Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 4

We reached the cemetery about 45 minutes before dusk, to have a little time to take stock of our  surroundings. Was the place still as creepy? Yes, though not as creepy as it would become as night fell.

We wandered around taking photos and video, looking for details we might have missed. It was a pleasant enough night, if a bit cloudy. Everything was as usual. As the sun went down the wind began to kick up. The photos I'd taken so far looked ordinary enough when seen through the viewer, and then suddenly they were not. 

                                        

View of the west corner of the cemetery at twilight: 

Pollen? Dust? Insects? The dreaded, ubiquitous orbs? If you look closely, you can see there is one light for every tombstone in that corner, including a small one near the eeriest grave, the one where some have imagined hearing voices.

                                                                I immediately turned to the right and saw this in my viewfinder.

I moved on toward the southern part of the graveyard to a place where I felt a strangeness, an eddying wind and rustling leaves that sounded almost like voices. I came to the unusual resting place of Lily Linke, buried just outside the family plot, forever separate. It was here that I began to feel a distinct presence.

I felt the presence follow me onto the path, where I began to feel very uneasy. I told it to go in peace and it gradually drifted away.

It was beginning to feel too spooky, though I was prepared for that. I was determined I wouldn't be scared into running this time. But still, the feeling of being watched was unnerving.. It was time to leave.

In the distance beyond the path, I thought I'd photographed a light from a radio tower or a passing plane. But  I was wrong. There was no tower nor was there a plane that time of night. That tiny light in the distance hadn't been there at all.

I've been waiting for my brother to watch the videotape he recorded that night, but for some reason he seems reluctant to do so....

Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 3

It was nearly 17 years ago that my brother told me of something strange at Lone Oak. He had been visiting our aunt's grave late one afternoon, when his attention was caught by a headstone with a woman's photograph. The year of her death was 1919. He was completely alone in the cemetery, so I suppose he was unconcerned about being overheard when he spoke aloud: "Huh. I wonder if she died in the flu epidemic."

According to him, he immediately heard a buzzing in the air. It sounded like a lot of people whispering at once..Out of these sounds, he said, a distinct voice said "yes". It came from the left, from the grave of the woman's daughter. The whispering died away, and he was suddenly aware that the sun was very low in the sky and the wind was picking up. To hear him tell it, he couldn't get out of there fast enough.

It certainly sounded creepy. "Well, if you go out there, just don't go at sunset" he said.

It really was happenstance that the sun was beginning to set when my cousin and I wound our way to the cemetery gates later that year. It had been a long trip, we had spent hours at the library doing research and come all this way. It was less than fortunate timing, but we weren't going to not stop just because of that. Besides, we had  fresh cut roses to bring to our aunt, it would be a shame to waste them.

It was June, the grain was high in the fields. It felt so isolated, with only a few houses and a church across the road. The sun was on the horizon, but never mind, there was plenty of light left to do what we came to do. We laid the flowers for our aunt and decided to search out the grave where my brother heard the voice. It wasn't far - the grave of  a woman named Elsa, next to her daughter, Alma. Alma's photo plaque was sadly broken, but Elsa looked to be a sensible lady, not so scary. We heard no voices, but perhaps it  was at that point I began to feel a little strange.

I said nothing to my cousin, but  kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. There was nothing there of course, but even seeing nothing I could swear there was something.. I turned it over in my mind - the movements of trees, shadows? Perhaps those little flags placed on veteran's graves being whipped about in the wind. Nerves. Then again, this cemetery was peaceful. It didn't feel threatening. But why did I keep mistaking the shape of the headstones for people? Why did I feel so sure we were being watched?

We continued walking, my cousin reading out the women's names on the headstones: Mitta, Lille, Alamina.... "such pretty, old-fashioned names"  she said. It was dark enough that we noticed that the cross on the church opposite was lighted. We were nervous enough to feel comforted by it. The wind was really picking up.

              The lighted cross on the church opposite, July, 2012

We were walking toward the west corner - drawn by its relative isolation - when a car sped down  the narrow road through the cornfields. A young man out for a joyride perhaps. The car disappeared into the distance. We kept walking, but my cousin had become remarkably quiet. I wasn't feeling so chatty either. I wasn't scared exactly, but something was becoming very wrong. A strange thought came to me: "That was the first alarm."

