Tomb Fragments Towers

After learning about the deathly history of south Lincoln Park through the Hidden Truths project, I started looking more closely at the ground, the roads, the trees, and the people in the park. I imagined all sorts of possible resting (and restive) places for bygone Chicagoans. Along one path near N. Clark St. and Wisconsin St. I saw a scattered assortment of very old fragments of stone and concrete. Some still had remnants of decorative carvings, possibly part of a cornice or other adornment to a tomb or monument long since crumbled and forgotten. I wondered if these had just been dug up in a recent lawn improvement or path repaving, or if they had simply been sitting there where I found them for a hundred and fifty years. I wondered how many people like me had passed by them...if any of those people could have been related to the people whose monument these fragments once were. To whom do those rocks belong? I circled back by the rocks on my way home, and on an impulse, stacked them up in two towers, making new memorials to the unknown, unknowable past they lived. The lawn suddenly looked different. It was more peaceful, more settled. I hope more people find meaning now in the short stacks of old rocks as they walk around, breathing in the crisp air of autumn, alive and un-haunted by the ghosts of Lincoln Park. For now.