Friday, February 24th, 2012 - 12:53 PM - 52 degrees - gusty and raining
Today, I look closer at the land of Homewood. After my last visit, in which I walked much of the cemetery paths in overview, I want to focus on something smaller.
I am surrounded by hills and curves. I like this land because it appeals to my love of unconventional lines-- I don't like angles and straight, flat shapes. I prefer movement in shapes, and this land certainly has it. The hills roll, undulate around me, drop and rise beneath my feet. Even the man-made roadways wind.
Grave markers are placed perpendicular to the flat horizon we imagine the sky must have, but the perspective of these hills makes them appear slanted. Some truly are slanted, and others have fallen over as the surface beneath them has eroded.
The trees mimic these stones (or is it vice versa?) and stand at strange angles to the surface of the earth. I imagine how their roots, like the bodies of the deceased, must plunge deeper into the hillsides that rise to one side, shallower as the land falls away on the slant below them. Are the graves dug to be flat, accounting for the angle of the land? If so, the head of the graves would be covered with more dirt than the feet. Or are these bodies lying at a slant, too, ready to slide down the hills? I wonder how we humans must change the way we manipulate the land in even a graveyard to account for these things.
There is much to learn about this land, what lies below the grassy surfaces, in the cracks between and beneath gravestones. I find that there are layers of roots and chocolate-colored dirt below the moss and dead leaves. The dirt is hard-packed, similar to the red South Carolina clay I dug my fingernails into when I was a child. It is also packed into rocks of various sizes, as if someone had rolled them, wet and muddy, and let the sky bake them into shape. I don't know how much of this is natural, though, since the ground here has obviously been worked over and over for decades. How much of this dirt has been brought here for filler and topper? I wonder when I also see that some of the mud is black and fine, rich like peat, and other is sandy, grainy and pale. How much can I know of the veracity of this land when the human imprint upon it is clear?
In the distance down a muddy lane of tire prints, I see some fencing, chairs set next to a tree. There are no graves that way, leafless woods on one side, a green field to the other that I know must be waiting for more death in order to become useful. I trek towards the fenced area, wondering if the path I walk is set to become a road when this area becomes harvested. It is flat here, too, unlike the majority of the cemetery. Is this even Homewood's property? I know Frick Park extends from across Forbes Avenue and meanders alongside this end of Homewood.
I find deer prints in the ruts left by trucks and marvel at the symbolism-- animal/city coexistence that amazes me, as I've written about before. This time, my picture turns out, and I like the way I could follow the prints and find where the deer have gone. I almost take that detour, but the call of the fences is growing.
I reach what seems to be an abandoned network of gardens. Fences are down, gardening tools are strewn about, and nothing seems to be growing. The sites are fenced in, creating square after square, each in proportion to the rest. There are paths down and across the grid to allow access to the sites in the middle. Despite the precision of the layout, the area is unkempt and unsightly. It reminds me of the backyards I've seen in trailer parks across the south. I have no idea what this place is.
I've never felt the eeriness I've heard associated with cemeteries in Homewood until now. I catch myself looking over my shoulder into the distance grayed by rain as if expecting someone or some animal to emerge. This place embodies a new decay, the decay of human leftovers, perhaps even the decay of human interest. This is what we leave in our wake when we decide not to clean up after ourselves, I think.
Maybe it marks the decay of my comfort, too, because I find that it's gone. I attempt to take a picture of a children's lonesome plastic rake through the holes in a fence. My camera chooses that moment to malfunction-- it just won't take the picture. It does not freeze (when I move the camera, the image on screen moves with it). It does not shut off. It looks like it wants to take the picture (when I press the button, the screen changes in the usual way that it does when capturing an image). And yet, it does not actually take the picture. I turn the camera onto a window shutter that is resting on two metal sawhorses-- what was needed with a window shutter in a garden, I do not know. But the camera screen fades to bright white, the slowly the image returns. I try to take the picture of the shutter; again, the camera does not do it. I turn it off then back on, try it again, and there it goes-- it works!
I'm not superstitious, and I have no idea if I believe in ghosts. But I am human, and odd occurrences in creepy abandoned places certainly fuel my imagination. I know there's some explanation for what happened since I am just learning this camera D. let me borrow. But I decide not to stick around and leave the cemetery for the day. I may be goth, but even I get scared!
Later, I call Homewood's administration office and ask the lady on the phone about the area I visited. She said that it's the Homewood community garden, which provides a 20-foot by 20-foot gardening plot to urban families. It has a long waiting list, she said, and directs me to the website. I find that the website has not been updated since 2010, when 120 people were on the waiting list for a small plot to grow fresh plants. I realize that the plots probably haven't been kept up because of the winter season. Still, it's hard for my mind to make the leap from the creepy, abandoned area I witnessed to a fruitful, vibrant community of gardens and gardeners. I'll be interested to see if they are in use later this year!
