All Souls’ Day experience

It was fabulous to experience the Halloween but the day after there was All Saints’ Day and I was about to visit the cemetery. And NYC surprised me with that once more. Finding a graveyard is not such an easy deal as you would think (you know, comparing with the European metropolises). At Manhattan there is almost none of them besides some small churchyards, and I was looking for something big, with famous habitants, nice sculptures and atmosphere (Pere Lachaise, Powązki, Hietaniemi..). There is of course something like that – the Greenwoods cemetery in Brooklyn which in nineteenth century was the most popular tourist attraction of the US. Even more visited than Niagara Falls, can you imagine!? Well, at the epoch. Because today the most fascinating thing about Greenwoods is how it came to be so forgotten and abandoned place.

First it was not easy to find that it exists, then how to get there. I must say that waking up after Halloween night was not painless. But when we finally did it and after one hour in the metro when we ended up in front of the cemetery gate it was already closed and before we found another one which should be open longer it got dimmer and of course it was also closed. Well we had about a one hour walk along the graveyard’s fence. Quite scenic walk after all: from one side the English garden style graveyard with its idealized views, from another the postindustrial area of railroads, magazines and tracks' parking going down to the Brooklyn harbor. And in addition the view to the Manhattan sky towers and harbor and Liberty Statue on the skyline. The next day was the All Souls’ Day and I was decided to come back. And it was worth of it.

The day was cool but sunny and in the sharp grip of littoral air all redness yellowness gold rosiness and dying greenness seemed just about to explode. The yard is huge, I spent there more than five hours and didn’t succeed to visit all parts of it. Situated on the hills of Brooklyn with surprising views to downtown made even stronger impression than Central Park. It’s not a grave city with strict lines of stones and narrow paths between. It is a park with artificial lakes and waterfalls, with grottos, monumental stairs, squares with fountains. And at the same time a pretty rich botanic garden with collection of old and rare trees bushes and so on. And the graves, well they are just scattered all around blending with the landscape, sometimes dominating it, marking, emphasizing its idealistic and symbolic meanings, another times simply lost and abandoned in the domain of woods. Therefore the depth impression of this amazing place was done by the coexistence of this beautiful idealized and artificial landscape, so strongly and with such a big effort done to comfort still alive visitors, with their absolute absence. During the time which I spent there I met only five or six persons walking around. In the middle of Brooklyn! After really looking for it I found maybe ten graves with marks of someone’s care and visits. And without any tourists, photographers, impressions’ seekers… I was really shocked and so exited. To find yourself as a discoverer in NYC and then keep it alive during several minutes, hours (!) it was something. Irony of all this situation, like a silent laughter of a death. Like in Poussin’s Arcadia that humorously lost or get rid of ignorant shepherds. And in this finally empty paradise of memory only the regular work of gardeners, of quite big group of gardeners that makes the emptiness of the garden just more visible.

As it probably was easy to foresee after the walks on the Styx side, at some point I arrived to the other shore. In the middle of charming English style garden with its Antic temples, obelisks, columns and marble cradles I found a strange looking, business center like building. Set in the mountainside, almost invisible with its glass and steely walls shows up only its roof pyramid. Inside several flours connected by comfortable stairs and elevators. Hardwood floor and soft carpets. In every corner stylish sofa. Gentile music comes from hidden speakers. The landscape comes in through glass walls. On the other ones there are marble and granitic plaques with names, dates and so on. The new cemetery looks like a reception in a good quality hotel. And when I sat down there, on one of the sofas and looked around I somehow felt as I really wait for a room.

What an All Souls’.