2005-03-25 - 7:37 p.m.

Cemetaries and creamed corn

Are you ever wandering around a cemetary on a Friday afternoon when all of a sudden you get a craving for creamed corn?
No?
I'm not surprised, since that was a new one on me too, but there I was, admiring the Hispanic cemetary when all of a sudden I got an insatiable craving for creamed corn. What's weirdest is that I've never much cared for creamed corn. Sure, I went and bought some and have eaten half the can now, but it's weird to suddenly want something you hypothetically don't like.
Two other things that are weird about this situation:
That I was in the Hispanic cemetary in the first place.
and-
That one of the ingredients in creamed corn is "food starch: modified." I don't like seeing the word "food" in my ingredient lists. It's like they're trying to reassure themselves- "yes, yes- this is a food based food additive which you should not worry about having in your food." Also, starch has to come from somewhere- like corn or potatos or some grain. It's like if instead of saying canola oil or corn oil or palm oil a label just said "food oil." What's it from, huh? Is it people? I hate it when my food turns out to be people! Damn Soilent Green... they have no respect for the dead- I would totally quit eating that stuff if it wasn't so delicious.

Speaking of respect for the dead, that's what I love about the Hispanic cemetary. There's so much creativity and compassion visible on every grave. Some of the tombstones are for people who died 100 years ago and yet they're covered in new flowers. In some places there is no tombstone- just a mass of flowers marking where someone is burried. And you can tell the flowers weren't all put there at once- you see the newest silk flowers are the easter ones, but then there are valentines hearts and Christmas wreaths too. There are also flags and figurines. Little Virgins de Guadalupe and angels and calavera. Some of the graves are strewn with mardi-gras beads and one of them had a little Greatful Dead bear. There's something really beautiful about that. Like no matter how long someone has been dead, the family still checks on them and loves them. Why don't white people do that? Are there some who do? I dunno- it seems like in WASPland you don't go to cemetaries much. For example- my friends think it's weird that my mom took me to cemetaries a lot as a kid. She was interested in the plants that grew on gravesmore than anything. She catalogued all the antiuqe roses in every cemetary she could find. It was her hobby and I was just along for the ride, but it kind of got me used to/interested in cemetaries.

And in retrospect, I guess I get like, a bazillion goth points for plaing on tombstones at the age of seven...

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.