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lwoodOh, hullo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tomobedlam! Welcome to my friends' list...
Religious/necromantic nuttery content, but nothing particularly sensitive, so no lock. If the idea of someone consentually chatting up dead people is a creep-out for you, then don't click, you wet blanket. 8-P
Waaaaaay back in mid-November, just after I returned from Florida (guh, Florida, see previous entries), several of us went to a picnic in a local graveyard.
In Oakland's semi-autonomous Piedmont neighborhood (it's complicated) there are two large cemeteries back to back. Diana (that's Diana Paxson to our new readers), to honor the dead and some of the powers she works with, has "adopted" a grave in an unendowed corner of the cemetery. As it's unendowed, there's no money for its continued upkeep, so it's not landscaped or anything. Actually, it used to be all overgrown until they cleared out the underbrush for a firehazard some time this past year. The stone, too, has either broken off or worn away so thoroughly that the name of the interred is no longer at all legible, making it a sort of... Tomb of the Unknown Dead.
So we go there and have a picnic, cheerfully macabre while dressed in lots of black. Actually, I did a similar with a Voudoun group a couple years ago, only with one of their people in trance for Papa Ghede (Voudoun lwa of sex & death), but all of this, really, is only to set the scene: here we are, a bunch of people susceptible to various and sundry trance states, including "hey, let's chat up dead people," are having a picnic in a cemetery.
I got no weird pings on the way up, but this is probably because it was, in fact, UP, as in uphill, and there's nothing quite like physical exertion to cement one in here-and-now (in most cases, your-damn-mileage-will-vary, contents may shift during flight, whatever). At the graveside, we put the low concrete site-surrounding curb back together, said some words to a few Folks, and again this roused nothing unexpected. We ate a lovely picnic lunch with a cloth spread on the grave: fried chicken, nuts, and all manner of things. A raven watched us for awhile from a treetop, croaked his greeting, and flew away.
Near the end of it, we found some mugwort (oooo, mugwort from a cemetery, that'll get you some right quiet rest, yessireebob), and picked a little to dry for dream pillows. We spread a few of the leftovers as offerings to the local spirits, buried the spent bones as a further offering to the underground contingent, then packed up the rest of our trash and leftovers and started back down the hill.
Mind you, we took our time, meandering down the hill of the Mountain View Cemetery. We scoped out interesting crypts and decided what sort of vampires might live in each. We said things like, "Oooh, that Merritt" and "ooh, those Ghirardellis," and floated the idea of a pilgrimage to Colma...
... oh, wait. I should explain Colma. Here, a handy sidebar.
Then we started meandering around the graves of the hoi polloi. Specifically, a plot was cited that was said to be the childrens' plot, for the kids not buried with their families.
I could hear them. It sounded like a playground in full tilt recess, only as heard from inside the schoolhouse. Shouting and calling in high-piping voices, but nothing distinct or quite intelligible.
I tried to stop and listen for a good few seconds, the way one does with voices that seem to be just the next room over, until I realised I wasn't necessarily hearing them with my physical ears. And, well, directly after that I realised it was no damn surprise that I should be hearing dead people; duh, hello, trained to chat up dead people.
Once we left the childrens' plot, it no longer sounded like a school playground at recess. No, now that I was sort-of listening, it was the faint and murmurous whispers of a conversation held in the next room. No raised voices, obviously the tone of perfectly normal conversation, none of that oogabooga from The Sixth Sense. I was still sure that if I just stood and listened for a moment...
No, no, no! There are rules! And the rules say we don't talk to the dead people unless we've done this laundry list of things that ends up with--
oh. right.
Going through a gate. Specifically, the eastern gate of Helheim. Orrrr...
That nice gate there. The one at the entrance to the cemetery. geez, Lorrie, duh.
