I was running late (as usual) and was tempted to take the car down to the University area but at the last minute I hopped on a bike instead and cruised on down the hill for a bit of caffeinated libation and conversation.
Whilst headed home, I considered hopping on this thing and winding up who knows where but I learned my lesson about riding trains the first time I heard RW’s train hopping story (he’s lucky to be alive and furthermore, lucky to be walking).
I took a good long squint at the Hotel Yellowstone, one of my favorite buildings in Old Town Pokey. It was then that I realized that I didn’t want to be done riding my bicycle around town for the day so I headed for one of my favorite places in town. The cemetery.
The first time I ever saw Idaho or Pocatello, for that matter, was when I rolled into it on the wheels of a Uhaul truck. The first sight to greet me in this fair little town was the cemetery. Cemeteries are such quiet places — everyone there is sleeping so hard they’re turning to dust beneath their marble and granite pillows. The trees in the Pocatello cemetery are maple and elm mingled with some ever green conifers. It’s quiet there.
So I grasp on, push the door open, and find the silence.
Trucks rumble past but I can’t seem to hear them.
I’m not even sure what I think about in this space but there’s rest for my mind here and quiet for my eyes. I go to the cemetery to look at the changing colors of fall, to tell the dead they aren’t forgotten, to recognize the fullness of my life. To listen to the grass grow and if the season is right, to hear the snow fall.
For being a place of the dead, there’s so much life here.
So much scope for the imagination.
And when I had enough I biked home, stopping only to sketch an idea by the river that flows through town.
I didn’t have the time to make the time for this today
but I ignored that fact and sucked a little marrow out of life instead (I had a sort of crummy day in the studio yesterday and it put me into a bit of an emotional tailspin…).
Sometimes it’s alright to push at the deadlines, to expand my immediate space and take a little time of my own and squander it how I will.
And now you know,
I sometimes hang out
in cemeteries.
See you tomorrow!
XO
PLUME