The Spaces In Between

I pulled through the imposing iron gates of the Royal Oak Burial Park and everything about being there seemed somehow undefinable. The clouds seemed on the brink of unleashing a down pour, the wind was cold (colder than it had been all winter) but there was no hint of snow or frost to be found and I parked as near to the gate as I could, not wanting to impose the clank and clatter of my beaten down old truck on the stillness of the graveyard. Not really wanting to cross the threshold of this place.

This problem with thresholds and barriers (dare I say liminal spaces?) persisted throughout the day. We came to the section we wanted to study but stopped at the edge of the road, not knowing where to step. There were no paths in the burial park and no indication of where the burials lay. Some of the stones faced East, others West but some had no regular orientation at all. Even within the sections themselves there was very little order. The neat North-South rows gave way to clusters (some around trees, others with no observable patterning what so ever). Barriers were everywhere but ill-defined.

Eventually, after a great deal of awkward smiles and shrugs of uncertainty one of my enterprising group mates took that first fateful step into the grass. The rest of us followed, acutely aware of where we were stepping. We were careful and respectful, trying to move between the monuments but still uncertain as to where we were actually walking. Eventually we came to the base of a large sequoia and decided to begin our work but were faced once again with a barrier. This time a circle of pine needles. The monuments were nestled in this bed of softly rustling foliage, some all but obscured by and others thrusting up defiantly from the brown carpet. 

Each barrier encountered was overcome and analysis proceeded but with each step further in I felt more and more like an outsider and I found myself longing for the liminal space once more. I began to think of how much more comfortable it would have been to stay on the road and take pictures of what I could see from there. Kneeling next to a grave marker under the spreading boughs of a sequoia seemed so personal. I tried to distance myself, to remain clinical by meticulously recording the inscriptions and sketching the sculptures but every now and again I would come across an inscription that read "A loving son", "Lost before his time" or perhaps most powerfully "lest we forget", and my barriers would fall.

As we were studying military monuments I came across a lot of "Lest we forget" and forget I could not. That is why I was unsure of where to step, where to kneel or even how loud to speak. I could not forget that these markers belonged to people, fathers, brothers, sons. I longed for distance but couldn't quite attain it and wound up in an undefined liminal zone. Half way between the personal and the clinical.

I wish I had a succinct conclusion to this post but I am still unsure about how I feel about this Monument Analysis Assignment. It was certainly a valuable experience and I glad that I did it but I can't quite shake the feeling that I intruded somehow, that I crossed too many boundaries and entered into a space I did not belong.