This morning, about 30 minutes into May, I was in bed but not asleep yet, with the bedroom window open a bit, since it was warm enough to make that comfortable. I remembered that I hadn’t checked any weather forecast for May 1, and wondered whether it was going to rain overnight or during the day.

Almost immediately – really, within seconds – I heard rain falling. Light, but definitely rain. It lasted a few minutes. The only reasonable conclusion from such an event is that I’ve learned how to make it rain with my mind. I hope I use my power wisely.

Fairly early on the morning of April 15, I made a doughnut run in Hot Springs, Arkansas, seeking out a Shipley Do-Nuts store. I associate that chain and its wonderful doughnuts (cream filled, especially) with Texas, but Shipley is in other, mostly Southern states. There happen to be two locations in Hot Springs.

It couldn’t just be a doughnut run, though. On the way I stopped at Hollywood Cemetery, said to the Hot Spring’s oldest cemetery, though a precise founding date seems to be lost to time. The oldest stone is reportedly from 1856.

The cemetery is on a large, wooded hill.

Many – most – of its stones are aged and unkempt. It’s that kind of cemetery. Aesthetic decay. Not only do the dead return to the earth, but so do their memorials.

Hollywood is quite large for a small town cemetery, and since important doughnut matters called, I didn’t explore that much of it, such as the Confederate section that’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Still, one large memorial stood out, at least in the part of the cemetery I visited. Davies, it said. Cornelia A. Davies, who died at 28 in 1884.

Looks like that statue has a bit of a lean. Was it that way originally, or does it have a tumble to take in the near future? Otherwise the memorial is in good shape.

A young mother, I assume. Jesus comforts her children, perhaps.

If this isn’t a Victorian sentiment, I don’t what would be.

The entirety of such a cemetery is a momento mori. You’d think any cemetery would be that, but not always.

It isn’t written anywhere, as famously it is in Rome, but feeling is in the air at such a place as Hot Springs’ Hollywood: “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”