Beantown Ramblings: Forest Hills Cemetery

Forest Hills is literally the backyard of my last Boston (JP) home. I used to run here, and I'd get lost almost every time. There are solstice celebrations, and one night every year, there's a ghost festival. We paint Japanese lanterns and float them on the pond, to mark the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, when the realms between the living and the Other are permeable, and the living might atone for the suffering of our ancestors.

During blizzards, we'd go snowshoeing here. And one Halloween, I wandered for hours, taking strange photos with my dad's college camera and expired color film. I was wearing this ripped, white little girl's dress from around the turn of the twentieth century, and after my walk, Monica and I saw the Dresden Dolls play at Avalon Ballroom. It was theater of the absurd at it's most flawless. And on e.e. cummings's birthday, we sat by his grave and read his poetry, and also years later, when we'd both moved away and just happened to be in town for a simultaneous visit.