Nov 17 2008
A STRANGE PLACE
This past Sunday I (and a pair of peripatetic companions) went on another graveyard stroll. We went this time to Cypress Hill in Brooklyn - final resting place of Jackie Robinson, Mae West, and the Collyer brothers among others. It was a cold, windy November day, the ground muddy still from all the rain the day before.
It was a different trip than Green-wood.
For one thing, Cypress Hills is a lot more of an urban cemetery with an expressway cutting through it and the elevated train along one edge. However, there are a few hills in it, and from the top of one of them the view is spectacular. On one side stands the skyscraper wall of Manhattan rising above the trees. On the other is Brooklyn, stretching far into the distance until it ends in the harbor.
It felt simultaneously congested, crowded, remote, and empty. I could hear the train squealing by on the tracks, and there were footprints everywhere along with junk like balloons and dolls left at graves. But then, beyond all that there was the horizon, and the fact that no matter how many people live in New York it still remains this tiny corner of the world where the Hudson River empties into the sea.
It was a strange place to be.
It was a different trip than Green-wood.
For one thing, Cypress Hills is a lot more of an urban cemetery with an expressway cutting through it and the elevated train along one edge. However, there are a few hills in it, and from the top of one of them the view is spectacular. On one side stands the skyscraper wall of Manhattan rising above the trees. On the other is Brooklyn, stretching far into the distance until it ends in the harbor.
It felt simultaneously congested, crowded, remote, and empty. I could hear the train squealing by on the tracks, and there were footprints everywhere along with junk like balloons and dolls left at graves. But then, beyond all that there was the horizon, and the fact that no matter how many people live in New York it still remains this tiny corner of the world where the Hudson River empties into the sea.
It was a strange place to be.
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