Good Will Haunting

One thing that is really wonderful about Philadelphia, especially now with the sharp fall weather, is that there are graveyards everywhere.

I remember going home to Brooklyn on the shuttle bus from college and seeing Greenwood Cemetery. There was one perfect moment along the ride when all the hundreds of tombstones there lined up with the skyline of Manhattan. But the dead were too concentrated there, the ghosts all looming over Queens, looking across the water to an island of many things that could be described as death-defying. I know it rubbed them the wrong way.

It figures that the ghosts, zombies and dancy skeletons of New York would all be relegated to the boroughs.

But in Philadelphia, I can be walking along and then -bang- there's a graveyard, right in the middle of the block. It feels better, and more sensible, to mix the living and the dead like that. Mulching up today's lives and yesterday's so that one can feed the other. Philadelphia ghosts are less bitter, less grumbling and less likely to chain smoke. They're like stakeholders, so their haunting feels protective, more like an investment in the city and it's people.

Nice for fall.