June 17, 2010
Between my first and second day working at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Florence, someone came with a scythe and cut down the tall grasses – within hours the rough-hewn and half-broken stalks turned the yellow gold of egg yolk. The cracked tombstones carved with Hebrew were hot to the touch. They lounged at odd angles as though sunbathing – as though they were angling themselves to expose the deeply shadowed recesses of their lettering to the warm glow of the summer light.
Everything was bleaching and burning and toasting and baking, including me, my cameras and my films – we spotted a deep green lush of ivy growing against the high stone wall. It was such thick brush that I could hunch under it and peer out at the heated world beyond.
This is what we saw peeping out: jumbled rows of orderly graves, and orderly floors of jumbled apartment houses.
A happy Tuscan juxtaposition of temporary and eternal resting places.
Old Jewish Cemetery Florence (c) Quintan Ana Wikswo