Trip 1: Green River Cemetery

In Bluebeard, Rabo Karabekian says he is going to be buried in Green River Cemetery in East Hampton, NY.

Green River Cemetery just happens to be located pretty close to where Vonnegut had a home out there in the Hamptons. Since his other home late in life was in Manhattan and pretty much no one gets buried in Manhattan, I thought Green River might be a pretty good shot.

So after a wild New Years celebration that stretched from SoHo to the lower east side, on New Years Day we set out on the Long Island Expressway.

"Set Out" gives us too much credit. Actually we got lost in Spanish Harlem and drove around a bunch. By the time we got to the cemetery it was almost dark.

It's an incredible place, Green River. Pretty small space, very manageable to search. There are a lot of artists there with gravestones made out of unique mediums and in weird forms. Lots of epitaphs and signatures. Painter Jackson Pollock is buried there. His marker is a giant mossy rock. So is poet Frank O'Hara, whose Lunch Poems is one of my favorites.

Yet, no Vonnegut. As the sun finished setting we looked over the back fields and smoked American Spirits. It wasn't too cold.

Disappointed but not discouraged we laughed about the fact that we were in the Hamptons. Green River seems to be sort of a monument to the place's bohemian past. Today its something else.

We stayed at a Holiday Inn that night, like in Breakfast of Champions. It wasn't much like Midland City. The room was, however, a perfect receptacle for human beings, just like Dwayne's. Then we went to the beach in the snow.

More research to do. Busy busy busy.


Comments, Insults, Admonishments more than welcome.