Laser B'Omer and Cemetery Walks
2020-May-12, Tuesday 12:32![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Happy Lag B'Omer, the holiday where Jews light bonfires, remember the students of Rabbi Akiva who were killed in a plague which may or may not be a metaphor for remembering the people who died in the Bar Kochka Rebellion of 132 CE, hold weddings, play with archery, cut our hair, and emerge from our caves and turn our laser eyes on those who are too concerned with worldly matters rather than the eternal study of Torah.
You think I'm joking?
Obviously, during the Plague Year all we can do is use our laser eyes, so watch out.
Just got another email from work, saying that work from home is extending into June, but they can't say for how long. We're stuck in germ jail at least through the end of the month, and they rightly point out that some people might not be comfortable riding mass transit or being in the office if they're vulnerable to coronavirus or live with someone who does. I don't, and I don't have any comorbidities that I know of other than having had pneumonia when I was a teenager, so I would actually be fine going into work and riding the L if they did reopen the office. But I'm not going to complain if I get to sit on the couch with my laptop for longer, like I'm doing right now.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd been walking in the cemetery nearby, and that tradition continues. Since that post I've gone a couple more times, with![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
worldbshiny and with ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
britshlez, and last time I went I took pictures! Here's a few:
This is probably the most Memento Mori grave I saw during my walk around the cemetery. There's generally a pretty good separation between the trees and the graves, because unlike Rosehill Cemetery there aren't that many trees there in the first place, but when I saw this I had to take the photo. This is the end to which we all come, to be laid to rest and have new life born from our shells. Dust to dust.
Game Over Return of Ganon
I always wonder about mausoleums. They look really impressive, but does anyone build them nowadays? Aren't they more for when you could ensure that your whole family would live in the same place for a long period of time, so that they could also be interred in the ancestral crypts? How much of a market is there for them? Looking it up, it seems like they're more common than I thought, since a free-standing building above ground can take up less space than series of underground graves, which is especially valuable in a densely-populated area like Chicago. Maybe I should go in with some friends on a mausoleum, the way every millennial just wants to live in a commune with their friends so they can have plenty of living space and people close by.
I really like how the guy on the left is holding a church.
The mundane explanation for this is probably that Margaret moved away and died and was buried elsewhere after the death of her husband and child and no one ever came back to update the grave, but I like to think it's because she's a vampire.
Did she turn to the night in despair after the death of her only living family, thinking that if death were to be so cruel to her, she would defy death itself and sustain herself on the blood of the living? Were her family killed by a vampire, who was performing a test on her to see if she could handle the all of life's cruelties arriving at once, and when she did not submit they granted her the Embrace? Or did she kill them herself--when she was Embraced, she wiped out all remnants of her former life so she would have no reminder of her mortal past and could truly become a predator?
We may never know.
It's sunny today, but still a bit chilly (13 °C), but that's not why I won't go on a long walk today. I'm waiting for a delivery from Takara Sake, which is currently out for delivery. It's mostly cooking mirin, which thanks to American liquor laws I still have to be present to sign for it, but since I already had to be present to sign for it anyway I went ahead and ordered a bunch of sake too. I don't drink by myself, but by the time we're out of germ jail, my liquor cabinet is going to be extremely well-stocked.
And now, lunch time. 🧇
You think I'm joking?
Obviously, during the Plague Year all we can do is use our laser eyes, so watch out.
Just got another email from work, saying that work from home is extending into June, but they can't say for how long. We're stuck in germ jail at least through the end of the month, and they rightly point out that some people might not be comfortable riding mass transit or being in the office if they're vulnerable to coronavirus or live with someone who does. I don't, and I don't have any comorbidities that I know of other than having had pneumonia when I was a teenager, so I would actually be fine going into work and riding the L if they did reopen the office. But I'm not going to complain if I get to sit on the couch with my laptop for longer, like I'm doing right now.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd been walking in the cemetery nearby, and that tradition continues. Since that post I've gone a couple more times, with
britshlez, and last time I went I took pictures! Here's a few:This is probably the most Memento Mori grave I saw during my walk around the cemetery. There's generally a pretty good separation between the trees and the graves, because unlike Rosehill Cemetery there aren't that many trees there in the first place, but when I saw this I had to take the photo. This is the end to which we all come, to be laid to rest and have new life born from our shells. Dust to dust.
Game Over Return of Ganon
I always wonder about mausoleums. They look really impressive, but does anyone build them nowadays? Aren't they more for when you could ensure that your whole family would live in the same place for a long period of time, so that they could also be interred in the ancestral crypts? How much of a market is there for them? Looking it up, it seems like they're more common than I thought, since a free-standing building above ground can take up less space than series of underground graves, which is especially valuable in a densely-populated area like Chicago. Maybe I should go in with some friends on a mausoleum, the way every millennial just wants to live in a commune with their friends so they can have plenty of living space and people close by.
I really like how the guy on the left is holding a church.
The mundane explanation for this is probably that Margaret moved away and died and was buried elsewhere after the death of her husband and child and no one ever came back to update the grave, but I like to think it's because she's a vampire.
Did she turn to the night in despair after the death of her only living family, thinking that if death were to be so cruel to her, she would defy death itself and sustain herself on the blood of the living? Were her family killed by a vampire, who was performing a test on her to see if she could handle the all of life's cruelties arriving at once, and when she did not submit they granted her the Embrace? Or did she kill them herself--when she was Embraced, she wiped out all remnants of her former life so she would have no reminder of her mortal past and could truly become a predator?
We may never know.
It's sunny today, but still a bit chilly (13 °C), but that's not why I won't go on a long walk today. I'm waiting for a delivery from Takara Sake, which is currently out for delivery. It's mostly cooking mirin, which thanks to American liquor laws I still have to be present to sign for it, but since I already had to be present to sign for it anyway I went ahead and ordered a bunch of sake too. I don't drink by myself, but by the time we're out of germ jail, my liquor cabinet is going to be extremely well-stocked.
And now, lunch time. 🧇
