Distant as a northern star

[sovay]

The oldest gravestone still extant in the Ancient Cemetery in Yarmouth dates back to 1698, but I did not encounter it as I photographed a small selection of winged death's heads and lichen. Afterward I went back to the salt marsh where my camera with unnecessary aptness apparently died.



The oldest gravestone of which I got a picture looks like Ruth Tayler d. 1737. It is not visible over her shoulder in particular, but it was extraordinarily strange to me that someone had gone through the cemetery and put modern American flags on the graves of veterans of the American Revolutionary War.



The first one that caught my eye was Experience Tayler d. 1764—mother of the aforementioned—on account of her Puritan funerary art was particularly gnarly. I saw nothing to better it on the winged skull front.



I enjoyed how much the various blooms across the slate created an effect of agate or deep-sky photography.



I know the names of remarkably few lichens—slime mold, we can talk—but whatever was going on here looked ready for Halloween.



The sole and merely documentary shot of the fractionally higher-tide marsh because immediately afterward my camera declared itself kaput and has not revived since, even when supposedly charging off my laptop. I leaned on the rail of the boardwalk and watched the same small fish swarming and darting in the silt. I saw fiddler crabs flexing their claws from their burrows. Both species sidling under the water were invasive: the familiar and delicious green crab and the dramatically maroon-and-orange Asian shore crab whose flavor is unknown to me. I had my hair loose and it wrapped a net around me in seconds. A wide-winged gull as beautifully detailed as balsa wood curved over the boardwalk extravagantly and much less obnoxiously than the paraglider.

Judah Thacher d. 1775 had a rather bland angel at the top of his gravestone, but some unusual stars and curlicues down the sides and above all both fancy lettering and the best memento mori I saw in the entire burying ground:

Reader ſtand ſtil & Spend a Tear
Think on the duſt that Slumbers he^re
& When you think on yͤ State of me
Think on yͤ glaas that runs for yͤ

I just side-eye my camera taking it to heart.

Comments

[selkie]

…well. Okay.
*sprinkles a li’l salt around just for reasons*
Seriously, though, I hope it is not the end of your poor camera.

[nineweaving]

A lykewake for a Leica-likeness, and no lack of lichen!

I hope your poor camera is no deader than Finnegan.

Nine

[sovay]

…well. Okay.

I saw something from the car that billed itself as an Ancient Cemetery! It turned out to mean "colonially ancient," but I happen to like eighteenth-century slate headstones!

Seriously, though, I hope it is not the end of your poor camera.

I'm hoping it will be like Bertie and fisher-king itself back. I've never had another digital one. I was shooting on film before and we don't have basement rights to put a darkroom in.

[sovay]

A lykewake for a Leica-likeness, and no lack of lichen!

Here: it is not much as a composition, but you may like the one where the stone itself appears to be growing.



I hope your poor camera is no deader than Finnegan.

Thank you. I am very fond of it and it has been tenacious.

[nineweaving]

That's like a map of Scarristack!

Nine

[sovay]

That's like a map of Scarristack!

Enjoy the skerries!

[selkie]

You have almost a whole indoor bathroom you could darken, maybe, if the ceiling feels okay about it. (I think you made the correct and autumnal choice of outing!)

[thisbluespirit]

That is a great winged skull! I am so sorry about your camera, though. I mean, as you say, an apt spot, but fingers crossed you can get some life back into it. <3

[sabotabby]

I don't really want to be buried but I want a death's head gravestone covered in lichen. I guess these are not irreconcilable things to want and can probably achieve them both while alive.

[umadoshi]

Woe! I hope your camera can be coaxed back to functionality!

[lauradi7dw]

Gravestone while alive is a thing, but usually when one person of a pair died and the partner bought a double headstone for when they are together in death. Just add death date, and you're all done. My grandmother had such a stone for nearly 20 years before she died, and I have a friend who is up to 14 years now. (f*ck cancer, her partner should still be alive with her).

[sovay]

That is a great winged skull! I am so sorry about your camera, though. I mean, as you say, an apt spot, but fingers crossed you can get some life back into it.

Thank you! Maybe it will perk up when home again. At the moment it is pounding rain on the Cape, so I am still here, which I am fine with.

[sovay]

Woe! I hope your camera can be coaxed back to functionality!

Thank you! It is a beloved piece of technology!

[sovay]

I don't really want to be buried but I want a death's head gravestone covered in lichen. I guess these are not irreconcilable things to want and can probably achieve them both while alive.

I bet so. Just put up the gravestone and the lichen will take care of itself, really.

[asakiyume]

Laughing at your camera driven to death by the epitaph! Truly, there's a story in that.

Camera: The sand in mine glaas approocheth its end ... I faint... I fall ...

Sovay: Dammit.

Love in the salt marsh picture how it looks like grass and a bit of turf overlaying the sky. Anyway, what is water? What is sky?

ETA: (But I too have hopes for its resurrection!)

[sovay]

Camera: The sand in mine glaas approocheth its end ... I faint... I fall ...
Sovay: Dammit.

Just about!

Love in the salt marsh picture how it looks like grass and a bit of turf overlaying the sky. Anyway, what is water? What is sky?

Like your mural of the terrestrial and celestial bears. I love when they look so interchangeable.

ETA: (But I too have hopes for its resurrection!)

(Thank you! It seems unable to make up its mind whether it is permanently defunct or in a kind of suspended animation. To my shock, I got about five minutes out of it tonight, and then it has been unresponsive ever since.)

Not quite a flying skull

[lauradi7dw]

Margaret Shurcliff, Mount Auburn cemetery. She rang at Old North and the Church of the Advent, then veered and was a founder of a national organization of handbell choirs.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/76468299/margaret_homer-shurcliff#view-photo=48447281

Re: Not quite a flying skull

[sovay]

Margaret Shurcliff, Mount Auburn cemetery. She rang at Old North and the Church of the Advent, then veered and was a founder of a national organization of handbell choirs.

I like her choice of iconography and its blending with traditional funerary motifs! It's a good stone.