Trusting my senses at Forest Hills.
Agnes here is made of marble, I believe. I'm not great with materials; I'm assuming marble given her acid-rain erosion (marble is very suceptible to this) and her color. When she was new she must have gleamed.
As it is, ground-level monuments like Agnes are at least distracting and at most startling. When walking through Forest Hills, particularly the more densely-populated sections, one's eye wanders over the whole of the landscape. A white figure a few inches above ground level, viewed peripherally, for a split second, can look remarkably like a ghost, even to those - such as myself - who do not attend cemeteries with the idea that they are spooky or creepy or that a ghost is something I am likely to see, ever, in a cemetery or elsewhere.
Still, I will see these occasional figures in the corner of my vision and think first, a living human, and then, no, the color's wrong for a living human, and then, noticing the near-glow coming off a white human-shaped thing in sunlight, I think, a spirit, a ghostly figure! All of this happens inside my head in less than an eyeblink. Because then I realize, oh wait, it's just Agnes.
Agnes' hand has been through a lot. Weather or vandalism. Or both? Two years ago she was whole again and a week and a half ago she was broken again, and soon her hand will no doubt be reconstructed all over yet again, because, as observed elsewhere, Forest Hills has the scratch and the inclination to care about the state of its' inhabitants' marble appendages.
Forest Hills has another mind game, analogous to the is-that-white-statue-in-the-corner-of-my-eye-a-ghost? example cited above. It's wind. The wind in the trees - in any season, with leaves or no - sounds exactly like a car on the path. Exactly. I'll be standing, camera to my eye, in the middle of the road, and hear the rustling, and think, "oh, just wind in the trees," and then bring the camera down to see a car waiting for me to get out of the way, the driver typically scowling at me as though I'm an overlarge and particularly slow-moving goose, unfamiliar with the concept of traffic (Forest Hills has its share of geese, it's true - they assemble round the central pond).
Other times I'll be walking and hear the crunching, and instinctively step out of the road to allow the car that I'm sure is approaching behind me to pass - only to turn and see there's no car there at all, just the wind in the trees.
Gracie Allen died a young girl, I forget how young - I would guess seven or eight. She's canned now for the winter, but inside the green metal casing shown above is a glass cylinder with a cone-shaped top and brass fittings. Inside the glass cylinder is a life-size marble portrait of Gracie in her little ruffled Victorian dress and beribboned hat. It's an incredible monument and I can completely see why Gracie's parents would have put it under glass - protected as it is from weather, the statue is virtually unblemished.
Unfortunately, being under glass, she's difficult to photograph, and to this day I've never been pleased with any of my attempts to document her. Once the weather warms and the casing is removed, I'll try again.
I have no idea who leaves the flowers. Gracie died well over a hundred years ago.
One last picture, for now.
This one,
she knows somebody or something made off with her arm once before. It won't happen again. She's got an anchor in that other hand and she's not afraid to use it.
There's more Forest Hills, going back a few years, here.
Til next time.