Don’t Blink

“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.” ~Neil Gaiman

I went hunting in the local cemetery  for some weeping angels this morning. They are, by far, the scariest “monsters” in my opinion. That most recent episode of Doctor Who was mega creepy. Baby angels? Giant liberty angel? *shudder*

I found some angels and a cupid, but none were actually weeping.

I don’t find cemeteries creepy. I have lived in a few houses near them in my time. Not intentionally, but I did enjoy the quiet, alone time that a walk through one offers.

My walk today was through the older section of our local. There were so many crumbling stones and tangles weeds. A lot of these graves no longer have visitors. I felt a bit sad for that.

I wonder what the style of graves will be in the future. In the past they were huge shrines with statues, pillars and cast iron fences. Now that are square marble pillars, except for that one I saw made of natural stone. That was really nice.

Will we even have graves in the future or will everyone be cremated?

   

   

      

      

      

Any Village, Town or City

“I don’t think anyone can be more of a predator than a human being.”~Robert Rodriguez

Last week our newspapers were awash with the tragic story of Jill Meagher.

A cautionary tale of being in a place you thought was safe, but it turning out not to be.

This morning I got up, took the kids to daycare and then came home to go for my jog. I altered my jogging course today. Made it a bit shorter, skipped the bush leg of the track and opted for a blocky in my neighbourhood. It was a glorious run that had me thinking that I lived in paradise. The weather was sublime and the air smelled delicious.

This afternoon my Facebook had multiple stories/warnings of a man who had approached two women (separately) walking their dogs at about 7pm on Monday night in that very same bush section I skipped this morning. Maybe I will be skipping that bush section more often.

It makes me angry. That one guy on Sydney road made a whole lot of people suddenly worry about the area. This one guy in a tracksuit on my jogging track has got me thinking about new places to run where there are lots more people. Really, the reason I (and probably a lot of other people) go there is because there aren’t cars and lots of other people. He is taking away my ability to feel safe. Making me think about getting a can of Mace to take jogging or something equally crazy.

I took these photos at 7pm tonight. One is of the east, and one of the west. It’s not even dark out.

It takes one predator to ruin something.

In any village, town or city.

 

 

Cosmos

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ~Carl Sagan

Thursday just gone was the last choir rehearsal of term 3. We always have a really relaxed session and then go to the wine bar after.

I love going to choir. There are so many interesting people. People I might not of gotten to know if I hadn’t joined the choir. I joined the choir shortly after moving up here. I am a music teacher and really enjoy singing, but my main reason for joining the choir was to meet people outside of “mummy world”. It worked. I highly recommend finding some kind or group activity that is outside or your usual social circle. I always come home feeling refreshed.

Anyway, after a couple of wines I got home at about 11pm and saw that the sky was amazing. It’s been such a long cold winter of constant cloud cover that I guess I had forgotten about the stars up here. It was like an Apple OS desktop picture. I just went off into a little dreamland for a few minutes contemplating the cosmos. I felt positively miniscule.

I’ve never tried to take photos of the stars with a digital camera before (I did a long exposure with a film camera once that showed the movement of the stars over 4 hours….) and was pretty excited that it worked out! In the future I hope to go take some pictures where there are no street lights.