sunday morning

[peripeteia]

What's most incredible is the combination of geography and history and the fresh, too-sweet smell of decay that overwhelms you as soon as you walk down those steps. Because one moment you're turning the corner from the bridge onto Symonds Street, a couple hundred feet from the bus stop that shelters my impatience every weekday afternoon, and the next you're surrounded by headstones, some cracked and fallen, others fortified by metal backing, a congregation of extravagant gestures that you can't help but appreciate because they were offered with love. I see it every day through slats in the bridge, itself a historic monument, but my deplorably cautious nature has kept me from exploring the gully alone. Long lines on the last morning of the museum's 'Da Vinci Machines' exhibit made for a great opportunity, and I took it. We spent the next couple of hours exploring a place whose dimensions far exceed the amount of attention paid them...





(Reverse here.)















(Anyone else see a skull in the last image? A quarter-century later and my imagination is still overacting.)

The whole photoset is here.