A big park with almost 600,000 permanent visitors...

The sun was almost high visible over the roofs of the buildings. I was almost perfectly dressed for this kind of cold weather. I had almost bought myself a coffee. The bus arrived just minutes later. The metro card was almost expired. The highway was almost filled. It was almost eight. The guard was almost done with the opening of the gate. "I will let you through, but the gate is really not yet open." A morning visit that other giant park down the avenue, the other battle field, the other, or maybe the main. Maybe this is the actual park, the one with the better views, the hills that are still the original ones, the trees planted sparsly. Stones planted in masses. Stones planted to mark places where human remains have been planted. For more than a hundred and fifty years now. I was in the park with about 600,000 people and yet the only sound I could hear were my shoes on the snow, the wind in the branches, the hushed sound of a dirty man passing me by with a strangely loaded bag. (I later saw him play with toys he had brought with him, under a tree, secretly... definitely not for the first time...) I had no idea I would ever get this close to Peter Cooper or Mr. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. I never imagined that I would be just feet away from Jean Michel Basquiat. Though it really took a while to find him, under the snow, between two Italian "loved ones"... I spent a good time with Basquiat, watched the snow melt away in the sun, watched the water flow from the letters, watched the color of the stone change. All in complete silence... or at least so it seemed... It would be simplistic to say that one is being reminded of one's own mortality in a cemetery. One is as much reminded of life. One is as much reminded of stupidity, bombast, kindness, bad taste, greed, and definitely love. Love in all expected and unexpected shapes. The clowns on top of the grave next to Basquiat's were certainly expressions of love. So were the three monkeys in rusty sleds next to a marble bench near the grave of the "perfect daughter". The photographs of the two policemen who died in the line of duty in the 80's were placed there with as much love as that stone next to one of them: "#1 dad." A washed out Valentine's card to "Joe" from his wife, somewhere on the walkway in the snow felt incredibly loving. The poem written by a man for his Nel was so gentle, it might have helped to let the two giant cypresses in front of it grow as high as they did. And even the dates on the stones seemed to be expressions of love. Couples passing just months apart, one probably not able to survive the grief of losing the other. And there were the tracks in the snow, leading to different graves, some with flowers, some decorated with taped photographs of kids, the wedding that took place decades after the stone had been erected, a letter written and stuck in front of that photograph hidden under the medallion on the stone, little boulders on top of some headstones. Others were just single stones in the snow. Anne, mom, dad... On the steps leading to the lot of a family, complete with two cornerstones spelling out: "our" and "home", a quote: "When I die I will go to heaven, because I spent my life in hell..." A father and his two daughters seemed to throw a baseball by the mother's grave. I really like the Greenwood Cemetery... I would like to go back there... four hours are nothing compared to eternity...