 The sky was still streaked with pink but the sun had set.. The sound of the wind in the fields was not comforting. I hadn't realized the way wind can blow across flat land, that constant hollow rushing. It went on and on.

The man in the car sped past again. We saw him through the gates. That was the second alarm, I thought. My cousin kept looking  toward the lighted cross. I was beginning to feel real fear now, the kind that was like an outside pressure forcing my body to move. Five minutes later, the man in the car sped by again, and my cousin who looked  very white in the face, said. "I think we'd better go now." As we started to move toward the gate, the fear came upon us so strong that we began to run. It was a blind panic, terror. It seemed more than the fear that some guy might harass us on a country road at twilight, though that was bad enough. It seemed like something else. It was as if something had begun to yell at us to run.

We didn't speak for a while. When we did, we tried to think what happened. Well, that man in the car was unsettling, no? It could have been him who caused us to panic. But maybe not. There was something else there. We could feel it. That lighted cross on the church seemed almost as if it had a specific purpose, facing the graveyard that way. The next time we went, we made sure we brought a male friend, so we wouldn't have to worry about strange men on country roads. We went even later, at night. We wanted to know what it was that frightened us- maybe it was just that man, after all. Our friend was very jovial, out for a lark. I can't even say what happened - only that one moment we were walking down the lane in the pitch darkness, Jeff chuckling that we'd need a guardian for this - and the next we were all scrambling into the car, scared out of our minds. Even Jeff  was so frightened he couldn't open the simple latch on the gate - we jumped it instead.

A year later, I gave it another try, with another companion this time. I had brought him to show him this place where my some of my family had settled. Once again, we didn't mean to come at sunset, it was bad timing. Again, I felt safe enough not to forgo the visit. Probably I had exaggerated the fear in my mind. We walked about as the sun was setting. It was he who first pointed out the cradle boards around the grave in the west corner - I hadn't yet had the nerve to make it back there on my own. We crisscrossed the grounds, splitting up to examine things on our own. The sun had dropped below the horizon and the wind had begun to pick up the way it always seemed to do as night was falling. Again, I was amazed at how far sound carried there. There was no one to be seen for miles, but I could hear the sound of people working, building something perhaps, shouting to each other and banging away on something metal. .The sounds made it feel less lonely. It was getting quite dark and the wind was howling by then. I was back in the west corner, taking a closer look at those odd, out of place burial sites. They really were intriguing. The fear I'd felt must have been my imagination, it wasn't bad here at all....

I hear a faint sound - my companion is shouting my name into the wind. He's coming across the grounds, very fast, and says come on, we have to go, we have to go. I ask him what's up and he only  takes my arm and says "we have to go right now."  He's taking me back to the car - is prepared to carry me bodily if he has to, he says - when the fear hits me full on. My knees are so weak that I can barely get myself into the passengers seat. We go as fast as possible away from there. Finally my companion says "everything was fine one minute, the next there was a voice in my ear saying "get her out of here, now, run, RUN!'" It wasn't the sort of voice you could argue with.

On the long drive home, I said, "it surprises me the way sound carries - those people working must have been miles away". He looked puzzled. I said, "all those people shouting and banging; it was pretty loud. didn't you hear it?' He says, appalled, "honey, there wasn't any sound out there but the wind"

It would be a long time before any of us went back, but finally, we did. At twilight again, but this time on purpose.

.

Lone Oak Cemetery, part 2

The historical marker at Lone Oak Cemetery reads like this:

"On January 17 1897, German immigrants in the Geronimo area met at Specht school to discuss the need for a community cemetery. The group formed a "Friedhof Gestellschaft" or cemetery association and within a week purchased a five-acre plot of land from Ernst Puls and designated it the Lone Oak Cemetery.The following year, the first burial, that of the one week-old unnamed son of Ernst and Bertha Puls, took place. Since its founding, over 900 burials have taken place and several older 19th century graves have been relocated here as well."

