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I Am A Morbid Fuck Sometimes before/after
Okay. So I'm a morbid fuck.
I'm all right with that. And the people who love me either like it or accept it.
I have no rock solid rationale for it. It just is.
Yesterday after work I hung out in Fairmont Cemetary for a little bit. A little drive and a walk. Some mind-bending sensimilla.
Just a half an hour. I don't go for less, and never usually stay much more than an hour or an hour and a half.
It relaxes me, and helps me get a good perspective on life.
I really don't feel odd, or bad about it, except for when people corner me and I tell them where I was. Their reaction and expression is the only thing that causes me to doubt my little morbid fascination.
I got a friend once to go with me once, to try to understand. It was Halloween. We hung out and smoked reefer for about an hour and a half around midnight. I was hoping to see ghosts, or something supernatural. I saw no ghosts. The place seemed empty spiritually. It was Halloween, they were probably out kickin' it, getting their spook on.
I remember years back when I first started to go to cemetaries. I told my folks, and they were a mixed bag of shock, concern, and letting me do my own thing.
I love crypts. I like wandering among the tombstones. I can't explain it.
I ponder my mortality, the meaning of life, as I am wont to do. I read the tombstones, sit on the stone carved benches, and admire the crypts, look for statues. One will catch my attention, and I'll amble over to it.
I try to put together the many stories of the residents.
And I chill. Its good to be alone.
In a metropolitan area, sometimes its tough to be outside and alone. When I would go on Family Therapy trips to Detroit, sometimes to beat traffic, get a little quiet and some perspective, I would stop at some of the old cemetaries in the city.
I would sit on a bench or whatever, and just quietly think. Look for names.
And the phone would ring. Some juvenile delinquent's parents either re-scheduling, or inviting me early.
I'd chat. Talk about their kid. All upbeat and everything, getting ready to go tango with fucked up parents.
"Uh-huh...I'll be right there. I'm about five minutes out. Where am I? Oh...(pause)...just around the corner."
Its the safest place in the hood. Plus I always had tons of time to kill.
And when I wandered a lot, on my roaming tour of numbness in college, to get a good lay of whatever backwater podunk town I found myself, I'd always scope a couple of things. To get a feel for a town, see the city park, the courthouse, and as always, the cemetary. You will know what's up.
I saw and visited a lot of cemetaries in that time. No regrets. I got a song out of an inscription on a seveteen year old girl's monument. It was a marble sculpture of a woman in flowing gown casting off chains. Her dad was Alonzo Abscomb. I think her name was Alyssa or Alice or something.
On his daughter's monument? "Again we shall meet, in the sweet, bye-and-bye."
Quite touching.
If you're going to have a headstone, have it inscribed with something original. It will make me, and the others like me which must surely exist somewhere, do a little thinking.
There's a lot of inscriptions in Fairmont. A lot beautiful crypts, too. Some with truly striking architecture and elegant stained glass.
One inscription stuck. It was from this mammoth headstone, with tributes from various organizations to which this pioneer belonged. It said, "Its not the fact that you're dead, but only how you died."
Wow. You died at the tender age of 46, bud. Hope you died well.
I'm not really sure what I'm looking for when I go there, other than what I've listed. And I'm not sure what I get out of it.
But I'm okay with it. I just don't talk about it.
I'm a morbid fuck, and I like it.
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