"Diana," I declared sunnily, "either we leave soon, or we start singing that song." (Specifically, the one that tells the seeress in a Hrafnar-style oracular seidh session that it's okay to sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, answer questions, and oyeah, chat up dead people)
"... Right." We meandered slightly faster; I don't think her head was much clearer, really, although I don't think she heard them even as (un)clearly as I did. I had to be talked out of lingering overlong in a columbarium (a place to keep cremated remains, sort of a File Cabinet of the Dead) and wondering at how different that sounded compared to the normal interments, but happily that was close to the gate.
Actually, that was the first time I'd been in a cemetery for any length of time since I started this particular line of Work, especially since I showed any particular affinity for the "chatting up dead people" part of the seeress gig. At least it's not Laurel, who has done pinch-hit psychopompery while driving by roadside accidents.
As we neared the cemetery gates, I paused a moment to hail those buried there, and thank them for sharing their space with us.
Unsurprisingly, as I walked back through the gate, the noise dropped off to nearly nothing. I visualized the gate to Hel closing behind me just to make sure, and ran myself through a ground-and-center routine to make even more sure, although I was still floaty for a bit afterwards.
Diana did me one better, though: she attempted to drive off with the back of her station wagon open!
We adjourned to Greyhaven for tea and picnic leftovers while we swapped ghost stories.
Y'know, I like my life. Ever since I decided that, since I couldn't possibly be normal as a result of Extra-Sufficient Brain, I should be weird, it just been getting more interesting ever since.
Adieux!
-- Lorrie
Colma footnote follows:
San Francisco is a small city in terms of square mileage. It's the tip of a peninsula, seven miles from north to south, and again from east to west.
About a hundred years ago, the town fathers opined that they were running out of space in the City and County of San Francisco, and wondered what to do about it.
The answer was obvious(?). Cemeteries take up way too much space, so let's relocate all the dead people!
So, all the dead of San Francisco who were not interred on federal land (e.g., The Presidio) were exhumed and ferried, with all due and appropriate ceremony, a few miles south of San Francisco to new and fair cemeteries in a charming locale, set in rolling hills, and were replanted.
The result is the City of Colma, a vasty necropolis with an above-ground population of 1500.
The belowground population (including crypts and columbaria, yes, let's not be picky) is somewhere over one million.
In the City of Colma, the law used to be that the only permitted businesses are florists, monument works, funeral homes, and cemeteries. It still mostly is, as the shopping centers, car dealership, and card room are all on the edge of things. At its heart, Colma truly is a necropolis. The dead people and the shopping give the town fathers of Colma such a ridiculous tax base that they keep having to figure out new and improved ways to deal with the surplus, including "free cable for all residents," which recently got upgraded to "with free HBO," with the joke that this was so they could catch "Six Feet Under," a series set in a mortuary. Colma residents get grants for minor housing repairs.
(They may have repealed that law, actually. Just looked at the Colma city website and they burble happily about the car dealership (look! a way to get more interred residents!), the card room, and the shopping.)
There are bus tours of the cemeteries of Colma.
Well, it does have Emperor Norton...
Anyway, Colma is full of cool dead people and its existence is a fascinating quirk. Here endeth the lesson. Back to the Story.
tomobedlam! Welcome to my friends' list...Religious/necromantic nuttery content, but nothing particularly sensitive, so no lock. If the idea of someone consentually chatting up dead people is a creep-out for you, then don't click, you wet blanket. 8-P
Waaaaaay back in mid-November, just after I returned from Florida (guh, Florida, see previous entries), several of us went to a picnic in a local graveyard.
In Oakland's semi-autonomous Piedmont neighborhood (it's complicated) there are two large cemeteries back to back. Diana (that's Diana Paxson to our new readers), to honor the dead and some of the powers she works with, has "adopted" a grave in an unendowed corner of the cemetery. As it's unendowed, there's no money for its continued upkeep, so it's not landscaped or anything. Actually, it used to be all overgrown until they cleared out the underbrush for a firehazard some time this past year. The stone, too, has either broken off or worn away so thoroughly that the name of the interred is no longer at all legible, making it a sort of... Tomb of the Unknown Dead.
