--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Many of you have probably gotten the impression that when I "go out" > it's always to noisy, crowded places where I can do a lot of > people-watching. But no. Every so often I, too, feel the need to get out > of the city and into a place with trees and grass and silence and, > possibly most important, no people. > > Some things I write can coexist peacefully -- if not symbiotically -- > with noisy cafes and bars. Other things, not so much. The words of those > sorts of things just seem to flow better in quieter, more still places. > > Fortunately, one of those places is only a few blocks away from where I > live. It's beautiful, it's green, it's quiet, and almost every time I go > there it's free of other people. Some of my favorite "writing park > benches" in Leiden are there. I go there when I want to write about > silence. It's appropriate, because the place is silent as a tomb. > > Which is appropriate in itself, because the place is full of tombs. It's > the Groenesteeg cemetery. And it's just lovely. Here is a photo essay by > someone else who thinks so: > > http://jpgmag.com/stories/17102 <http://jpgmag.com/stories/17102> > > You can read about it at the link to save me having to tell you. The > thing I like best about going there -- besides its silence, of course -- > is the idea that at one point this cemetery was abandoned, and reverted > back to nature. Napoleon decreed that there could be no more church > burials, so they stopped using it. I just *love* trying to imagine what > this place must have been like totally overgrown with grass and weeds. I > suspect I would have liked it even better then than the way it is now, > restored by the Leiden city government in 1995-1997. > > One thing they didn't have to restore are the trees. They are nothing > short of magnificent. Some of them were possibly planted here when the > cemetery was first created. They are enormous; some of them tall and > straight, others twisted and gnarly and Tolkien-y. Especially one of > them. It's a European Beech, very very old, and (I stepped it off today) > 14 meters circumference at its base. It looks like this: > > http://www.flickr.com/photos/de_buurman/2919934156/ <Getting away from > it all with Van Gogh's Mom Many of you have probably gotten the > impression that when I > > > As trees go, it's as close to being one of Tolkien's Ents as I've ever > met. Today as I walked by it there was a girl, perhaps 13, sitting up in > the branches of the tree. At first glance, I took her for a Hobbit. I > chuckled but then left, so as not to bother her, and moved to a favorite > writing bench at the other end of the cemetery, next to the canals. > > What I wrote about is a matter between me and my computer at this point. > This isn't it. This was written later, back at home, so that I could > look up the Web links. > > Oh, yeah. Van Gogh's Mom. She's buried here. She doesn't actually say > much, so I kinda misled you with the title. My bad.
Necrophilia is OK Barry, at least symbolically, or if the nerves in the nose are dead. I found a number of images of that old beech tree using Google Earth, there seem to be several there, but that one is stunning. I have noticed that meditators seem to shy away from cemeteries. A fear of ghosts, dead spirits, or rather spirits of the dead?