It's a chilling irony  - Did the farmer who sold his land ever imagine the first burial would be his own child?

Perhaps, or perhaps not. Certainly there is evidence of the harshness of country life back then in the number of children's graves at Lone Oak. It's painful to contemplate the rows of headstones in the family plots where a child was lost every year. Even with the inscription wearing off the oldest  stones, there are many carved  with small lambs, slowly succumbing to the weather.

Most of the children's headstones are simple, though one stands out as more elaborate. The grave of a small boy (four or five years old, the inscription was too worn to be sure)  has a marble statue - perhaps a young Jesus or other saint - with a lamb at his side. The pedestal reads "watch until I come". A lot of care and expense must have been put into it. I wondered if his parents had been especially distraught over his loss; or perhaps it was that they had the financial means to express it when others had not. At the foot of the grave, a stone reads "baby love",  a sentiment that seems very unusual to find in a German-American cemetery at that time.and place. I think the answer is probably both - the heartbreak is almost palpable in the stone itself:

Even if the means to decorate the grave of a lost child might have been scarce, the effort was made nonetheless. This infant girl's grave, surrounded by her cradle, overwhelms me every time I see it.

There is another reason it troubles me though. It's not only the feeling of the loss or the sense of passing time. This grave is in the west corner, isolated, no one with her last name nearby. There are only a few graves in the west corner and none seem to be related. It's not likely that these were the graves of paupers - they all have markers - and they are not the oldest graves in the cemetery. They just seem... odd, out of place, distressing somehow.

The west corner is intriguing, if a bit unsettling, and it's possible to get lost in thought there before you realize the sun is sinking and dusk is coming way too fast.

Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 1

Coming further north to the place where I grew up, we took the opportunity to visit the small cemetery where a number of my relatives are buried. It's a quiet place on a lonely road, surrounded by acres of corn and sorghum fields.

As cemeteries go, it's a pleasant one. It's old fashioned, fairly plain, with a  few decorative cedars and one large oak tree that gives the cemetery its name. Many of the headstones are inscribed in German, the oldest  beginning to sink into the earth. Usually, the only sound you hear is the wind.

If one has to be buried, then I suppose it's not such a bad place to take your eternal rest.

Quite a few of the headstones even have photographs, which is nice, I think. It  gives one insight into the lives of  those interred there.

                                                 

 So yes, it's a pleasant place, very peaceful. Not imposing or intimidating, not even scary for a place that makes you contemplate mortality. In the daytime, at least..The problem with Lone Oak cemetery is what seems to happen at twilight, when everyone I've known to go there has had to leave at a terrified run....

Left-Hand Angel

Left-hand angel

So, I was driving through Victoria last week and noticed that the creepy, ever-present angels looming near the cemetery gates seemed a bit different....

Okay, I'm pretty sure the missing head of the right-hand angel was an accident - there is a broken tree nearby and a chip in one wing as well. The burning question remains, however - Where is the head? No, really. Where is it? It was certainly not in evidence nearby. Did someone abscond with it? Do they have it in their bedroom where it stares at them in the night? I mean, those angels always seemed about to turn and look at you, even when they had both their heads....*

 * "Oh, I have an animation program that can make them do that, easy!" said my brother happily, thinking he was being helpful in that special way he has. Erm...no, I prefer not to see my recurring nightmares come to life on screen, but thanks anyway, bro. :p

I've been absent for a while, finding the new blogger format more difficult than I was willing to bother with. But I do have a few new photos at least...

In A Hotel Room On The Coast

She fades in and out.

So I've been away for 2 weeks now, in a place that is not Victoria, nor is it remotely phantasmagorical. Except for maybe this electrical pylon. The black smudges are roosting vultures, 40 of them or so. Maybe this counts? It's all I got.

Perception, Not Necessarily Truth

Days spent packing all my worldly goods into a storage space across town, the place seems like a home away from home. The rows of silent, sun-bleached buildings seem to mirror my internal loneliness. Occasionally the wind rattles a lock or a leaf, but otherwise there is nothing.

