Oftentimes, you can find me wandering around local cemeteries with rose petals in one pocket and sage in the other during evening hours. An unusual assortment, of course. People give flowers to the dead, roses in particular, because Pluto lured Persephone into the underworld by holding out a rose. I carry sage, because it is a cleanser...the spiritual equivalent of Ajax, if you will. I carry both with kind intentions and to convey a meaning.
I always feel rather sleepy in cemeteries. I remember one dreary evening, I was creeping about on my hands and knees trying to read stones. I recall that the stones were warm.. This is indeed odd, and virtually impossible to explain how one feels touching a granite slab, silky and as warm as a living thing in the cold dark. I remember stopping and curling up on the grave of a very young man. I remember lying on that grave as if it were my bed. Pretending to be dead and folding my arms over me, I thought about being this young man in an old box underground-- not a modern concrete atrocity, but an old one made of wood. There were worms making soft sounds inside of me, replacing the beating of my heart. I smelled the soil very heavily. After a short while, it became a bit too much to handle. I became a vehement mess and I soon caught myself weeping over the grave, as if I were weeping for my lost love who had been murdered terribly. I whispered to him softly and sweetly that night and left a rose petal on the edge of his stone.
There's something very rapturous about walking through the cemetery in the evening or at night in the dark. The dark seems much softer. Perhaps it's because light tends to show us all angles and busy pain. One can sit fearlessly in a tall tree in the dark, where in the light it would be rather dangerous and phobic. |
