Today was a dreary day. We went from no clouds, no breeze, hot days to clouds, wind, and the constant threat of rain. What a prefect day to go to a cemtery.
It was our last day in class for this trip and we talked more about The Graveyard Book and it's wonderful ending (it made some of us emotional, it's a really good ending). We then talked about the weekend and what the plans are for flying out.
Nothing lives FOREVER
Neither BODY
nor
SOLID ROCK
R I P
restless in perpetuity
I headed to the West Brompton Cemetery in order to find a "ghoul gate". A ghoul gate is something in The Graveyard Book, it's where the ghouls (and generally other baddies) come out of. It's their entrance to the living world. Here's a quote from the brook describing them:
One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals,that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.”
We were tasked to find a "ghoul gate" and talk about it. I had trouble with this. See, I understand how some people can feel anxious around certain graves and I fully believe in ghosts (every theatre is haunted and the universal theatre curse by naming one show within its walls - at the very least, every Design & Production Theatre kid believes in ghosts), but I don't feel this "ghoul-gate" when I'm in a cemetery. I believe in ghosts, and I believe in violent and angry ghosts and the creatures that would come from a ghoul gate, but I can't seem to find it. I understand Death, it's a part of Life - we all die eventually, and I try to respect the dead whenever I can (I may make jokes and such at times but in a cemetery and in places where they are actually haunted, I don't crack a single joke). Maybe part of it is that I believe that a cemetery is just a celebratory part of the cycle - where they actually died is where you need to be careful about angering them. Being at the tombstone of a violent, angry man versus being the in house he died in (and possibly died violently in), the house is where I'm uneasy, scared, and don't want to draw attention to myself.
Regardless, I tried to find a tombstone that made me feel a bit uneasy. I found one that I didn't like, a grave that was opened (see final above photo). While there is no overgrowth and you can see read the name a bit, I chose this as my ghoul gate because of it being open. Typically, in a tomb like that one, the body is actually in there (whether that is true in this case, I don't know) and the fact that it is open disturbs me. It's pure stone, extremely heavy and difficult to move and so it being open so much - it was either some prankster kids or the body inside. However, it was opened, the spirit inside got disturbed and I feel like they should just be at rest, don't disturb them, especially if they didn't do anything to you first. It being open made me sad and given how spirits react to emotions and in some stories use vulnerability to escape a resting place, I feel like the spirit inside got used by the ghouls - their rest was disturbed and because of that the ghouls were able to escape the dead realm back into the living plane and cause mischief and chaos. That spirit can never be at rest now.
On our final days of London, I thought about the entire trip. Things I did, things I'll miss, thing's I won't miss, etc.
I thought about how this trip might have changed me. I did get a great understanding of how people can live similar to you and still be a completely different place. I hope to "bring home" and continue to be understanding and do my best to be respectful of people and how different their lives are (I liked to think I was already doing this but now that I've actually experience many different people's lives in a different place, I have a newer understanding). I also learned the best ways to learn about a new place and how to use that to assimilate easier into new cultures, which will come in handy with a Cultural Anthropology degree.
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“It's just harder out there in the world of the living”
“Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.”
"About fifteen, I think. Though I still feel the same as I always did," Bod said”
“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”
