cymagen

Me and a couple of friends went to the most amazing mausoleum in Sellwood,OR today! You KNOW like, The Mall of the Dead or whatever? The Portland Memorial Mausoleum. This is the place that Chuck Palahniuk set a lot of his book Survivor on. The place is just ridiculously labyrinthine and huge...and has many, many wings, rooms, aisles, booths, closets, and just about a million little nooks to explore...we kind of got lost for a while...the mausoleum has urns on display too, which is pretty uncommon in mausoleums in general (apparently). Parts of it go back two centuries!!!! It really is humbling--religion or no--seeing the adoration and love that has bestowed upon those who've passed on. And just thinking about how every person interred there must have lived--the joys, grief, triumph, etc--all summed up by a few words and the years that they lived on earth. What really got me was the section where stillborn babies were interred. Where there's just a single date listed the epitaph. It really kind of choked me up.

Chuck Palahniuk gives a good description of it somewhere in an interview he gave a while ago. Here's a good article in the Portland Tribune of him describing it.

Anyways, if you ever come to Portland, you must visit this place! Just be sure to bring some flowers so they think you're visiting a family member there, and check in at the front so they know you're not a bunch of rowdy kids out to vandalize the place or commit suicide (i guess you could still do that). Yes, people used to do this when it was open for the public.

Anyways, here are some pictures:






















^^^urns shaped like books!!! ha.











Sorry about the quality, i only had a crappy phone on me :\ . Anyways I wish I could show just how monstrous and amazing this place is!!! It made for a very fun day trip .

Anyways heres a gratuitous picture of me with all my hair gone!!! CHOP CHOP




Oh and happy Valentine's day! Someone loves you, go love them back!!! And the rest of the year too.

<33333 !