man, i was out at the big cemetery today, and the confluence of beautifully gloomy weather and moody cloud formations made for some pulitzer prize worthy shots…
good times.
i never get used to seeing those big piles of dirt, though. the piles of dirt sit beside the open graves, into which a freshly dead body will descend. that pile of dirt always clenches at my gut, somewhere near my testicles. it is a dim clenching, only dim, for what do i care of the dead? i am not among them yet, and i won’t care when i am. but the fresh mound of dirt that i saw today, that reminded me of the real business of the cemetery. the business of the dead. the gristle and grizzle of dealing with the paying customers, and the indignities of assessing the value of the unpaid.
i remembered, too, the time i saw a vault lying out on the grass, half on the sidewalk. the vault is the metal container which containes the coffin, and the coffen is the metal container which contains the corpse. for some reason, one day, a vault was left sitting in the grass, nowhere near a pile of dirt, or near anything else, really. just a bronze-colored vessel sitting there, glowing in the afternoon sun.