Thursday, September 14, 2017

Artist's Date in the Cemetery, September 13

Today I went to the cemetery for my Artist's Date.
The idea came to me last night when I went to pick up L. It was rainy this morning, and I almost changed my mind about going, but then realized that my inner romantic would LOVE to walk barefoot in the cemetery in the rain. Under an umbrella or a shawl. In a long dark skirt.

It was worthwhile. Nothing epochal, but thoughtful and good. Seeing old gravestones (18th-19th cent.) and new (the earth still raw and ruddy). Walking in the quiet solitude, but surrounded by stories. Minnie, who lived to be ~97 and was buried with her husband, who had passed on 41 years before. In the old section, lots of babies and young children, with lambs on the tops of the gravestones.
I was impressed by the number of veterans, with flags marking their graves. And struck anew with the pathos of wet, sun-bleached plastic flowers on solemn headstones.
Rebuke and denial. Manifested in Galadriel's gesture toward the East and the Eye. Our response to death, to evil?
There was a gravitas, but a sweetness, to this cemetery. I'll probably go back.
"...Up the long delirious burning blue..."




Ref. to Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring"
Quote from a poem on a cemetery monument, by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. 


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