peace place
Gravel crunches and spits under the tires as I brake and turn full-circle in the middle of the road, making up my mind. On the way home from the beach I used to stop here, visit yesterday's people on this long-deserted outcropping fenced in on three sides by marsh and on the fourth by the sea.
It’s been too long.
I’m so glad nobody’s left to mow. It’s prettier this way, fitting, somehow. They are reclaimed, and it is peaceful. Weathered, naked stone faces the waves half-sunken, embraced by meadow.
You’re walking on bones, something tells me, and I hesitate. Crunch crunch.
But then something else says they sense your beating heart and they note you, curious.
They are peaceful and not minding me but still ask why are you here? You don’t know us. We are too long dead for even your great-grandparents to know us.
I press my palm through the grasses to the cool mud underneath, through layers of insects and prickles and wildflowers and through that palm I speak back to them because I am of the dead too, and because you have answers I want.
Ahhh, they say. We see.
Then there’s just silence, crashing waves and seagulls, because you can’t get what you want from one dimension to the next. You just can’t. You can only sit cross-legged in front of the gulf, staring at the relentless fog that obscures the other side.
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Just now Evan’s door creaked open and he scrambled into bed next to me bleary-eyed, whispering as he does when he needs me most: hiya nonnie, I cuddle. I wrapped myself around him under thick blankets, cool breeze and a chorus of peeper frogs through the open window, the milky way above our heads as I hummed him back to sleep.
As he breathed in and breathed out the thought came to me one life is one episode in the life of a soul and as I did, a subtle ribbon of light twirled across the black night sky, what I’d call winter’s northern lights if we were north, and if it were winter. Suddenly I could see that it was all alive, breathing in and breathing out. Some just our own flotsam, satellites and jetplanes and junk, but other stuff too, stuff not so easily pegged by the language of quantum physics.
I lust so deeply for magic, I swear sometimes I can will it into existence.
+++++++++++
There’s so much to tell you.
I long for what I can’t have, selfishly.
I feel like I might be on the brink of something.
I want an unchaperoned day pass.
Gym schmym (sigh).
Maybe next time.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 in thinkings
Reader Comments (42)
..."because I am of the dead too, and because you have answers that I want.." Kate, you take my breath away.
Your writing is just lovely, made me want to take a walk outside tonight and look at the sky.
I feel like you will a little flash of magic every time you post, Kate.
oh the power of those long lost places.....
Long time lurker here, but need to say that the moments you share are so three-dimensional and so needed and thank you.
I love old cemetaries too - since I was a little kid I've found a peace there that is difficult to find anywhere else.
Every time I think I've read a sentence unparalleled in beauty, I come here and that former sentence becomes dust in your wake.
the last time i felt truly lost, i drove to the place where my grandmother is buried and leaned against her headstone, looking out at the others. i closed my eyes and asked for help, for wisdom, for peace. i swear the sun flickered in a way i've never seen it before. i'm one of those desperate believers, with a belief in nothing in particular....i think in some ways, searching for magic. like you.
thank you for sharing - the last photo took my breath away.
Ah, yeah. The lust for magic. And to think we all once had magic, when the world was riskier and the night scarier. Maybe it's a yearning to turn back time. Quantum physics has some ideas about this, if only I could truly internalize those Feynman diagrams.
kate, you are the magic. you just are.
you capture the terrifying peace of graveyards so well. the answers you continue to seek there even though they can't be given.
beautiful, as always.
The way you describe them, curious and watchful, reminds me of the cemetary scene in the play, "Our Town".
The girl in the play dies and joins the others in the cemetary, who just sit, and knit, and doze, and watch. She learns the lessons, gets her answers, eventually. But she cries out about how those living can never understand, never really enjoy life fully. They can't truly understand until they arrive here in this place.
I heart this post. Totally love it.
It is magic. You are magic.
Love to you.
While you are lusting deeply for magic, take comfort in the fact that you are creating (and sharing) some with the words that spill out into this space.
I hope you get that day pass.
I spent a good deal of my childhood in graveyards with my mother. She was a geneaolgist too eager to prove that we were more than we had become. As a teen and early twenty-something, I spent time in graveyards alone, seeking out the graves of children and talking to them, wondering what it was like for them to leave so soon. I remember one disctinctly: Mark Brown. He died at 9 yrs old in the 70s. I spent so much time looking at his grave and wondering about his magic and his loss. I'd forgotten all that until I read this, Kate. Thanks, for that glimpse back at a person I used to be.
