The Dead Garden

A string of condos for the dead

Mother Mary comes to me
Weeping words of wisdom, let it be

One more glorious day to the weekend. The temps are gonna hit 90º+ today so I’ve got to get out for my ride early. Bast knows, I melt, become horrifically whiny and start demanding Martini ice cream floats when overheated. Not pretty.

Beth Carter
Dancing with Morpheus

On Saturday, I pedaled the whole way up to the cemetery just beyond Froggies. Why ride there? I'm still uncomfortable with triking on busy roads and riding on the busy summer promenade along Wollaston Beach is annoying and dodgy. Being three wheeled, I'm wider than bikes and take up more sidewalk space AND I'm speeding along. I feel like a collision waiting to happen. This being a serious non-starter.

In any case, the boneyard's nice and quiet—little to zero chance I'll knock anyone off their pins. Yea.

Despite my most def strong aversion to the idea of burial ('cept at sea) I like graveyards. They're tranquil. Sometimes there's even a few interesting (for a Dead Garden) sculptures to see such as this regal elk who reminded me of Beth Carter's Dancing with Morpheus, just seen on my Newbury Street gallery hopping expedition.

That weeping, presumably, Mother Mary above? I love the line, the sweep of the dress. That and the extreme distress. Isn't this unusual in a memorial statue? Aren't graveyard people sculptures generally all placid and somber—no dramatics? An anguished figure strikes me as way more appropriate for a lost beloved one's finally home than a cross or an urn.

If I was gonna be planted, which I'm not, I'd want some sort of neon sculpture, like Tristin Lowe's Comet: God Particle sitting atop my rotting corpse. OK, better still, one of Anthony Howe's brill kinetic pieces—About Face mebbe (begins at the one minute mark in the video). And I'd want music too. The Ride of the Valkyries or NIN's The Downward Spiral. Maybe The Queen of the Night Aria or Orff's O Fortuna?

That'd be fun! If it's not gonna be fun, I don't wanna play.

When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye 

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills
~Shakespeare, Richard II