Stone-Garden

On our big photo outing last week, Gordon and I found many lovely places, peaceful places. This was one of them, an old cemetery. It was so beautiful it felt more like a garden of stones, and memories of lives lived long ago. What else is a garden but a place of beauty where life is constantly transforming from one state of matter to another? Plants die and become part of the earth, their seeds and bulbs to be renewed again in the spring. With people and animals of course the process is a bit different. We do the dust-to-dust part, that is certainly the same. Some people believe that a soul lives on and like a seed waits for it's "spring" and is born again into a new form...blossoming into freshness and life once again. Memories too are seeds. They become embedded into the hearts of earth-bound humans who loved the people and animals that have gone from their physical bodies. There, as we re-member a beloved, story by story, they blossom again in the garden of our own lived experience, all the days of our lives.

So for Halloween, I offer you not a "scary" post, but one of contemplation. Take time this weekend, amidst the fun and the costumes and candy consumption to sit in silence and remember someone you loved who no longer walks the earth on their own, but is growing within you, cultivated as you gently rake through your thoughts of them, warmed by the light of your smile and watered by your tears.

In honor of these long gone humans, I was careful to photograph the backs of the stones, which I found to be rich in texture and quite beautiful as monochrome images. Except for the first one, because I wanted to let you know how old the cemetery is. Being trained as a textile designer, texture still really catches my eyes! There is one special stone at the end for my friend Clytie, somehow a "heart" grew on the back of the stone!   

Happy Halloween!

please visit my friend at the weekend in black and white and Shadow Shot Sunday.