anamnesis forgotten
Where angels fade
Not every but most Tuesdays take me down Lisenby Avenue bordering Greenwood Cemetery and I turn in and drive all the way to the north end to visit, ain’t nobody’s business but my own. In the area between 15th Street & 23rd Street -- 17th and the railroad track actually -- Greenwood is an alone if not lonely, quiet place to stop for a bit of peace. Remember. Think. Fume. Converse: monolog, nobody’s home, I saw that before we left Wilson’s. Wonder. Am I the only consciousness here? Wander. Be fine if there were park benches, but maybe that would attract picnickers leaving trash behind. Yesterday was interesting.
Not every but most Tuesdays take me down Lisenby Avenue bordering Greenwood Cemetery and I turn in and drive all the way to the north end to visit, ain’t nobody’s business but my own. In the area between 15th Street & 23rd Street -- 17th and the railroad track actually -- Greenwood is an alone if not lonely, quiet place to stop for a bit of peace. Remember. Think. Fume. Converse: monolog, nobody’s home, I saw that before we left Wilson’s. Wonder. Am I the only consciousness here? Wander. Be fine if there were park benches, but maybe that would attract picnickers leaving trash behind. Yesterday was interesting.
Lots of folks like to wander old cemeteries, I first did those Christmas and Mothers Day afternoons in the late forties and early fifties when my family would visit St. John's Cemetery in Pensacola after my grandmother died, and I go still. And years then later and now ago in Pennsylvania, across the Susquehanna from Harrisburg, a long overgrown, neglected and forgotten graveyard on a hillside near a hospital where I made pastoral calls. Tombstones from the seventeen-hundreds into the eighteen-hundreds. That cemetery was also near a restaurant that, when we first arrived there in 1976, had a Sunday brunch buffet and the centerpiece was an iced basin with two enormous bowls of caviar, one red, one black, and you helped yourself: caviar is not cheap, I certainly hope I’m not the one who put them out of business. Evidently, wandering is my state of being, mental or physical, this was about old cemeteries, wasn’t it, not caviar.
But so yesterday was interesting. In the new generation my family are cremated and the ashes (don’t say “cremains” to me, I cannot stand undertakerspeak) spread as priorly asked by the now deceased, mine are going several places if my wishes are honored, ain’t nobody’s business but my own, Linda knows where. Ashes sadly leave no place for survivors to grieve or latterday family genealogists to discover. Several years ago, for example, my friend Ray Wishart found my greatgreatgrandfather’s grave in the cemetery in Vicksburg, and his pic of it is among my treasures; but of my parents, and me, no trace will be found. Not so with those who leave tombstones behind. And the anamnesis, “never forgotten. we will never forget you.” Wandering round Greenwood seeing some for whom there once were tears, prayers, and the anamnesis. But "never" is too long for a human promise.
Sometimes a faded angel. The shadow above, I do not wish to be here in a hundred-fifty years. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me," so I'm taking the wings of the morning and holding no one to the promise.
The mind wanders to breakfast. Two black mission figs. And in the refrigerator, that opened jar of black caviar that I ordered from Russia, slice of wheat toast, lightly buttered to hold the caviar from rolling off. Black coffee. No point in getting that vodka out of the pantry this early. It’s pretty good vodka though. So am I pretty good so far this morning. There's that train whistle, is this Our Town?
ἀνἀνάμνησις then.
ἀνἀνάμνησις then.
W