My dreams have been getting at me.
This morning before I was actually awake yet already moving, Roxy came into my room and put her arms around me. I hadn't realized that I'd been crying in the shower, crying while I dried my hair, crying naked down the hallway fetching my clothes. I knew I felt sad, but the me who feels and the me who's nose runs and lips get trembly are disjointed entities a lot of the time.
In my dreams I consider outcomes. All night long I think about every action I could possibly take and all the ways those choices could turn out. I could, instead of going to school, maliciously attack a stranger and go to jail.
All night long, I consider every terrible, boring, desperate and outlandish thing. I could catch a 2am bus to SanFran and call Tiny from the bus station. I'll get a job at a hot dog stand and not tell anyone where I went. Tiny will let me hide under the bed for as long as I want and she'll feed me french fries with ranch dressing.
But the outlandish and terrible are never the things that make me cry. I suspect that what's got me upset are my ACTUAL life options. I suspect that considering every possible outcome in my near future has got me feeling a little trapped between a barbed wire fence and bramble of poison ivy. I can see beyond all the choices to what they get me, but I damned well don't want a rash OR to get cut all to hell.
Roxy was also feeling a little melancholy this morning. After I got home from school and did my homework, Rox suggested that we do something to brighten our spirits.
I suggested that we go to the cemetery to take rubbings of beautiful headstones.
I like cemeteries. They're filled with good sentiments and gestures of tremendous love. gone but not forgotten. They mark out lifetimes from start date to end date. here lies a kind hearted woodsman They collect entire families together and hold space for those who've not passed yet. farewell dear, but not forever.
I took a rubbing of Margaret's flowers. Alfred's dove. Howard's Grieve Thee Not...I Sing.
Roxy made poetry, and took a rubbing of an entire stone, mother and daughter side by side. She said that she'd felt freaked out by walking on the dead before, but felt okay today.
I think that acknowledging the dead and taking note of what their families have to say about them in such a permanent way helps me to remember that life isn't about much more than the people you love and the people who love you. Poison and barbed wire notwithstanding.
I used to spend a lot of time in that cemetery. I had favorite headstones. Favorite monuments and names that I liked.
There was one in particular for a girl who had been, I think, about 11 when she died. She was only a few years younger than me when I started going there, and her parents used to leave big extravagant things around her headstone on birthdays and kid-holidays like Halloween; stickers on the headstone and toys and stuff. Years passed. I went to college and came back, and at some point the parents stopped coming. The stickers faded, then peeled off and left little spots where dirt and grass cuttings stuck to the old glue.
Her name was Jasmine. When I was about 20 I used to write science fiction stories in my head about time-travelling back and saving her.
You probably already know this, but the oldest graves in that cemetery were moved there from downtown, to make room for Denny Park.
Posted by: Joshua at May 2, 2005 06:41 PMbeautiful. I like cemetaries too.
Posted by: Wow at May 3, 2005 08:53 AMi had a great american studies professor who took us to an old cemetery. we wrote papers about the rubbings for our final. he was a such a good guy.
Posted by: louella at May 3, 2005 12:22 PM"so we go inside and we gravely read the stones, all those people all those lives where are they now?..."
if you're even in London then visit the cemetary in Barnes, and take simple sandwiches wrapped well in greased paper. ingredients for a beautifully sad day.
Posted by: ian at May 7, 2005 07:46 AM