The Magnificent Seven are London's seven large victorian era cemeteries. My new goal for this study aborad is to go to all of them. Honestly, I would go to every cemetery and graveyard in London if I could. I graves are one of my great loves in life, have been for a while. Before I could drive I used to ride my bike to the cemetery by my house and sit there and read. I like them because I think you can feel how full they are. Cemeteries are weird because even when they are empty they are totally full of...hmmmm energy? I dunno. The spirit? Something. The dead are good company; quiet and patient.
The graves with statues on them are very cool. I don't plan to be buried in the traditional sense for the Earth and all that. But I would still like a headstone. Put it by an anicent tree in the middle of a field so that one day a young girl can stumble upon it and find it holy.
Today I walked to one of these seven cemeteries. The aforementioned Tower Hamlets Cemetery found on tumblr the other day. Lemme tell you it really was magnificent. There were so many graves. Graves on graves on graves in rows, on top of eachother, sideways, up, down, all around. They are so old that the stones are leaning and crumbling and worn and seriously falling apart. Many are leaning on eachother which is actually quite sweet when you think about it. There must be thousands of graves...I think...I am bad at estimating. Let's just say that if the undead rise now, I am totally screwed. All the graves were covered in bright green moss and I loved the ones that were so weathered you couldn't read them anymore. I tried looking for my friend's names, but unless you were Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret or Jane, you were few and far between. There were actually many Marias but usually as a middle name. Many a Henry and James as well. Unsurprising. It was kind of astonishing how little the names varied.
Laid to rest.
I hope you can kind of tell just how many graves there are.
It was absolutely freezing cold and I had decided to wear my shorts and tights with a flannel and cardigan. Not my best decision. Golly and I was just going on and on about how I dislike looking cool. I am nothing more than human. But while I was on my feet it was fine. I brought my camera with me (sadly, my better camera's battery is totally shot I just had to order a new one) and I took lots of pictures. I love pictures of cemeteries. These pictures are nothing to write home about (although I guess that is what I am doing now), but hopefully I will be back again with my better camera. It was almost surreal to walk around the park. I kept thinking how beautiful it was and how my pictures weren't capturing just how green the moss was. All the graves toppling over eachother, it was like out of a fairytale or something. It's also weird to have something like this in the middle of a city. It got me thinking about just how old London is. That is a loooooottt of history. Kind of overwhelming, especially as an American. Well as a white American. I was also thinking about all these people buried hundreds of years ago and I wondered if any of them had ever resurfaced. Had anyone ever been eroded out? Or do they just get deeper and deeper, more and more dust and dirt deposited on them. Now that I think about it I guess it's probably the latter.
Girl who weeps.
They just keep going.
I love cemeteries because they are the ultimate liminal space, but they don't feel that way, at least to me. They are for both the living and the dead and the veil is nothing but dirt. So the ground you walk on in a cemetery is a floor and ceiling. Transformative, ambigous. And so they are scary, but I feel that they are comforting. Their ambiguity is certain and counted upon. I like a place that is full yet empty. It's like an invisible weighted blanket. The dead bring me peace. Because they are not physical, I imagine they read my mind. For my final research project in one of classes I was researching Sufi celibates which brought me to many pieces about Sufi dervishes and Qalanders who would go naked and lie on graves totally still as if they were dead. They would do this for as long as they could, no food or water. Just silence and stillness. They felt that to get closer to God they should get as close as they could to death because that was the ultimate enlightening or escatic experience. I find this admirable. There are also many records of Muslim and Christian women weeping at saint's graves as a form of worship. I am also inclined towards grave dwelling as a spirtual experience. It was a bit too cold for me to go naked though.
I sat down on a bench to write in my journal. My fingers were totally frozen but I wrote anyways. I took out my headphones which cleared my head immediately. I love music, truly adore it, but it is easy to forget to stop for a second. Music is a stimulant just like eveyrthing else and often times I find myself feeling hmmm busy when I am listening to music; a bit overwhelmed. I love to listen and walk around like I am in a movie. But a cemetery demands silence. No ghosts can speak to you if you have the world tuned out. I think music is more than just hearing, it is also space in your brain. Which is good when you want to focus on music, but you can't hear anyone dead or alive, spirtual or none spirtual that wishes to speak to you. Sometimes the spirtual speaks through music, but that's a whole other thing entirely. Bottom line is that sometimes when I take out my headphones I see colors more clearly and I can suddenly hear my breath and the birds together. The wind in a graveyard is whispers of the dead.
I love this one.
This one is so old it says nothing at all. It stands alone. I wonder who was buried here...
Like God and Adam
1 and 16. Very young
I went home because I was freezing and starving, but I walked the whole way back just listening to the city. I enjoy hearing snippets of conversation here and there. I stopped at the grocery store for orange juice, mustard, and chips for the egg salad sandwhich I was gonna make. Egg salad is food of the gods it is just that good. I make a pretty goooood egg salad I gotta say.
I am aware that I said Irene and I were gonna go to a club today butttttttt I was so tired and it was only 6pm. I am still very tired and now it is 8pm. So that has been shelved for a later date. Plans for tomorrow are church, if I can muster the conviction, and who knows, maybe doing some sorting. gah sorting. Oh also it is insanity what a good blanket will do for your sleep. The new one I got from Ikea plus my new (not insane) duvet cover has changed my life and today I woke up at 10:30 because of the amazing sleep I got. Shout out my new pillow too.