So we go there and have a picnic, cheerfully macabre while dressed in lots of black. Actually, I did a similar with a Voudoun group a couple years ago, only with one of their people in trance for Papa Ghede (Voudoun lwa of sex & death), but all of this, really, is only to set the scene: here we are, a bunch of people susceptible to various and sundry trance states, including "hey, let's chat up dead people," are having a picnic in a cemetery.
I got no weird pings on the way up, but this is probably because it was, in fact, UP, as in uphill, and there's nothing quite like physical exertion to cement one in here-and-now (in most cases, your-damn-mileage-will-vary, contents may shift during flight, whatever). At the graveside, we put the low concrete site-surrounding curb back together, said some words to a few Folks, and again this roused nothing unexpected. We ate a lovely picnic lunch with a cloth spread on the grave: fried chicken, nuts, and all manner of things. A raven watched us for awhile from a treetop, croaked his greeting, and flew away.
Near the end of it, we found some mugwort (oooo, mugwort from a cemetery, that'll get you some right quiet rest, yessireebob), and picked a little to dry for dream pillows. We spread a few of the leftovers as offerings to the local spirits, buried the spent bones as a further offering to the underground contingent, then packed up the rest of our trash and leftovers and started back down the hill.
Mind you, we took our time, meandering down the hill of the Mountain View Cemetery. We scoped out interesting crypts and decided what sort of vampires might live in each. We said things like, "Oooh, that Merritt" and "ooh, those Ghirardellis," and floated the idea of a pilgrimage to Colma...
... oh, wait. I should explain Colma. Here, a handy sidebar.
Then we started meandering around the graves of the hoi polloi. Specifically, a plot was cited that was said to be the childrens' plot, for the kids not buried with their families.
I could hear them. It sounded like a playground in full tilt recess, only as heard from inside the schoolhouse. Shouting and calling in high-piping voices, but nothing distinct or quite intelligible.
I tried to stop and listen for a good few seconds, the way one does with voices that seem to be just the next room over, until I realised I wasn't necessarily hearing them with my physical ears. And, well, directly after that I realised it was no damn surprise that I should be hearing dead people; duh, hello, trained to chat up dead people.
Once we left the childrens' plot, it no longer sounded like a school playground at recess. No, now that I was sort-of listening, it was the faint and murmurous whispers of a conversation held in the next room. No raised voices, obviously the tone of perfectly normal conversation, none of that oogabooga from The Sixth Sense. I was still sure that if I just stood and listened for a moment...
No, no, no! There are rules! And the rules say we don't talk to the dead people unless we've done this laundry list of things that ends up with--
oh. right.
Going through a gate. Specifically, the eastern gate of Helheim. Orrrr...
That nice gate there. The one at the entrance to the cemetery. geez, Lorrie, duh.
"Diana," I declared sunnily, "either we leave soon, or we start singing that song." (Specifically, the one that tells the seeress in a Hrafnar-style oracular seidh session that it's okay to sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, answer questions, and oyeah, chat up dead people)
"... Right." We meandered slightly faster; I don't think her head was much clearer, really, although I don't think she heard them even as (un)clearly as I did. I had to be talked out of lingering overlong in a columbarium (a place to keep cremated remains, sort of a File Cabinet of the Dead) and wondering at how different that sounded compared to the normal interments, but happily that was close to the gate.
Actually, that was the first time I'd been in a cemetery for any length of time since I started this particular line of Work, especially since I showed any particular affinity for the "chatting up dead people" part of the seeress gig. At least it's not Laurel, who has done pinch-hit psychopompery while driving by roadside accidents.
As we neared the cemetery gates, I paused a moment to hail those buried there, and thank them for sharing their space with us.
