aosid's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - and so he found his way through an improbable number of eye-level branches and toe-level faults in the walk (all quite comfortably at home in the gloam) to the cemetery. he had taken great care to pick the most promising plot as a destination, a markedly large green square with a corner bitten off, ideally by some hill oblivious to the city's designs. a graveyard of any size really ought to have some relief, he decided - to force the land into some sharp suburban perpendicular to satisfy the sharp suburban plans would be to belie the circuitous paths of those who would sleep in it. but as the double-wides and cookie-cut houses sorted themselves and parted, that dull, treacherous plane was all he found. nearly all, that is - it would be unfair to omit the laminated eight-and-a-half-by-elevens with typed messages reminding people who wouldn't read them not to do awful things. there was also an unbroken grid of headstones, all clearly toeing the line between "sufficient" and "disrespectful." he did not find what he was hoping for - unusual sentimental slabs, understated little plaques for those who chose ash, soft inscriptions that only five hearts at best ever understood. really, he didn't find the resting place he knew lay one hundred and twenty miles north. so for the millionth time, he realized that there are better places to be than in some memory. and then he found them: a dormant baseball diamond (pantomimed home run), platonic ideal of a chain-link fence (muscle-memorized climb meets twice the historical body mass), and a sleepless rail yard (bemusement at the web of lines and drifting cars and only a single attendant ever visible). a familiar playground marked his way home while offering faint echoes of well-missed debauchery. a strange restless eddy of hot air somehow reminded him that the whole hubristic grid would soon be laid low by oh-so-welcome blizzards. he found something to write about: not a sweeping worldview or a bold proclamation or even an attempt at bottling some sweet evening, but something. 9:54 p.m. - 2011-09-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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