Book your Business Meetings in the Cemetery
THREADY GRIN
Are they filming here today? I’m looking at the bank of trailers parked on the street like rectangle puffballs that popped after the rain yesterday. It’s an October Sunday. Are they shooting some crappy construct for Halloween? Please tell me they aren’t in the cemetery. I need some recharge time minus the living. Dead people in the cemetery don’t talk to me.
I scout for a film crew through the corroded black bars as I walk by the trailers. None in sight. Fabulous. Looks like things are packed up, no shoot today. I celebrate inside. Walking quickly in through the gates, I’m acutely aware of how much light I have left in which to do my own shooting.LOSING LIGHT
Quiet leaf crunches underfoot. Only a few are walking the cemetery paths under overcast skies with the odd shot of sunlight streaking through. I wander with no particular direction, my intuition nudging me to point my camera here and there. My focus is on that until my batteries go dead. I crack open a new package and put them in. They aren’t working. I find a spot to sit and fiddle with it all. They must be dead. I have one more set. I think they’re new. They aren’t. I work with what I have left on them.LEAF PUDDLE
I’m almost back in the creative river flow when rain starts. I go stand on the step entrance to a mausoleum out of the wet. It’s just a shower; it won’t last. My battery isn’t recharged yet. As I watch the rain, sunlight cuts through clouds blowing golden light on sheets of raindrops. It’s one channel of light through the grey. I’m mesmerized. There’s no way to capture this with still photography. I film it with my eyes instead.RAINDROPS
As my eyes wander the raindrops, I reflect on how much time I’ve spent in this cemetery over the years. I measure the amount of time I’ve spent exploring death while I’ve lived. I see that death has always been a part of my life. My father fed our family with meat that was hunted and trapped, so death was ever present. It’s a natural part of life on earth. Best to accept the inevitable and get comfortable before it calls on me, guaranteed to transpire at some unknown point.LEAF DROPS
There isn’t much access to nature in the way I’m accustomed, within this anaconda snake of a self-entitled city. The cemetery and the ravines are all I have access to. The real deal is at least a four hour drive from the city, and even then, you can still see the lights sickeningly glow at that distance.TOMBSTONE DESK
Moments later, I hear this guy doing a face time meeting on his cell phone. When isn’t someone buried in their phone? Maybe when they’re asleep. He’s wearing shorts to his business meeting. I’m already on a direct course towards him. Turning away in another direction, I hear him speak.
“I have a notebook…(pause, shuffling noises)…I’ll write it down.”
Silence for a couple minutes.
“Okay, I wrote the measurements on a newspaper I have with me. I’ll check them when I get home.”
By this time I’m laughing to myself. I’m standing about five paces away from him. He’s completely oblivious to me. I think,why not? I take several photos of him. I might as well be invisible. This is just too funny. I’ve seen people do all kinds of things in this cemetery. A Sunday face time business meeting using a tombstone as a makeshift desk is a new one. There’s always some first. Laughter breaks through my grey clouds as I walk on, like the sunshine lighting up rain with gold light.LIGHT IN DARK
All photos taken by Nine with a Pentax digital 35mm camera and 90mm Tamron macro lens.
For those wondering why this post is muted:
galenkp chose to mute this post in retaliation, among other shady behind the scenes behaviour since I gave him the boot somewhere around two years ago. He has muted this post because I chose not to allow him to control me, give me orders, influence what I write, who to upvote, who not to upvote, whose posts to comment on, whose posts to ignore, etc.
No one controls me. I have always been and will always be captain of my own ship. Deal with it.
