sepulchral sychronicity

[muckefuck]

I was glad I did it, but my cemetery trip didn't really turn out as planned. Thanks to all the sousing at the sushi house, I slept in and got a very late start. The air was warm, but the sky was overcast; Monshu thought the front that had been promised for Sunday was coming in "early". (That is to say, it was coming in right on time and shame on me for treating meteorological estimates of its time of arrival as anything other than sheer guesswork.)

It was surprisingly warm and humid, in fact, and I wasn't disappointed at the lack of sun. I ate a few slices of bread and got going, arriving at the east entrance to Rosehill in the early afternoon. I paused among the Union solider graves the read the names, still breathtakingly legible despite the years. The one that really stood out was "Napoleon McClintock". Suddenly, some of the character names I'd come across didn't seem quite so far-fetched.

I made my way to the goose pond and sat there quietly for a while. It was wonderful; only after I got up and started moving again did I realise that mundane concerns had floated totally out of my head for forty minutes or more. By then, the weather was starting to look threatening and I tried to think of places to take shelter in case of a squall. I steered clear of the old chapel, which seemed to be the site of a service, and made my goal the gazebo in the Korean section.

I was closing in on it--I forget how large the place is--when the large drops began to fall. I sought the most sheltering tree in sight, a large mulberry. The wind was blowing rain at a steep angle, so I kept the trunk between me and it. I had expected a brief downpour like the one that caught me out the previous Sunday, but it never materialised. So I reconsidered making it to the gazebo. As I remembered it, the sides were open and, with a blowing rain, I might get wet even there. But if I didn't, it would be a great place to sit and read for a while.

So I dashed past the new chapel complex and around the pond. On the south side was a small block of low walls that I didn't remember from my last trip. They demarcated small plots with smooth granite benches and blank headstones. Not a one was occupied. I made it to the other side of them, dashed up the slope, and sat down inside the Palkakceng or "Eight-sided pavillion" without getting substantially damper.

But the rain couldn't decide to rain. It would speed up, never quite reach downpour, and soon drop back to a drizzle again. It sank in that this was likely to continue indefinitely and it was already darkening, so I made my way back down the slope to the western entrance and caught a bus. A few stops later, I changed to a packed eastbound bus that took far too long to make it to Monshu's neighbourhood. But once there, I hied it to his apartment.

He was busily working on his laptop at the dining table; the day's mail was lying at his left. "That came for you," he said as I picked up a mailing from Rosehill on the top of the stack. It was an ad for their "Premium Burial Plots" and featured an illustration of the empty Schrebergräble I'd walked through barely an hour earlier. When I told him that, he reached into the stack and saying, "I meant this one," handed me the notice of an apartment for sale in his building

Comments

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

You saw a *gazebo*? And you didn't attack it? What kind of D&D player are you, anyway?

But seriously, good luck in the (non-cemetery) real estate search. Are you just interested in a unit in Monshu's building, or are you looking in other places, too?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I was alone! I didn't have my +3 blade of vorpal circumcision! There were girls there and I wanted to do them!

I'm starting out in that neighbourhood, which seems to fulfil most of my criteria: Proximity to him, to the el, and to places I want to go (like restaurants, beaches, and parks/cemetaries). I know there are better deals to be had further west, but I hate taking crosstown busses. I know intellectually that every minute that slips by is one that you'll never get back, but only on a crosstown bus do I really feel the reality of that statement.

[o-nut.livejournal.com]

I think I heard there are cemetery tours of Graceland and perhaps Rosehill. I seem to recall that the Chicago Architecture Foundation organizes them. Also, my boss just went to a cemetery tour in Forest Park. It was organized by the Oak Park/River Forest Historical Society and included various actors playing the dead. She said it was really good. They only run in October.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Me and tours don't get along so good. I tend to get impatient and want to run off on my own, or to get answers to odd questions that the others on the tour don't want to hear. It's too bad I never went on any of the ones organised by Graceland's full-time historian, when they still had one.