Unsurprisingly, as I walked back through the gate, the noise dropped off to nearly nothing. I visualized the gate to Hel closing behind me just to make sure, and ran myself through a ground-and-center routine to make even more sure, although I was still floaty for a bit afterwards.
Diana did me one better, though: she attempted to drive off with the back of her station wagon open!
We adjourned to Greyhaven for tea and picnic leftovers while we swapped ghost stories.
Y'know, I like my life. Ever since I decided that, since I couldn't possibly be normal as a result of Extra-Sufficient Brain, I should be weird, it just been getting more interesting ever since.
Adieux!
-- Lorrie
Colma footnote follows:
San Francisco is a small city in terms of square mileage. It's the tip of a peninsula, seven miles from north to south, and again from east to west.
About a hundred years ago, the town fathers opined that they were running out of space in the City and County of San Francisco, and wondered what to do about it.
The answer was obvious(?). Cemeteries take up way too much space, so let's relocate all the dead people!
So, all the dead of San Francisco who were not interred on federal land (e.g., The Presidio) were exhumed and ferried, with all due and appropriate ceremony, a few miles south of San Francisco to new and fair cemeteries in a charming locale, set in rolling hills, and were replanted.
The result is the City of Colma, a vasty necropolis with an above-ground population of 1500.
The belowground population (including crypts and columbaria, yes, let's not be picky) is somewhere over one million.
In the City of Colma, the law used to be that the only permitted businesses are florists, monument works, funeral homes, and cemeteries. It still mostly is, as the shopping centers, car dealership, and card room are all on the edge of things. At its heart, Colma truly is a necropolis. The dead people and the shopping give the town fathers of Colma such a ridiculous tax base that they keep having to figure out new and improved ways to deal with the surplus, including "free cable for all residents," which recently got upgraded to "with free HBO," with the joke that this was so they could catch "Six Feet Under," a series set in a mortuary. Colma residents get grants for minor housing repairs.
(They may have repealed that law, actually. Just looked at the Colma city website and they burble happily about the car dealership (look! a way to get more interred residents!), the card room, and the shopping.)
There are bus tours of the cemeteries of Colma.
Well, it does have Emperor Norton...
Anyway, Colma is full of cool dead people and its existence is a fascinating quirk. Here endeth the lesson. Back to the Story.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 05:45 am (UTC)I'm curious as to how the columbarium sounded different from the in-ground interments. We have a small columbarium at our church; I think most of the people there right now are Chinese, so even if I could hear them, I might not understand what they were talking about.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:20 am (UTC)I dunno, I thought the picnic idea was completely respectable, giving a little respect, having a memento mori moment.
The necromancy, now, that's weird, and I know it, and I thank you for your respect. ;)
The File Room of the Dead? Well, they were aboveground and next to me as opposed to under it, for one. Cremation did something I can't really describe to their "voices," but I'm not sure what as I was deliberately trying not to listen too closely, as that would put me into a deeper trance state than was warranted by our current activity.
We have a small columbarium at our church; I think most of the people there right now are Chinese, so even if I could hear them, I might not understand what they were talking about.
*cough* I don't think it matters particularly once you're dead. I know of one case where someone went looking for a helpful ancestral spirit and found some umpty-centuries-old Frisian, for example, and language wasn't an issue. The symbol sets might be deucedly hard to reconcile, getting yourself to where you can listen more so, but the actual language? Easiest part.
[Disclaimer: While I do believe in all this shit, I may well be putting us all on -- including me.]
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:23 am (UTC)You're saying once you drop the need for physical speech, and thus a series of sounds representing a concept, you can skip straight to the concepts themselves as communication. Any translation to language is within one's own brain, and then the problem becomes what the concepts themselves symbolize, because beyond the sounds of language are the metaphors?
--Ember--
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:36 am (UTC)However, I remember in my first few times talking to gods in Otherspace, they would say something, and they'd "hear" me repeating it back to myself, and correct me when I hadn't picked quite the right word to depict what they said. This got even more interesting when one "word" got a chord of English in response... but I learned to cope.
