of a village of the dead in a forest.  It is extraordinary for its ambience and monumental architecture, making it one of the greatest cemeteries in the world.  It seemed poignant today to revisit this touchingly macabre landscape, with its depictions of life lost and taken away.  While there is an overlying sadness, sorrow cohabitates with strange beauty and profound peace.

There are more than 1,000,000 bodies buried here, and thousands more in the Columbarium, where ashes are interred.

Here lies a gallery of my favorite images from that afternoon at Père Lachaise.

The grave of French painter Thèodore Gèricault

The gates of Sorrow

City of the Dead

French sculptor Jean Joseph Carriès

Moss Roses

The Belgian writer and poet Georges Rodenbach, breaking out of his grave

Grief

Reaching

Jim Morrison's grave

A mossy cross

The Columbarian

A new arrival

Holocast Memorial

Holocaust Memorial

Porcelain Pansies are a popular tradition

Bird in a Cherry Tree growing from a rock

Gibert Becaud

Monument to the Dead by sculptor Bartholomeè

The stained glass window inside the above crypt

The grave of Oscar Wilde

Communing with the departed

Thanks for reading, Rest in Peace, Jeffrey

A mosaic I built several years ago…what the World needs now

The Halls Hill Labyrinth Essay Collection

I recently returned to Bainbridge Island to visit the Labyrinth I completed in May of 2014.  It was my first time back since the dedication ceremony last June.  An attractive wood box containing laminated fliers describing the meaning of the Labyrinth has replaced the interpretive sign that was there when I was working on the project.  Most of the horse shoes from the stables across the road were gone although a couple had been moved to the hole in the center where offerings are placed.

 It was a wonderful experience to see how this magical space has fared over the past year, beautifully maintained and brimming with the accumulated energy of the thousands of people who have walked it in my absence.  I came with two friends from Portland who had never seen it except in pictures.  One of them, my dear friend Eric Slade, came to film the space as part of a story he is making for Oregon Public Broadcasting's show Oregon Art Beat on my work as an artist.
https://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/pebble-mosaic-artist-jeffrey-bale/

Eric Slade filming the offerings in the center of the Labyrinth

People came to walk the Labyrinth while we were there and I had some engaging conversations.  There is a small photo of me from the dedication on the fliers in the box and people would look at me and the picture and make the connection that we were one and the same person.

Visitors walking the Labyrinth

Conversations always delve in to the meanings incorporated in to the design, the 12 moons on the outside ring, the 108 stones in the 10th circuit forming a Tibetan Mala, and the 9 circuits representing the planets in our solar system.  Some people followed the process on my blog as I posted essays after the completion of each circuit while I was working.  I suggested to those who haven't read them to do so as the texts and photos give a much better understanding of what you are walking on as you go around and around the concentric circular paths.

But finding the essays in a chronological order is not all that easy the way the blog site is organized, so I've decided it would be a good idea to list the links to the essays here as a list so that you can click on the links and go from the beginning to the end as they are meant to be read.  So here it is:

1. The Labyrinth Project, the beginning
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-labyrinth-project-beginning.html

2. The Halls Hill Labyrinth Project: The Mala Circuit
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-halls-hill-labyrinth-project-mala.html

3. The Halls Hill Labyrinth: Pluto and the Four Elements
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-halls-hill-labyrinth-pluto-and-four.html

4. Halls Hill Labyrinth: The Neptune Circuit
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013/10/halls-hill-labyrinth-neptune-circuit.html

5. The Halls Hill Labyrinth, the 7th Circuit, Uranus, God of the Sky
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-7th-circuit-uranus-god-of-sky.html

6. The Halls Hill Labyrinth, the 6th Circuit, The Rings of Saturn
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-6th-circuit-rings-of-saturn.html

7. The Apollon Beach Mosaics, Greece
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-apollon-beach-mosaics-greece.html

8. The Minoan Labyrinth
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-minoan-labyrinth.html

9. The Halls Hill Labyrinth, Jupiter
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-halls-hill-labyrinth-jupiter.html

10. The Halls Hill Labyrinth, The Fourth Circuit, Mars
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-halls-hill-labyrinth-third-circuit.html

11. The 3rd Circuit, Earth, the Community Circuit
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-3rd-circuit-earth-community-circuit.html

12.  The Halls Hill Labyrinth, The 2nd Circuit, Venus, Love
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-halls-hill-labyrinth-2nd-circuit.html

13. The Halls Hill Labyrinth, The First Circuit, Mercury
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-first-circuit-mercury.html

14. The Halls Hill Labyrinth, The Sun
http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-halls-hill-labyrinth-sun.html

A red flower in the Summer quadrant of the 11th Circuit

Filming requires repeating shots over and over until the desired look is captured.  Eric filmed me walking barefoot, back and forth on different sections depending on the light for hours.  I could feel the warmth of the sun on the black rocks in the autumnal quarter of the circle as I tred on them as opposed to the coolness of the lighter colors.  I really noticed how different the level of connection is when you walk it barefoot rather than in shoes.

The opening in the center of the Labyrinth contains offerings left by a number of people

I was flooded with memories thinking back to the times I spent on each section, the many flowers dedicated to people who rang the Prayer Wheel, the stones I brought back from Greece, and the beauty of the place where I was fortunate enough to spend over 3 months working on this beautiful project.  From what people told me while I was there, the place has brought peace and solice and introspection to the many people who have walked it, as was intended.  I love that!

Thanks for reading, and if you have time, read the essays from start to finish.  They're pretty interesting.
XO, Jeffrey

Dappled Autumnal light on the Labyrinth

Blakely Harbour, Bainbridge Island, Washington