Oct. 14th, 2013 12:08 pm
Doubling back
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muckefuckYesterday at midmorning, I was in the basement moping about how I was about to let another gorgeous Double Nine slip away without climbing any heights. Between laundry and a Kurosawa film, the afternoon was shot before it'd even begun. And where could I go anyway? This is Chicago, where an elevation of a couple meters is enough to get a street named "Ridge".
Then it occurred to me: Rosehill! I jumped in the shower so I'd be ready to go when the GWO left to do the Clark errands. At the bus stop, his tracking app announced we'd have 18 minutes to wait. Since the distance to the cemetery was something I could cover in 15 minutes, I didn't see any percentage in waiting, kissed my spouse goodbye, and struck out down the alley parallel to Paulina.
At first, the grounds seemed unusually empty for a Sunday morning. But a car passed, then another, and I saw that I was coming up upon a graveside service. I veered off, noting that a line of mausolea would keep me out of view as I sat on the steps at the marshy eastern edge of the central pond. I stripped off my overshirt, which had been a good idea earlier, but was now too warm for a spot in the sun.
In my bag I had pills, an apple, and two books. One of these contained a tale from Dazai Osamu that I'd been saving for this day: "The chrysanthemum spirit", a translation of 清貧譚 (lit. "A tale of honest poverty"). The title is something of a spoiler. After finishing that, I started "The mermaid and the samurai" (人魚の海) but decided to go in search of a bench.
I rounded the pond, tracing the edge of a newly-removed lane on the south side, and settled under a hawthorn tree opposite the earth-covered chapel in the middle of the grounds where I finished the second tale. The second book, which I'd brought foreseeing this eventuality, was Mishima's Thirst for love (愛の渇き). But I was perfectly content simply to sit there in the sunlight gazing out or lightly closing my eyes.
Elsewhere sugar maples are turning, but inside Rosehill virtually everything is still green. In terms of fall colours, it was a bust. The geese were gone, although their shit was still everywhere, and I could hear cicadas. It was a very summery fall day.
Eventually my attention was caught by a small woman in a sweatshirt hauling something away from a gravesite. (There was a sign near the entrance warning people to remove anything they didn't want discarded.) A bit further away, I saw two dark-haired women strolling. I decided to head off in that direction to get a better look at a brightly-coloured mass that turned out to be a clump of fake autumn foliage. Then I caught the scent of...burnt tortilla?
No, incense sticks from the spot where the two women had been. There were three groupings of them, two at graves and one at the base of a nearby tree. One of the graves also had two persimmons and a mass of deep orange sticky rice which a little research back home revealed to be xôi gấc.
At this point, I cut due south to the Jewish section, which I make a point of passing through on each visit ever since the time when I spotted a fox among the graves. No luck today (unless you're willing to count a sandy-haired old man in an Indiana sweatshirt) so I followed the wall up to the Masonic section where I found a monument for the Apollo Commandery of the Knights Templar.
At this point, I was feeling the need for some lunch and decided to head straight back to Clark. When I got there, I realised I was across the street from Gethsemane, so I popped in to use their restroom and talk to their shrubs staff. They hadn't heard of Abeliophyllum distichum (a.k.a. "white forsythia") but they did find a record of ten Kerria japonica 'Pleniflora' which had been acquired for a landscaper; if there are any left at their offsite facility, they'll call me tomorrow. As I left the beardy young thing who took my number complimented me on my "good taste".
From there, I walked back up through Edgewater Glen, stopping off at a garage sale to acquire a healthy rose-of-Sharon seedling. The woman who sold it to me (and whose charming New Orleans accent reminded me of how my Baltimore-born grandmother talked) said they were winter hardy even in pots, so I replanted it in a terracotta pot on the patio.
The Old Man and I discussed bringing the azaleas in to prevent damage to their blossoms, but in the end we decided to leave them out there. We've got some fine weather ahead of us still. Later, he made himself a Last Word, I shook a little Korean chrysanthemum wine with ice, and we toasted what he called "one of the happiest weekends of my life". I'll drink to many more like that one.
Then it occurred to me: Rosehill! I jumped in the shower so I'd be ready to go when the GWO left to do the Clark errands. At the bus stop, his tracking app announced we'd have 18 minutes to wait. Since the distance to the cemetery was something I could cover in 15 minutes, I didn't see any percentage in waiting, kissed my spouse goodbye, and struck out down the alley parallel to Paulina.
At first, the grounds seemed unusually empty for a Sunday morning. But a car passed, then another, and I saw that I was coming up upon a graveside service. I veered off, noting that a line of mausolea would keep me out of view as I sat on the steps at the marshy eastern edge of the central pond. I stripped off my overshirt, which had been a good idea earlier, but was now too warm for a spot in the sun.
In my bag I had pills, an apple, and two books. One of these contained a tale from Dazai Osamu that I'd been saving for this day: "The chrysanthemum spirit", a translation of 清貧譚 (lit. "A tale of honest poverty"). The title is something of a spoiler. After finishing that, I started "The mermaid and the samurai" (人魚の海) but decided to go in search of a bench.
I rounded the pond, tracing the edge of a newly-removed lane on the south side, and settled under a hawthorn tree opposite the earth-covered chapel in the middle of the grounds where I finished the second tale. The second book, which I'd brought foreseeing this eventuality, was Mishima's Thirst for love (愛の渇き). But I was perfectly content simply to sit there in the sunlight gazing out or lightly closing my eyes.
Elsewhere sugar maples are turning, but inside Rosehill virtually everything is still green. In terms of fall colours, it was a bust. The geese were gone, although their shit was still everywhere, and I could hear cicadas. It was a very summery fall day.
Eventually my attention was caught by a small woman in a sweatshirt hauling something away from a gravesite. (There was a sign near the entrance warning people to remove anything they didn't want discarded.) A bit further away, I saw two dark-haired women strolling. I decided to head off in that direction to get a better look at a brightly-coloured mass that turned out to be a clump of fake autumn foliage. Then I caught the scent of...burnt tortilla?
No, incense sticks from the spot where the two women had been. There were three groupings of them, two at graves and one at the base of a nearby tree. One of the graves also had two persimmons and a mass of deep orange sticky rice which a little research back home revealed to be xôi gấc.
At this point, I cut due south to the Jewish section, which I make a point of passing through on each visit ever since the time when I spotted a fox among the graves. No luck today (unless you're willing to count a sandy-haired old man in an Indiana sweatshirt) so I followed the wall up to the Masonic section where I found a monument for the Apollo Commandery of the Knights Templar.
At this point, I was feeling the need for some lunch and decided to head straight back to Clark. When I got there, I realised I was across the street from Gethsemane, so I popped in to use their restroom and talk to their shrubs staff. They hadn't heard of Abeliophyllum distichum (a.k.a. "white forsythia") but they did find a record of ten Kerria japonica 'Pleniflora' which had been acquired for a landscaper; if there are any left at their offsite facility, they'll call me tomorrow. As I left the beardy young thing who took my number complimented me on my "good taste".
From there, I walked back up through Edgewater Glen, stopping off at a garage sale to acquire a healthy rose-of-Sharon seedling. The woman who sold it to me (and whose charming New Orleans accent reminded me of how my Baltimore-born grandmother talked) said they were winter hardy even in pots, so I replanted it in a terracotta pot on the patio.
The Old Man and I discussed bringing the azaleas in to prevent damage to their blossoms, but in the end we decided to leave them out there. We've got some fine weather ahead of us still. Later, he made himself a Last Word, I shook a little Korean chrysanthemum wine with ice, and we toasted what he called "one of the happiest weekends of my life". I'll drink to many more like that one.