A trip to the cemetery.

I've always been fascinated with graveyards and cemeteries. It's not the dead that draw me, though that makes for good gags. I like how they look, and how they feel. It has to be hard, being a sloppy cemetery groundskeeper. So the scenery is well kept, usually. Around here they're usually on hills, too. Hills (like windows, doorways, arches, hollows, and tunnels) fascinate me as well: they're balanced between exit and entrance. Another aspect of burial grounds I love are the stones: I like stone all by itself, really. It looks nice and clean. I especially like simple things, with function and form mingling: so the clean lines and bare look of gravestones: those are nice. Especially very old stones. Finally, the combination appeals to me. Clean white or gray stones buried in grass, hill, and trees. And in the back of this particular place, some stones are right on the borders of what's considered the cemetery, so trees and vines drape over and bury a few stones.

Yes: "this particular place." We visited the cemetery where my patriarchal grandparents (that is, my dad's parents), are buried. The sunlight was slanting, as I'm fond of seeing (and writing: "slanting sunlight" is a nice piece of consonance). Honeysuckle wind surrounded us in that pleasant place. There are stones there that have the names wiped from them, with the dates following slowly. Shrouded in growths, they stand still, some broken, some mysterious. One broken slab, weeds and shoots growing from the cracked gaps, is perhaps the top of a crypt. Nearly six inches thick, it bars most from finding the truth.

Some of my favorite headstones I've only found there. Small for a large monument, large for a small, they rise to about chest height. Small steeples, they square nicely, and point well. A combination of everything I like about stoneworks. There was even one with an extra level of interest: still quite readable, it reveals the name and birthday of the deceased. But no deathday has been carved on. And the birthday tells us, if the monument itself isn't evidence enough, that this person is dead.

The entire trip was wonderful. Clouds were that peculiar sort of cirrus that I enjoy, making shapes with tufts and spikes and swirls. Swordfish and purple sandworms scudded the sky.