Skip James (good piece by Matt R Lohr) exited the world in roughly the same fashion Keith Douglas entered:
hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky
Last night I saw the Wenders film, which is extraordinarily embarrassing in a peculiarly German fashion, and which features Nehemiah Curtis James howling hairless about killing his women. I haven’t spent much time in North American cemeteries but it was reasonably good to hear him sing:
I would rather be buried in some cypress grove
To have some woman, Lord, that I can’t control
(Italian) cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens) symbolise death here too, is what I tell people on walks like this, but then I start recalling the avenues planted near farms… Google, however, provides a cure for all our troubles, an end to all distress, informing us that the cypress in fact symbolizes (not much symbolising going on in Brit English):
- the courage and strength of the Chinese people, their simple, and hard working nature and their defiance in the face of aggression.
- nobility, mortality, and eternity… “the dark green shape of the cypress which rises out of the arid soil… the solitary sentinel who reminds passers-by that nothing is lasting and all is fleeting…” (pg. 164), “… the noble tree that hedges so many villas in the North [of Italy] and as many cemeteries in the South [as Heavenly pointers].”
- high thoughts.
- sadness and morning (sic; I often feel sad in the morning).
- longevity, a core aspect of friendship.
- mourning, death and eternal life. (This is actually a good site, telling us that the cypress “came into fashion as a gravestone symbol in the 1850s for the Pennsylvania Germans.”)
- a black finger
pointing upward. - bravery and resistance among the Bakhtiyari tribe.
- tenderness and fragrance
- the proffering of a glass of water to passersby.
- male virility, potency and strength.
I’m not planning on buying a cypress any time soon.
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