Occassionally, if one opens their eyes, they can find extraordinary places and things right close to them. In my case I found a massive, massive cemetery right outside our neighborhood.
I guess I can say I morbidly enjoy cemeteries, especially really old gothic ones. In ninth grade when I had a morbid curiosity about everything that was morbid, ghosts were foremost. I've never seen an ectoplasmic orb or shimmery figures or anything of the sort, but my imagination does a pretty good job of filling that all in. It's even better in large and impressive graveyards.
It's easily the size of four of five football fields, but you may notice a curious lack of graves in the above picture. As you might expect, that's because it's actually a crematory garden. Here is one of the graves, which you can see is merely a metal plate with a small handle implanted in it; doubtlessly if one pulls on that handle and urn would be revealed somewhere underneath.
Exploring this place took forever. Adding to the grand feel to it were the statues scattered infrequently about the gardens.
And pretty statues they were, but this is definitely not Florence: most if not all of the statues are concrete casts. As such...
...most have not been treated well by age. The reason why her hand is so nubbish is because all of her fingers are gone. I perhaps only saw one statue which wasn't missing any digits.
It wasn't this one, though--I think this statue was missing entire limbs. Actually I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what it was; it was placed right over what seemed to be a family grave, and upon closer inspection it appears to be a normal human boy riding the back of a winged character, probably an angel. Why he got a free ride I don't know.
Standing confusedly among vaguely Greek and Christian symbols was this Buddha, standing near the entrance of a Buddhist funeral home. Half the graves I saw here were Asian in origin; it really reflects the mixed population of this area.
Here's another view of the amazingly pretty day and how it reflected on the pretty cemetery. You'd almost think it was a golf course (now that's interesting...).
After spying this Greek-like statue hiding among some bushes near a dirty fountain, I saw ahead the most grand statue I've seen yet in the gardens.
Yes, it's a massive tomb with a huge statue of the Last Supper standing conspicuously on top of it. Of course it's concrete like all the rest, so it's missing fingers, but it was still pretty impressive. The whole thing reminds me of the White Witch's powers from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, specifically the old BBC one with the terrible effects and animal costumes.
Upon close inspection, it seems to me that this group's Jesus is standing up in the standard arms-down-palms-forward style, while the rest of the disciples mutter to themselves. It strikes me as a very odd way of depicting Him. While initially I thought he was looking down at them, he's actually just staring off into space. Like he just stood up and announced something, but no one is listening to him. After musing on this unusual statue for a little while, we followed the path around and continuing behind it.
Following a path lined with trees and intermittent stairs, we came to the final statue I took pictures of, towards the edge of the property.
It's La Pieta, Michelangelo's La Pieta, but it's definitely not made of marble like the original. I think Mary's left hand was entirely fingerless. This statue is unusual for the unmatching proportions of Mary and Jesus. If you imagine both of them standing up, it's clear that Jesus would be a shrimp compared to the giant Mary. Since Michelangelo was such a genius, it's propable that he did this on purpose. For what reason, who knows. It's probably more visually perfect. Those Renaissance Men knew everything.
So that's all for Virginia this time. I'm flying out for Little Rock tomorrow sometime in the afternoon, then I'm going to try to move in and start classes without losing too much sanity. I'll live, somehow...
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