2013-06-12
fl�neurs du fantasme
we're going to europe! last time i went there was over four years ago, but i don't think i would have imagined i would be going back so soon. i don't honestly remember london very well. the streets were very confusing since they weren't in a grid pattern. lots of diagonals and roundabouts.
i most remember visiting the cemeteries by myself (see below). i also remember feeling kind of lonely in london, like i wanted someone to share it with, and no one in the program would do. this time, it seems, will be different.
i think we are just going to spend most of our time walking around, semi-aimlessly. that's what we do here, except for that when we do it here, we always know exactly where we are relative to everything else. i've been studying some of the city maps, but it seems a bit foolish, kind of like reading a dance manual (are there such things?) and then performing the steps onstage for the first time. walking is a very simple, low-pressure way to take things in.
besides this event (well, series of events, given that it spans seven different cities), things are relatively unremarkable. my sister seems happy. my brother is sad. i'm sitting in my living room looking at a shelf that displays some record sleeves. melody's echo chamber, such a great band. maybe i'll listen to that now. i'm also going to go for a walk later, maybe buy a weird-flavored cupcake, because it's only eighty degrees out and i need some fresh air. i've been feeling kind of tepid all week. maybe i'm saving up my energy and enthusiasm reserves for the next two weeks (Paris! Parisian macaroons! a river boat in Amsterdam! kissing on a footbridge in Venice!), at least i hope so. i am so sick of work, that might be part of why i feel this way. research can be so tedious sometimes, and you can get so bored of the questions you're asking, even if they are inherently interesting, the daily drudgery of trying to answer them is not. this paragraph is so navel-gazey. i'm done with it.
i'm not expecting to have any revelations (of the philosophical, poetic, or romantic nature) during our trip, but if i do, i hope to eventually post them here.
I headed to London�s northern outskirts to find Highgate Cemetery. I passed through Waterlow Park on my way there, which had abundant patches of stroller-pushing moms and cell phone talkers being walked by their overeager dogs. Traversing the landscape, I arrived at the exit onto Swain�s Lane. On one side of the road was a Tudor-style arched gateway with two mortuary chapels on each side. I approached the gateway to enter, but it was locked and labeled as open for guided tours only.
According to the posted sign, this was Highgate West Cemetery, the older of two neighboring cemeteries, both named Highgate. They are located on a wooded acropolis at the base of St. Michael�s Church four miles north of London and are separated by Swains Lane. Highgate West opened in 1839, when Parliament sought to combat overpopulated urban gravesites by opening private cemeteries that surrounded the periphery of inner London.
Highgate�s plots sold rapidly, as it proved an immensely popular resting place amongst members of London�s elite. It had to be extended to the other side of Swain�s Lane in 1854, to the additional site of Highgate East Cemetery. I turned to the other side of Swain�s Lane to face Highgate East. Through the rods I could make out grids of gravestones in the distance. With an open gate and a sign that labeled it as the resting site of Karl Marx, this half of the cemetery was open for me to roam.
Upon entering Highgate East, the atmosphere was a placid and mellow green. Everywhere I looked, tomb stones crookedly poked out of the lawn, and tall oak trees branched out and with their roots trickling over the rows of graves. Ivy and moss covered the space, and everything was serenely colored lime, jade and emerald. Before me there was a paved walkway, which I guessed would lead to Marx�s grave. While I wanted to see it, I decided to first wander along the less-beaten trails and mosey through the cluttered labyrinth of tombstones.
My muddy, rarely trafficked path meandered through the tombs, curving around half-buried grave markers and headstones swallowed up by vines and ivy branches. As the trees became more dominant, my path ended abruptly. I looked around, carefully scanning for the best way out besides turning back. It was like I was playing an inverted childhood game of �The Floor is Made of Lava,� where the goal was to step on the ground and not all the scattered gravesites. But it was inevitable, my foot had to land on some stones while I hesitantly crossed the overpopulated earth floor. �Sorry!� I hissed downward to Mary Percival Fripp, whose cracked stone head I had used as a leap pad. Next I grimaced while quickly walking over James William Harrison, Born May 1, 1830, Died May 15, 1922.