The sun is so bright it washes out everything. The blue paint is peeling. Little chips of blue flake off onto the concrete. I keep remembering the place as looking a little better than it does. If this is what my loneliness would look like, then it should look a little better. It's loneliness, but it doesn't feel so bad. At least among these silent rows, there is momentary peace.

The End

Suddenly, my time in this place is at an end. It wasn't long ago that I thought I'd never make it out. Now I'm about to go back the way I came. Almost. I came here with a lot of hope. Things were looking up then, but it didn't last. The despair is like the humidity and the pollution - always present, always oppressive. It's hard to breathe here. It's also hard to leave. Isolation and low wages make an effective trap. Of those who manage to go, far more are running away in desperation than running toward a better opportunity. Like most of my friends before me, I'm one of the former. Still, anyone who lives in a place so long must have some attachments. If nothing else, it's familiar. You know the best angle of sunlight at which time of day. You have your favorite route for walking, or the corner of the bookstore you like best. You find a certain comfort in the habits of your neighbors.

 In places like these, beauty is indeed relative. You must pay attention to notice it leaking through the cracks in the sidewalk or in the jumbled words of a schizophrenic man. Beauty which must be searched for is that much more valuable. But...today is the last time for many of these things. They'll continue to exist, yes, but without me. Now we tie up loose ends the best we can, retrace our daily steps knowing that this won't be happening again. What was ordinary unexpectedly becomes poignant. Tomorrow, I'll never see this house again. At least, not from where I sit tonight.

 

It hasn't been much, but it's all I've had for years. Sometimes, even prisoners are afraid when it's time to be freed.

Hopscotch

Yarn Bombing

I'm so intrigued by yarn bombing that I regret giving up my ill-fated attempt to learn knitting some years ago.* Civil disobedience with yarn? Wonderful.I really think the war memorial downtown could use a colorful rifle cozy. :D

*I may have failed at guerrilla knitting, but was quite successful with my controversial embroidery, at least.

More Fun At The Bookstore

Hey, wasn't there something in the Bible about "putting off adornments"? And how your jewels and finery won't save you from the Judgement Of God etc.? Well, perhaps they thought this didn't count because the Bible doesn't say anything specifically about not putting sequins on the actual Bible.

I don't even want to think about the look the pastor would have given me had I walked into school with one of these. At any rate, I'm imagining a lot of "nyah nyah, my Word Of God is sparklier that your Word Of God!" happening at Sunday school.

Also, I refuse to even comment on the Young American Patriot's Bible standing next it.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle

I came across this book over the weekend. I was familiar with much of Shirley Jackson's other work but had never read this one. It's astoundingly good (and the cover art of this edition is pretty awesome, too) In some ways I identified with the eccentric narrator, Merricat, and her strange ways and sympathetic magic - I often did the same as a child. With her conscienceless-ness and affinity for murder, not so much. But the state of being outcast and suffering harassment at the hands of the villagers is easy enough to understand, probably is for many who live in small towns.

I did have a struggle with the story though. It was extremely triggering to me - nothing to do with the madness or death or cruelty like one would imagine, but the elements of agoraphobia and fear of intruders made it difficult to read without panicking at times. This isolation and fear of certain people, I understood all too well. Watching, waiting, checking the locks on doors, being terror stricken at the sight of a visitor or sound of a knock - this is the sort of fear I live with. It was so vibrantly described that it was almost intolerable.

After I'd finished (and as I said before, it's an excellent book) I decided to see what literary critics had had to say about it. I had not known much about Shirley Jackson's life, except that she had died relatively young. I was surprised to find out that Jackson had suffered intense agoraphobia toward the end of her life. This had indeed been reflected in the book. Jackson had done what I can't bear to do - look directly at the thing that frightened her.

Easter Nests

Happily, there were enough wildflowers to decorate the nests this year.
As you can see, the Easter Bunny was generous :D

Happy Easter

Or, for non-Christians, happy celebration period that occurs in Spring, however you might practice it.

Despite not being Christian, I have fond memories of Easter. It was a big deal in our family.There were traditions they had brought from the old country that were important and tied us to our roots a little more firmly - important in a country without too many roots of its own.