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:03 am (UTC)And yes, you do learn to cope. In my case, mostly by stretching my brain around a few concepts I hadn't even realized EXISTED before that.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 12:33 pm (UTC)I'm reminded of Spock from Star Trek IV: "It would be impossible to discuss the subject [being dead] without a common frame of reference."
Although I'd add that a common vocabulary and an openness about the experience will do in a pinch...
And yes, you do learn to cope. In my case, mostly by stretching my brain around a few concepts I hadn't even realized EXISTED before that.
Mmhm...
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 12:39 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 04:05 pm (UTC)There is this whole realm of speculation where one's brain is formed by the language one speaks. It's a mind-bender, but very appropriate.
The thing is, the spirits will speak to you in ways that you can understand. Thus my Belgian friend *does* regularly get messages in her native tongue, and then has to translate them into English in orderto pass them along. Myself, I speak English, so the spirits and I tend to communicate in ways that will allow my brain to comprehend what is going on.
Now - the spirits *also* speak to me in visuals, audial cues, and with olfactory overtones. This gets confusing as Hel in no time ;) Mostly the problem comes when trying to explain to *someone else* what you are being told. Like...
The banking of a wing tipped in moonlight. Crisp autumn and the smell of brittle leaves and earth beginning to sleep. Overhead the midnight sky with a hint of crescent moon and the bird, the bird flies silent, owl after the prey. Anticipation and hunger, the sharpness of pine needles and a rustle. Stoop and swiftly into the darkness disappear with a mouse still swuirming in your beak, warm blood salt-coppery on your tounge.
Now...that might be the answer to something like..."What should I do?"
And it's MY job to tell the person...hunt wisely.
Seriously.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 03:22 am (UTC)formed by the language one speaks. It's a mind-bender, but very appropriate.
I have never quite believed this - if it's true, wouldn't I never be able to think of things I couldn't say?
-------------
Yes, I'm quite familiar with the difficulty of translating the meaning behind images - I keep a rather extensive, but by no means complete, dream journal.
--Ember--
no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 04:45 am (UTC)I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the language theory - but it is worth taking a serious look at. I *will* say that I have noticed distinct socioeconomic strata within language...but that is another discussion altogether.
And a dream journal is helpful, yes.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:23 am (UTC)http://www.theonion.com/3947/opinion1.html
[Title: No, Jesus is My Personal Savior!]
-- L
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 12:39 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 05:51 am (UTC)this is why I keep myself "locked up" as it were. there's a nice old graveyard down the street from me that I inevitably pass when going to and from the bus every day. (well, I could not pass it but that'd make the walk much longer than necessary) Though I do regularly look at a few select tombstones whenever I pass. Maybe at some future time slice I'll have a picnic there.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:21 am (UTC)I noticed that when I started.
Bite me. 8-P
I've driven by those gates lots of times and it's never been a problem. They seem to be fairly well-contained in Piedmont...
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:32 am (UTC)I wish the cemetary I passed was so well-locked. people walk their dogs in there.
at the least I am thinking of leaving some rum, smoke and an eggplant at the gate sometime soon.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:34 am (UTC)Actually, I know a Ghede song whose words pretty much come down to, "Hi, Papa Ghede, here's your little dog, I didn't eat it, it's all for you."
So the dogs might be good for *something*...
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 08:04 am (UTC)Introduction B!
Date: 2003-12-03 12:43 pm (UTC)Also, she writes quite steamy slash fiction and is kept by pretty birdies, although none of them say "Nevermore!"
The converse has been done for you in a response to her, naturally.
-- Lorrie
Introduction, pt 1
Date: 2003-12-03 12:40 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie will obviously do the converse in a reply to
sounds good...
Date: 2003-12-03 02:04 pm (UTC)just curious
Re: sounds good...
Date: 2003-12-03 03:02 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie