Fire and Hemlock

No, no hemlock involved, really. Only the burning of an ancient tree in the garden.

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.

.

Random Fogginess

Different streets, Different fogs...

The shape of the mistletoe second from the bottom reminds me of Zorak. :p

January Fog

There were lots of foggy nights this January, lots of opportunities to practice making pictures. Still lots of things I haven't learned to manage yet. Still, it's been fun.

At The Cemetery Gate

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the cemetery - it being that sort of gray, gloomy day that compels one to hang about the cemetery, you know.

At the gate, a black plastic bag was caught in this tree's branches. It rattled in the wind like some hapless spirit. It seemed eerie, somehow.

A Place Only Fit To Leave

Reality rears its ugly head.

So this week I finally acquired a new printer and scanner. I knew another one was needed in order to start putting this art project together in some cohesive form, but I hadn't exactly been aggressive about finding one.

Just how passive I'd been became clear when I'd got the thing plugged in and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do. All these drawings, photos, half finished texts attempting to say something about the place I live, all with the vaguest of themes - what to do with them? Especially when vagueness is the theme, pretty much.

It's an art project, not history. Well, it's supposed to be art. :p But it's definitely not history. That would be easy. This town is in love with its history, at least the parts (as per usual) written by the winners. Art is different, and making art about a place that's only fit to leave is not easy.

Working in an atmosphere of pervasive hopelessness is not easy, either.

In that light, my passive avoidance makes a little more sense.

The truth, according to Ms. Phantasmagoria

Had I wanted to document the ugliness and decay of a dying town, that would have been easy, too. But It's something else I'm after, and it's the thing so many others seem to overlook. It's also in the way they overlook it.

This town is weird, and not in a nice, cool, quirky way. Under its utterly boring surface of nowhere to go and nothing to do, its disorienting and discomforting nature permeates. Insanity breeds like the stray cats in my neighborhood. There is a darkness that underlies everything. Maybe it's the isolation. Maybe it's the barren flatness, the humidity, or maybe it's even toxic marsh gas, for all I know. These explanations are as good as any. It's a place where people have either crash-landed or never had the will to leave in the first place. The rest bide their time until they can get out, hopefully before they're drained of their life force and any self-confidence they ever had.

Underneath the crime, poverty, despair and the seamless insistence from city officials that everything is fine, just fine in our lovely town, thank-you-very-much, something else leaks out. Whatever it is, it's creepy as hell. And you aren't supposed to talk about it.

Which leads me where I am today, with a messy attempt to capture something unseen and hard to define, the "truth" of the place as I see it, which you aren't supposed to discuss and a good portion of the population is too miserable or insane to care. I could collect all this work into a book, write and design it to the best of my ability, make it as good and clever as I possibly can, and what I have at the end of the day is a book that even the local library wouldn't carry. :/

But then I must reconsider. This project is not a labor of love. It's a distraction from the hate. It's an attempt to make something of value where art has no value. It's mine alone, good or bad as it is. And if there is one thing this place trucks in, it is hopelessness. If I give in, I become like the others who've lost their will to care. There is already too much of that here. I don't want to go any further down that road.

There's nothing left to do but work.

* I know the photo at the top is unrelated to the post (except inasmuch as i made both of them) I thought of using a photo of a slug or palmetto bug to express my feelings, but that's just gross.

Gaslit

These pictures are very cropped, but I do like the mood of them.

It's also interesting that once again, here is a fence that keeps others out and a doorway to let them in.

This Church Doesn't Want To Be Photographed...

Though I kept trying anyway.

Allow me to explain.

Searching my neighborhood for something interesting to draw, paint or photograph isn't easy. Well, the roaming is fine, if you don't mind suspicious people constantly asking what you're doing and the cops circling you in their patrol cars. :p But as for interesting, that's a toughie. Sometimes I find myself looking for grafitti or new piles of rubble near the crackhouse in desperation. Often I find myself scouting out the church down the block, hoping for some new, previously unseen angle that might make a nice picture.

I've been doing this for about three years and still haven't managed it. Every time I think I've got a shot - this Gothic archway here, or that stained glass window there, it turns out I've got nada. Just a mess. The one time I almost got a good shot, the lens was covered in pollen, so it just seemed to be surrounded by ghostly orbs. Typical. :/ And it was definitely pollen, not ghosts. If I had to choose the local church most likely to be haunted, it would not be this one.

It's a Lutheran church, not especially old, as these things go. It's fairly plain, with a mishmash of styles, thanks to the additions and annexes that just aren't in keeping with the original structure.

My brother tells me that this is because whichever minister is in charge at the time chooses the designs, and there might be a number of ministers with differing taste over the years...hence the muddle one often sees in sprawling American churches.

Anyway, there is nothing at all spooky or unnerving about this place. Especially as I was raised (sort of) Lutheran and associate Lutherans with our hippie guitar-playing minister, who sang folk songs and went around cheerfully shouting "peace" and "shalom!" to everyone. There is nothing sinister to me about Lutherans. And there are a few other churches in the neighborhood that are far more imposing than this one. I never had a problem getting great pics of those, either.

I came to the conclusion that the church simply doesn't want to be photographed a few weeks ago, when I went down specially to try again. I was going to get a half-decent, somewhat interesting shot of this church. It was a matter of pride. It was a challenge.

I came back with some of the worst photos I'd ever taken. I hadn't even managed to capture the back steps or the service entrance door. It was a humbling moment.The church had won. I began to wonder if the church didn't like me and was showing its displeasure by refusing to cooperate. (If you had seen these photos, dear reader, you would understand why I had begun to take this personally. :p) After all, my parents had lapsed from the church and we children had all wandered on to different faiths in time.

Leave it to me to find religious guilt in some failed photographs. Ha.

Well, there wasn't much more to do about it, I had tried my best and failed. I wasn't going to bother trying again. However, it so happened the other night that my companion and I had to pass this church on the way to our destination, and he said, "hey, what's that in the window?" so of course I looked and the urge to grab the camera overcame me once again. Maybe just a picture of the window? Just so we could possibly make out what that odd shape was?

When I uploaded the pics later, all of them looked entirely black. Typical. :/

Seriously, this was beginning to seem supernatural. No one sucks at photography that bad!

I was bored though, and started playing with different photo effects just to see what would happen. And that's how I got this:

Now I kind of wish I hadn't. O Lutheran Church, I totally underestimated your ability to creep me out.

Some Alterations

I still have a lot of trouble with knowing the right way to crop a photo, or how much alteration is too much. I guess I would rather have something pleasing to my eye rather that something that's properly "artistic"? I don't even mind blurriness like is present in some of the photos. The feeling of a place is more important than actual visual information to me, but I can see how this might be irritating to outside viewers.

Subterranean Light

An underground light near the bank. This particular bank branch is closed now, but the lights in the drive-through stay on through the night.