clean slate

As I walked through St Pancras and Islington Cemetery my eye was caught by the erosion and resulting texture of these now blank headstones. Running left to right across the surface, harder strands of rock gave the effect of fluttering draped organza. 

Over a century of weathering has done to these gravestones what I achieve with knitting in Close Knit: A body of work. The interred are concealed, any clues withheld. What remains is a shaped slab of memorial stone, a presence, a solid form.      

This natural effect reminded me of Victorian carved drapery and I marvel at the trick of transforming stone to gauze. Gauze led me to think about Halloween drawing near, when the veil between realms becomes thin.

mum

I have a soft spot for these aged floral tributes, showing their guts in some cases, fading, becoming brittle. As I walked to mum's grave to give her a birthday spruce up I searched for MUM on others graves. Plastic font, plastic flowers endure, real, live flowers die, their stems cast in pierced green oasis - showing that once there were flowers, once upon a time there were flowers.  

row upon row

These paths invite, eyes led to their vanishing point. The last people to visit these graves are long gone, they, their interred anonymous. What lush green, what growth! Years marked by ivy, bramble and branch.