I went looking for beauty today, and I wanted to find it in unusual places. I was inspired while I waited for an exceptionally long train in the more industrial parts of Main Street, and in my boredom I noticed how beautiful the sky was just beyond a repair shop. I took a picture right before the train cleared the intersection. A little further up Main, I passed the cemetery I mentioned a few weeks ago, the one that I keep wanting to wander through. The afternoon sun was casting really pretty shadows, and I decided that today, three days before Halloween, I would give in to that impulse. I left my car at the house, put on some walking shoes, and walked out the back door to go back to the cemetery. Immediately I saw another oddly beautiful sight. The trees that are growing like weeds along the alley have burst into vivid color, and all along the ground, scattered among the trash cans, are golden brown leaves. I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed looking at trash bins so much before. (Other than perhaps the time that we stuffed three alley dumpsters ahead of our move from New Mexico, and I was just happy to lighten our load in any way I could.)
I walked as fast as I could toward the cemetery. It had clouded over a little heavier at that point, but I knew the sun would peek under once again before it set. I cut through another couple alleys on my way down, passing some graffiti murals I'd known were there from months ago. There is some seriously lovely work on the back of a strip mall, and I had to share a little of it. I kept plugging along, cutting over to walk along Main Street for a few blocks so I could cross at walk signals. I thought perhaps I'd see something else to fit my paradigm. I did not. Not only was there nothing beautiful in the blight in that stretch, even the air felt ugly. It was rush hour, and the street was completely congested, auto pollution in every cubic foot of air.
Once I made it to the entrance of the cemetery, all of my tensions melted away. I don't understand why I react that way to these places. I get so happy, so restful. I have no intention of ending up in a cemetery myself, unless I get planted au naturel under a tree as mulch. But I absolutely love wandering among headstones, as if I can hear entire life stories by the monuments left behind. I do get quite a bit from them. There was one carved in 1963 that screamed "bowling alley" as loud as it could. I saw several graves of children. It appeared a hundred years ago, it was "the thing" to use what looked like big granite core samples as markers. And then I came across a woman who was listed as "Elizabeth wife of J.C. Bailey," and that one bothered me most of all. Even in death she was only identified by her relationship to a man. I stopped short and looked at her marker, and asked out loud, "Who were you in your own right?" I wish she could have answered. I really wanted to know.
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