29 is the street number of the cemetery where my mother is buried. He died at 29, so I remembered the street number later when I was older.
We humans are symbolic animals – we are surrounded by numbers, signs, clues, in all this we see a meaning that most likely does not exist. But try to deprive us of our complicated relationship with the wind that suddenly opens the window, the bird flying into our room with the mirror tricks of our electronic clock. Especially with numbers.
I recently subscribed to a community on the Internet that talks about the so-called hidden meanings of numbers. I opened the tape in the morning – there: “The magic of the number 29. Protection and restraint.”
Oh, I thought to myself, a sign.
Turns out Karma was talking to us through this number. No more, no less, capitalized. We walk without suspecting anything, pass through February snowdrifts and puddles, look at the phone, suddenly raise our heads – 29. For example, house number. Or part of the car number. Or someone on the Internet wrote: “I turned 29 today.”
In general, this was not written by some random “someone” – it is Karma who is currently communicating with us. And he wants to tell us that he sees everything we do (and we didn’t do anything, we just looked at the phone), what we think (and think silly things) – and for all that he’ll give us exactly as much as we deserve. So if you believe my words in parentheses it will give nothing because we all blew it up, left it to the wind, wasted our time in the electronic kingdom of warped mirrors. It seems that this is what the number 29 promised us.
… So what, am I? Oh yes. About my mother’s monument.
On top of that, the already very old, black marble monument of the mother is written in gold letters, only the surname, name and surname, the dates of life and death, and two lines from whom (husband, mother, grandmother, well and us). , two orphans). And on the right, a part that goes beyond the edge is still carved: half of a gray birch with chopped branches. It is a symbol of a seemingly untimely departed life. Although this birch is more like poplar. Gray poplar on black.
Sometimes (very rarely, because I rarely go there) I think: Cemetery design, whatever it sounds like, ordinary people. Even if the client of the monument wants to do something original. Yet the result is pure symbolism.
But I like that there is no mom photo. And the great-grandmother and grandmother later “buried” him, and somehow they managed without a photo.
For some reason I’ve been thinking about this recently.
Walking the streets and roads leading to “your” place, you pass many graves – and there: photo, photo, photo, photo. Young and old, old instead of young (if you look at the face and dates), middle-aged, peers – regali (medals, insignia, military belts), women with lace collars, old women, old men, an infinity of portraits either made of photographic faces or photographs.
In the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois (we recall the last unpleasant incident related to the extension of the land lease), there are no portraits on the graves of our distinguished compatriots. Ivan Bunin, Andrei Tarkovsky, Rudolf Nureyev – just a monument, just an inscription. And that feels right to me.
Our whole life is full of photos. Both in the Soviet years and in the post-Soviet years – when there were not yet Internet networks – photo albums in the house were full of pictures, individual photos slipped from their swollen, packed pages. “I’m five years old here.” “And then I’m getting married.” “And this is Vitya.”
And now there are countless oceans of photography. All nets are made just for them. more more. Kind of like a zombie apocalypse.
Only when photography began its triumphant assault on the world, Charles Baudelaire once said (it was very photogenic, by the way, how ironic of fate it was):
“A vengeful god fulfilled the wishes of the crowd. His messiah was the inventor Daguerre. And then the people decided: “Since photography reliably guarantees the desired accuracy (there were fools who believed it!), it is clear that photography is the highest art.” And then all these vile townspeople rushed to look at their ordinary physiognomy stamped on metal, like Narcissus.
i think it’s very funny
Even more hilarious is that Baudelaire, who made such a mockery of rudeness, was posthumously honored with an impossibly ostentatious and intricate tombstone. There lies some sort of veiled figure, and Satan himself looks out from a high pillar, and a vile, leathery bat-like creature either clings to it or climbs up.
By the way, there is no Baudelaire under this tombstone. This is a mausoleum, an “empty monument”, a symbolic tomb. (Again, these symbols neither inhale nor exhale.)
The “damn” poet is buried in the same grave as his hated stepfather.
… let’s live our lives and all that remains of us is a pile of unrecognized photos. A false life, an empty monument, a meaningless mausoleum.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.