I was stuck in a sea of graves. It seemed impossible to find a good course out to the main path as I wincingly hopped my way through. Each grave I used as a stepping stone made me feel like a highly irreverent human being. I don�t know if this sort of superstition of stepping on grave sites sounds silly to anyone, because cemetery etiquette is rarely dinnertime conversation. But ever since I was a kid, I�ve thought it was extremely taboo to step over a grave, even if it�s only the green space in front of the tombstone. I don�t remember if that was taught to me or if I created my own na�ve ritual. I knew I was right in erring on the side of respect for the dead, but I realized that I probably sounded silly, whispering my remorse down to these unknown, half buried headstones.
But graves mark a deep presence for me, one that even warrants apologizing to marble and granite. I�ve always been fascinated by the immediacy of a grave, the thought that right there, six feet below the surface at that very spot, there is the person whose name is carved in stone, and there they will stay for the rest of eternity. Sentience has left them, consciousness has perished and the body decayed, but there still remains a comprehensibly physical trace of them. Even if only represented by their bones, they are still palpably with you at that grave space as you visit it.
And then here I was, so close to these bodies and their traces of faded vitality. I softly hopped my way out, and I fumbled by way out of the scattered graves and came to a large opening at the curve of the main walkway. There, upon a seven-foot-tall marble block, was the gigantic bearded head of Karl Marx, larger than life. �WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE,� read the stone, engraved in gold letters. Marx is often called the creator of Communism, and he is considered one of the three great founders of modern thought, his influence on the Western world matched only by the likes of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. At Marx�s funeral, Friedrich Engels spoke in the eulogy: �His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.�
After admiring the size of Marx�s gravesite and the lengthy epithet about his philosophies, I decided to stay on the walkway and explore the more recent graves. The plots of people buried in the past few decades line the outskirts of the lawns around pathways, while the more ancient tombstones degrade in the middle. One tombstone along the path caught my attention because it seemed so plain compared to the tall obelisks and brooding angel statues that surrounded it. This grave marker was a smooth, rectangular stone wedge simply engraved: �Douglas Adams, writer, 1952-2001.� On top of the stone, there were eleven little rocks of all different shapes, colors, and sizes. These rocks balanced gently on the slab�s upper edge, lining it from one end to the other. Each one of those must have been carefully placed on top of the tombstone, one at a time.
Some shorter headstones were completely engulfed in ivy, so surrounded by shrubbery that they merely looked like large misshapen lumps of leaves. Mossy green and grey stone crosses lay in shambles, vines slithering across their edges. It was a jumbled confusion of plants, gravestones, and trees. Highgate Cemetery is considered by the City of London to be a Grade II, �natural woodland park,� to be kept in a state of �managed neglect.� I marveled at the cluttered magnificence of the enveloping leaves and snuggly wrapping vines. Nature was physically embracing the tombs, and its care for them seemed far from �neglect.�
Branches coiled around the tombstone edges and tightly hugged the curves and corners of each stone, swallowing the grave markers into the earth. Nature was keeping those stones; the terrain itself was tending to the forgotten graves. When no one else was left to care for them, the earth took up the task of maintaining the century-old stones by enclosing them within its gentle green folds. Long ago the corpses invisibly rotted below, yet the encasing plants are fresh and ripe. A sense of life, of enduring vitality, softly pulsed through the spreading roots and vibrant greenery.
This glorious decay is the common fate that we all share.
After we inevitably die and if we choose to be buried, someday there will be nobody left that cares to make the trip to visit our gravesite, no one still alive to fondly groom our grave and lay flowers upon our tombstone, or to mumble their secret thoughts down upon the earth where we eternally rest.
Our only visitor may be some unknown girl escaping the buzz of the city by ambling through our resting site, seeking solitude amongst our ancient dust and mossy grime.
leesah-likes at 1:38 p.m.