neurasthenic

Twice every day, without fail, I pass by the memorial park near my workplace. This afternoon, stuck in traffic, saw a handful of plain cubic tombstones swallowed by an expansive swath of golf grass green. Not even enough dead to properly sustain the plant cover; with embalming and cocooning coffins in vogue around here, I doubt if any of the cadavers end up enriching Mother Nature.

Just led me into thinking about taphophilia (a fascination for cemeteries and other morbid resting places, not necessarily with dark, festering overtones). And how modern society in different cultures reacts to death and funerals. Western-style, clinical, orderly memorial parks of sweeping brown and green and grey stone versus overcrowded mazes of boxy, white, cement niches stacked on top of each other, empty spaces serving as houses for the downtrodden living.

Respect for the dead, too. Is it connected with our superstitions and beliefs about resurrection, spirits or the afterlife? Or do we respect the dead because we respect the memories of the living, the acts of the departed one to be mulled over and reflected upon. Respect as gratitude to the dead’s memory. Anyway, the meatbag can’t be of any more use then, except as lovely fertilizer. I believe this is quite the atheist/agnostic perspective.

Hoping to expand this brain fart into a longer post over at Wordpress-y. Too sleepy to string words into coherent chains. I need proper photos of La Recoleta in Buenos Aires too. Stunning graveyard imagery.

Feeling like the character in Lovecraft’s The Hound (he who escaped from being torn to shreds by Dutch-tittering, bat-flying ghoul adorned at the neck with a pendant from dreaded Leng) living amidst a dark moor in a dark house filled with dark graveyard booty.

Nooooo not that kind of booty. Necrophilia is so not my thing.