HAROLD AND MAUDE REVISITED

Spent a lovely dusk with a friend in the Congressional Cemetery tonight on the far side of Capitol Hill. The fireflies were out, twinkling in the near-dark over and around the gravestones, adding an hallucinogenic edge to the evening. We stopped by John Quincy Adams, J. Edgar Hoover, and the grave of a gay veteran. Graveyards are the most wonderful places. You’re surrounded by people, but they leave you alone. You can imagine their lives and see where we’ll all end up. My high school was surrounded by a cemetery going back centuries, and I loved to find a big old tomb-stone, as ancient as possible, grab a book, and read for hours. These places feel comfortable to me, like a platform in a train station full of people all different, and silent, and all headed for the same place. My friend chain-smoked through it all – appropriately enough.