July 27, 2009
Cemetery Lost-N-Found
Filed under: One A Day
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Whenever we walk to the local cemetery there's always something waiting to be discovered.
Sometimes it's fresh roadkill, just missing eyes. Sometimes it's a nurse's blue and white top (hanging inexplicably from a wooden post). Sometimes it's a black currant bush exploding between four graves. Sometimes it's a wheel off a toy, a broken piece of statue, a polished rock, shards of antique pottery or a discarded Jurassic Park 3-D coloring book.
(HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY JUNKYARD WITCHCRAFT WHERE EVERY RUSTY, WATERLOGGED PIECE OF TRASH THAT CROSSES MY PATH IS A PROPHETIC OMEN OF A FUTURE WAITING TO HAPPEN.)
On a recent graveyard trip - not the last visit, but the one before (an unintentional visit; we were out photographing the sunrise over the hills and lakes of dissipating mists and decided, all spur of the moment like, to pop round for a visit) - we found a black currant bush nestled between two sets of graves.
While considering the possibilities (while considering the NON-CULINARY possibilities of black currants since I HATE AND LOATHE THE TASTE OF BLACK CURRANTS DOWN TO THE VERY PIT OF MY (IM)MORTAL SOUL) we ambled around the cemetery until we were at the edges of the cremation section where I found a dusty, dirtied black bottle half sunk in Scottish summer mud.
Too far removed from the memorial plaques there was no way to connect it to its proper owner so it was gingerly tucked into my basket (I originally intended to harvest the last of the elderflowers but I got distracted, hence the rural chic basket outing) along with a broken penny we found en route to the graveyard.
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(But what should I do with it? Clean it up and give it as a gift (filled with graveyard dirt or some other witchery)? Clean it up and keep it for myself (peacocks are kind've sort've a significant spiritual animal thing for me)? Christ only knows. For now it's sitting on my nightstand altar behind my Apis Bull statue, holding the dry spray of flowers I wore in my hair on Midsummer.)
What does an American witch in Scotland carry in her Easter basket on an unplanned graveyard walk at five in the morning? The camera's tripod, a bottle of still water, an unearthed cemetery treasure, a mongoloid Pacman created out of a copper coin, her ritual shears wrapped up in their still bloody covering (I keep the kitchen scissors wrapped up in the unwashed towel I used to staunch the bleeding after I stabbed myself with the shears) and a dying buff-tailed bumblebee, quivering and shaking in its dampness as it slowly crawls off its yarrow deathbed and curls into the folds of her blood stained kitchen towel.
(It's magic, baby.)