Really, you have to be the most prolific writer of our times. You must publish, if anything, only to share with the greater world how you view life. We are all so lucky to know you. I am not kidding: the way you use words, your prose, is entirely perfect. It's magical.
Isn't it odd, I feel a connection with those places now too. As though I understand something now, or feel something. I certainly do math a lot quicker than I used to, wondering the span of lives below.
I hate wanting what I know is impossible for me to have. So much.
Blog commenters are often too lavish in praise of writing that is heartfelt but not necessarily great. Your blog is a horse of another color. Your writing is not only heartfelt but breathtaking--you could be another Barbara Kingsolver, or better. Please make this blog into a book? Not that the blog isn't worthy on its own, but I would like it on my shelf, with a lovely author photo on the back.
Beautiful.
you made this place come alive to me, so far away.
what beautiful feelings and words.
Absolutely breathtaking. I just have to echo the above comments that your prose is amazing and inspirational. Thank you.
i think i always felt i belonged in graveyards, was of the dead in some pleasantly melancholy way that connected me to something larger than the material. i spent a lot of time in them as a kid with my grandmother and was easy there, curious about all the stories woven there, all the threads that terminated there. only since Finn died have i not wanted to be among them, not felt that easiness.
you brought back a taste of it, and have made me curious.
this was beautiful, Kate.
This takes my breath away.
Kate,
Really, the magic is coming off your fingertips like lightening. You take the mundane and imbue it with grandeur through your words. I'm with Mamie - you are the magic. Thank you so much for taking us along for the ride. Peace to you.
gasp. i feel as though i am now left here waiting...wondering...longing to read your next offering.
this post is poetry kate. and i am moved so deeply. full of questions yet at the same time overtaken with hope.
On our summer vacation in Idaho last year, we happened to wander past a cemetary...both my husband and I turned up the driveway, independently of each other. This is something we would never have done before William. Your comment "I am of the dead too", touched me. How true.
May we all find a little magic today...and thank you, Kate, for reminding me about the magic.
This makes my heart hurt, Kate.
another fellow and life-long graveyard dweller here. the solitude and energy-filled stillness of these places were souls sometimes linger can indeed be as electrifying as you so brilliantly described.
i think you also wrote here of a moment when that "thin veil" is lifted between our two worlds: living and dead.
i think you live magic, kate. perhaps the magic is actually willing YOU.
can I will you, for just a few hours, for a tea and chocolate infused evening?
can't wait to see what exists over that brink of yours.
xoxo
Perhaps it's not a matter of willing magic into being, but of recognizing it as it unfolds around us. And you, my friend, have a way of seeing things and helping the rest of us to see them.
this is so beautiful, i love your style of writing...you should write a book and sell it to the masses.
I wish that i didn't understand all of this, but I do. Your writing is so touching. You manage to make sense of feelings that I've never been able to handle .. let alone write about.
Your children, all three, must be very proud.
Kate - came back to see you and found your new site. Your pics are stunning and I love the one of you in your 'about'. I didn't picture you that way. Maybe your words made you sound wiser and thus, wizened. You are beautiful and your words are moving. Sorry for the cliche, but even as an english and language major I can't think of the right words to describe your writing. I can honestly say I have never read anything like your writing. I still think of all of your beautiful babies, and marvel at your journey.
Thank you for this...
Simply beautiful. You certainly have a way with words and explaining the seemingly unexplainable. Your description of the moment and it's pure essence - of just Being - mimicks that of Eckart Tolle, in the book A New Earth, which has captivated and captured me in ways transformational. A soul lives on, coming to the human experience time and again, of this I am certain.
This post is so beautiful in so many ways; it takes me back to a much simpler place in my life, to smells and sounds that I long for so often, but are lost to me now. A place of peace.
Thank you.
Your comments and encouragement are so lovely.. thanks, everyone. (blush)
"But then something else says they sense your beating heart and they note you, curious."
I found the above sentence brought me a sense of peace. Thank you for sharing your words.
So beautiful written.And the images so fitting. I wish that magic for you....
You are an artist of the written word, Kate. Beautifully written.
You brought me there with you...with your magic.
thank you. i needed this today...
I owe you a poem now. I wish they could fly from my fingertips they way they used to, but I will coax one out.
What a lovely post.