Of course it was a big deal at my Catholic school too, being the holiest of holy days. Even though I was one of those outsider children who was not Catholic (always a bit of a puzzle to my classmates) I watched the rituals leading up to the ultimate day with interest.I may have even participated more intently than my peers, because they had to. For me it was something else, a chance to witness something alien but supremely important,carried out with utmost reverence. The sense of being part of the highest of high ritual magic pervaded everything. That is what the Mass is of course, even if no one calls it that. An formal ritual drawing down the spirit into bread for the participants to consume is undoubtedly a magic one.

I can comprehend the meaning of the sacrifice as presented in the Gospels. I can understand the joy that would follow finding that your leader had miraculously risen from the dead, thus proving that he was indeed the son of god. I've always found the story of the women at the tomb touching and meaningful. I also know that Jesus was not the only one who had followed this pattern, nor has such a story. It's no less respectable for that - the story of Jesus' death and resurrection is connected to more ancient roots. These stories and attending rituals clearly have a deep significance, whether as proof of a living god or as a symbol of the earth coming back to life.

Neuroscience Vs Philosophy, Again.

Neuroscience wants to be the answer to everything. It isn't.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7714533/brain-drain.thtml


Nice article by Roger Scruton in The Spectator, concerning a particular thorn in my side. Just one example, from the article:

"So just what can be proved about people by the close observation of their brains? We can be conceptualised in two ways: as organisms and as objects of personal interaction. The first way employs the concept ‘human being’, and derives our behaviour from a biological science of man. The second way employs the concept ‘person’, which is not the concept of a natural kind, but of an entity that relates to others in a familiar but complex way that we know intuitively but find hard to describe. Through the concept of the person, and the associated notions of freedom, responsibility, reason for action, right, duty, justice and guilt, we gain the description under which human beings are seen, by those who respond to them as they truly are. When we endeavour to understand persons through the half-formed theories of neuroscience we are tempted to pass over their distinctive features in silence, or else to attribute them to some brain-shaped homunculus inside. For we understand people by facing them, by arguing with them, by understanding their reasons, aspirations and plans. All of that involves another language, and another conceptual scheme, from those deployed in the biological sciences. We do not understand brains by facing them, for they have no face."

I have the argument mentioned in the article all the time, albeit from varying angles. There is a hard dividing line that seems very difficult if not impossible to communicate across. Most of my efforts have been toward finding a way to communicate this that extreme scientific systemizers (in my case, usually those with significant social deficits) will be able to accept, if not understand. The arguments in the comments section of the linked article are all too familiar.

While it may seem unrelated on the surface, I couldn't help but recall Brugger's experiments regarding apophenia and dopamine. Among other things:

"In his July 2002 report, Brugger stated that during the first stage of the experiment the individuals who believed in the paranormal were much more likely to see a face or a word when there was none. The skeptics were more likely to miss the real words and faces when they appeared on the screen."*

The link between patternicity and paranormal beliefs aside, I had noticed something interesting. When trying to communicate the nuances of interpersonal social interaction to these extreme systemizers and analyzers, I was being asked the same questions again and again: How can it be possible to understand another's motivations if it's not explicitly stated? What is the mathematical formula for friendliness? What is "flirting" and why should I believe it exists if I can't perceive it? Feelings are only a neurochemical process, so why should they matter in relationships? Trying to explain that many people experience empathy and emotional attachment feels like trying to tell a skeptic there is a ghost standing behind them.

There was so much missing of what was actually there that I thought of the apophenia experiment. One day I asked, rather frustrated, "when you look at clouds, do you ever think they resemble other things? Like, faces.or horses or ships...anything like that?" The answer was (and almost always has been since) a puzzled no. Clouds look like clouds, those other things are not clouds, so why should there be any resemblance? What's more, people who said they saw such things were either lying or crazy, or perhaps these stories of cloud shapes were just a peasant superstition cherished by the ignorant. Sort of like sasquatch or God.

