“No, it’s not the center” Joe, the guy at my age said to me that day when I told him in an excited tune” I just knew the intersection area is the town center!”. By then, I didn’t know what does Joe’s words mean, he might say “what are you talking about? it’s a small town, nowhere in this town is the center of the nation, the world!” we are in the center of nowhere. But after I read a book about the town’s history, I told myself” Maybe Joe knows the history of this town, that intersection area indeed is not the town center, or at least not the original town center which locates on the Main Street in North part of town.
Now I know the small white church at the intersection is over 200 years old, pretty old at my knowlege. it is one of the oldest building in this town, I see it quite often, but I never showed interest in it until I knew its history and wanted to take a deeper look at this town. Immersing in spring sunshine, surrounded by blooming pink malus, with two or three flower-looking clusters white cloud hovering in the blue sky, the white church looked elegant. It recalled me a senior female doctor in Yale children hospital I met years ago, in a same early spring day.
Behind the church is a cemetery, I knew its existence years ago. That night after I read the history of the cemetery, I wanted to see, to take a picture of it before the pink spring flowers gone. Seeing from the street, the cemetery is separated from busy traffic by a line of trees along the street. It’s a nice place to rest, in the past week, when I drove by that intersection and had a glance of the cemetery through the gaps between the clusters of pink blooming flowers, I told myself.
I have a new photographing tool, a Samsong Galaxy 10+ passing from my son. Just thinking about pretty images made me feel excited.
It’s a very nice spring day, around 10:30 am, I jumped into my car My white car merged into the traffic flow when I had a left turn and hit xxxx road which is the most important road in my eyes.
Having my car parked at parking lot of the town’s public library, I stood in a big open area between the white church and the two-floor red-brick library. The sunshine was gently scattering at every corner of my sight. This time, besides those blooming pink malus flowers along the roads at the intersection area, I saw two big trees with blooming white flowers, one standing in front of the library, the other facing the side door of the church. They were too pretty to be missed. Before I visit the cemetery, I need to take pictures for them. I gave me instruction inside.
But a contemporary metal-panel sculpture erecting above the vibrant lawn through a metal stick caught my eyes. It’s the same design as I saw in the central flower bed of Probably it could be called an obstacle art, but putting a slice of imagination, it’s not that hard to tell the two characters in flying gesture are human beings, one male and one female, both with butterfly-looking wings and cloud-looking hairs. I bet Harmony between Human and Nature is the theme of this art.
I have been visiting this library and the town hall many times since I moved in the town a few years ago. They were two-floor red brick buildings which might be a popular architecture decades ago.
Trees with white flowers all started blooming days ago, Here and there, you can see them in residents’ yards, in commercial areas, on hills, at borders of pastures or woods. with snow white flowers lavishly blooming to the end of every branch, the scenes were genuinely stunning beautiful! T
When my mind was still in the densely blooming white flowers, a group of young kids walking out of the side-door of the white church amused me. with pink, blue, yellow or white clothes and black, blond or brown hairs, they looked like a bunch of little angels. Leaved by a young woman, those angels walked to the direction from which a pavilion and a slide occurred in my sight. Oh, I see, that’s the playground, I saw it from the street when I drove by.
I realized part of the church are used for a daycare. It’s bad and good. The bad part is now mostly likly there are much less church members than there used to be. The good part is the young generation who are growing up here will be Christians in the future, or if not, they will naturally apply the good part of Christianity to their real lives.
Behind the church, the cemetery, playground, flowers and trees created a remarkable landscape. The tombstones from 1800s are lying on the ground mutely , the kids from 2010s are spending their play time noisely, they were sharing the same land, breathing the same airs. This dramatic contradiction was impressive. In eastern culture, it will be labelled unrespectful or inauspicious. Culture is a package from our ancestors, every culture has explanation to their culture. Keep your culture, respect others culture, this is what people should do.
