From the outside, an agate is ugly, powdery, dull, rough, and unassuming.
Unexpected beauty.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, beauty is only skin deep–
Before you crack the agate, you can’t be certain you’ve got an agate. Now and then, you don’t even have a rock. You have a dirt clod. Just a dirt clod. Striking the dirt clod — dirt sprays everywhere. Oops. No beauty inside or out.
“This is the most relaxing cemetery in New Orleans,” Alex said.
Many New Orleans cemeteries appear to be concrete, as if concrete made the most suitable bed for eternal rest. Or infernal rest? The tombs and vaults are above ground, so closer to the sky. Also above the shallow water table, as water bed.
There are flowers, but mainly cheap plastic, strewn on graves haphazardly.
“Crack open one of these tombs, and you’ll make a discovery,” said Alex.
“I don’t need that kind of discovery.”
“Crack one of these and we’d be back in jail, lickety-split.”
“I think I speak for both of us when I say plenty of guilt and shame. We’re not guilt and shame guys, but this would be guilt and shame.”
“In some of these, jewels are buried with the corpses. But we aren’t grave robbers by any means.”
The above-ground tombs are primarily soft red bricks coated in lime-based stucco or whitewash. They can be picked apart. It wouldn’t take a jack hammer.
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