Assignment: 42 & Dance For The Dead

Those who are dead are not dead

They're just living in my head

And since I fell for that spell

I am living there as well

This is the dance that brings the dead to the living

They say, "I miss you every day, you know."

Ahaha so morbid. My apologies.

Frankly, I haven't been to a lot of cemeteries. Which is strange on some level, now that I think about it... They're all over the place in St. Louis. Haha. But the one experience that I do remember in detail concerning a cemetery was one in the Philippines. We were visiting the graves of my great grandparents. There is a bridge a story higher than the cemetery, and if you walk across it and look down, all you'll see are graves.... and graves... and more graves. And not laid out in rows with green between headstones... there was no green here. Not on the ground, anyway. Trees outside the cemetery walls. Maybe small patches of grass like you see growing between cracks on the blacktop. Graves and graves and more graves, narrow paved walkways in between, and these graves are stacked up on each other. I was brought to my family's plot and given to understand that a member from one generation was buried (well... wrong word, since they were above ground) above someone from the previous generation.

Homeless people live here. Some harmless enough, some you have to watch out for. I was told to be careful and keep close. They'll follow you around, begging for a coin, offering to shine up your plot. It's different from the cemeteries I see here... in that... it felt as if there was no breathing space. You were surrounded by the dead, and not even living grass to remind you that you were still in the land of the living. I was happy to visit my  great-grandparents' graves, I've heard so much about them and seen pictures and stuff... and it stays with me as an experience that I was glad to have had... but it did feel so... dead. And depressing. And the homeless that live there... who have only the dead as their constant company... only depress me more. To the world, they are already dead. Unless they're awfully lucky, they will make no mark on any part of the world save on the graves they are told to clean... and no amount of such work will ever be enough to have their own place to be laid out... in the company of people who loved them.