cemetery cycling

This one has been in the works for a while. Seems like the time is right, given that we're on the eve of all hallow's eve and all.

To get you in the mood, I offer a quote from one of the best books I've read this year, namely Robert Pogue Harrison's stunning The Dominion of the Dead:

The dead depend on the living to preserve their authority, heed their concerns, and keep them going in their afterlives. In return, they help us to know ourselves, give form to our lives, organize our social relations, and restrain our destructive impulses. They provide us with the counsel needed to maintain the institutional order, of which they remain the authors, and to prevent it from degenerating into a bestial barbarism. The dead are our guardians. We give them a future so that they may give us a past. We help them to live on so that they may help us go forward. (Dominion of the Dead, p. 158).

And in a desperate attempt to get Dave L to show up for a ride, I offer my haiku version of the same quote:

the dead and living
embracing, a fecund dance
human is humus

If you feel inclined to do some homework in preparation, you might begin by looking here and here.

OTT: Viva Voce, From the Devil Himself