I'm in Oakwood again...

…I CALL IT A PRACTICE SESSION…

…Oakwood is a cemetery here in East Eden, a place to hang out in solitude and quiet, or not; on a number of occasions I’ve had to crank it up so I could be sure Alexander Cushing (who took a minnie ball in the head at Antietam) and Ginny Allbee (my Friend who drowned in the Connecticut River) heard it wherever they are…not to mention the Follets, the Duttons, Chamberlins, Stebbins, Youngs and Stowells…from Antonio Vivaldi to Killer Kane to ZZ Top, Oakwood’s heard it all, but in the main the appeal is its stillness which I find cathartic, for exhilaration is brief and silence eternal; in life I’ve spent a 1000 hours in this wonderful old boneyard and after life I expect I’ll spend eternity here, for here it ends, I think. Here in Oakwood when I roll snake eyes is where I wish to lie.

…but because I think, I wonder, is that it? A box of bony ash? No Beyond? No blinding flash of eternal life-giving white light? No Hell, No Heaven, just a very small pile of dust in a very big universe…that’s it? Why bother? What was/is the point? Is there a point? To be sure I am clueless; after 65 years I have no idea, well I have ideas about what lies ahead – nothing – is my flippant and probably blasphemous guess but I’m a survived Catholic and so that Heaven and Hell schtick was deeply ingrained and I (un)consciously sweat the latter…I’m desperate for diversion…

I crank up Telemann’s Tafelmusik and the gossamer wraiths of a 1000 dead twirl ecstatically in their habiliments of death through the flower-strewn paths of Oakwood…