Time and Again
“Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.”-Rainer Maria Rilke
I know I’ve mentioned Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Cemetery, several times before. But it’s just one of those rare, special places and that bears repeating, especially if this turns out to be the “last” visit.
We went after brunch last Sunday– found it less crowded, more serene than any park, with all the obelisks and weeping angels pleasantly nestled along the winding path. You can wander for an hour and not run into anybody except graveyard geese and a herd of poky deer. And the three groundhogs, who we’ve named Chuckles, Chantelle and Col. Watson over the last year of visits. (Col. Watson is pictured below.)
It was kind of humid and heady, about to storm. We either almost got attacked by a rabid beast OR missed a chance to go to Narnia. We reminisced about how cold it had been during our last visit together, at New Years, when I was still unemployed, sleeping in the “fashion room” for a bit, living in limbo. We day-dreamed that we’d fallen into another dimension where everything was a graveyard except for some Evil Wizard’s castle on Penn Avenue and we had to escape to break the curse.
By the next time I go to Pittsburgh, the friend who lives across the street from the cemetery will have moved across town and in with his boyfriend who is somehow starting grad school and no longer a shyish German elevator stranger in his freshman year of college.
We could drive back, I suppose, but graveyard adventures are the kind that you’re supposed to stumble into. Not that I’m the type to get glum over the passage of time– if there’s anything to be learned from fantasy stories, it’s that no place is as good as the real life place, even ridiculous French beach resorts or ornate Gothic cemeteries.
When you’ve made all the big leaps without too much thought, it’s strange to consider the moment right before a bunch of little things change. You lift your other foot out of Neverland and it comes down on deciding your favorite brand of bagged lettuce and how to share closets or caulk showers.
You realize the flirting college summer camp counselors are getting married, the cousin who shared the waterbed with you at Grandma’s is pregnant and that you’re negotiating a salary instead of navigating how to sneak $5 bottles of champagne into a college dorm.
Luckily, there are graveyards just about everywhere you go. And between entropy and mischief, we should have no problem keeping busy.
“There are sailing ships that pass
All our bodies in the grass
Springtime calls her children ’til she lets them go at last…”
-”Passing Afternoon” by Iron & Wine