It might only be anecdotal (and hence unacceptable to those same folks I'm talking about) but such consistency perked my interest. For all the mockery of those who believe in the paranormal (or who experience apophenia, pareidolia, cartocacoethes, synchronicity or what have you) such a consistent absence of such among a group who were not seeing, nor sometimes even believing in things like empathy or social nuance was intriguing. Could it be that detecting patterns plays a not insignificant role in successful social interactions? Thanks to my own tendency toward patternicity, it was pretty easy to see the similarities between the two groups. :p In my estimation, it's not so different from those who would see consciousness as simply a neurobiological process and nothing more, a "brain in a box" more than a whole person.

Personally - in all my crazed, irrational, philosophical unscientific-ness - I don't believe the views (and the theories) of those who are super-rational are the only correct explanations. Nor do I believe those who grab hold of any pattern (or convenient bit of mysticism, or worse, conspiracy) to explain their world are necessarily correct either. However, I do believe (and have been damned many times for saying so) that there is an added level of experience for those who are able to sense something beyond being a bag of water and chemicals, where everything simply corresponds to a precise formula. Being a synesthetic, for instance, I am a great test taker, always have been. Why? Because I'm using several senses to peg the answers in my mind. It's that much easier when you know how the answer tastes, feels, and what color it is. My friend over there, the non-synesthetic, has far less sensory information to help him out. Our experience of the senses and how they affect us is not the same. By the same token, a person who has a feel and understanding of philosophical concepts as well as the scientific is going to have an edge. Just because a person experiences something and you don't, it doesn't always mean they are a fool. Sometimes it only means they have a different experience than you.

Neuroscience has its place and it's an important one to be sure, but more is necessary to help us explain our experience as people.

*I've lost track of the source of this quote. Will find and add later.

Picnic Area #17 or, The Horror of Home

When you have been a strange child, nostalgia is a double edged sword. Walking through the park where you once spent so many hours is fraught with emotion. It's all fine one moment, recalling this bend of the road, the gravel beneath the swings, the water fountain where your hot and tired classmates lined up for a drink. Everything smells the same - the grass, trees and river still have the same sweet scent and you are amazed how much you remember despite having forgotten. When you have been a strange child, though, alongside comes an upwelling of old miseries.

Depression and alienation have effects that are hard to put your finger on. It's not so easy as cataloging a series of events. It means nothing to say. "I felt lonely in this spot" or "the bank of this creek is where I sat crying in despair". These are only expressions of things that happened The real horror is one of perception. Depression is like a wound in the mind

Amid the the sunnier memories, the feel of a nightmare emerges. The dense mat of live oak leaves crunching under my feet makes me nauseous. The webby light coming through the trees feels prickly. There is a yawning horror somewhere that I can't name, only sense its presence. It's here though, and comes back to haunt me in vague, uninterpretable dreams.

I had forgotten about picnic area 17. Reservations Only. It's always been there under the trailing oak branches, despite my forgetting. Snippets of far-off memory emerge - my sister's friends hoping to hide from prying eyes. My schoolmates in our Kindermaskenball costumes playing and clinging to branches like little monkeys in fancy dress, or sharing sodas with other girls whose names have been lost to me. It hardly matters. These are all just descriptions of things that happened. I had forgotten all of that long before yesterday as I was making my way to the springs, when suddenly it was there in front of me. The light coming through the branches was as it had always been, catching me in its sickening web.

There is no reason I can give, only that the wound in my mind makes it so.

Loomer

A vine covered pole looms monstrously in the neighborhood.

(also, I've got a theme with song titles today, apparently...)

Burning Down One Side

No, the title makes no sense. The song just happens to be stuck in my head. ;p

Somewhere in the vicinity of 6th and Congress, or thereabouts....

The layers of peeling paint in the last photo tell an intriguing story.

Victoria Phantasmagoria, Out-Of Town Edition

I was very pleased to be in Austin this week. It's the only place I've ever really felt happy. Between the crowds for SXSW and the very fact that the place is purposely arty, it was hard to take many pictures that were satisfactory. It's ironic. There is so much to draw the eye, I couldn't focus on one thing. My usual method of looking for something amongst a lot of nothing did not work here.

Never mind the pictures, though, my companions and I had a lovely time. It was such a relief to feel normal. It was nice to be in a place where people smile.