Small Town: Behind the Scenes

 

 

 

The Red Room

 

A fable in three photos.

 

The Little Cottage

The smallest cottage in town.

A few weeks ago, I received an email prompt about a new rental property on the market. As soon as I saw the picture, I knew I'd go see it; it looked so wee and small, like the perfect fairy tale cottage from a chidren's fable. The afternoon I went looking for it, I walked in the wrong direction, away from town. A neighbor called out to me as I stood on the sidewalk perplexed. After we talked, I headed back towards town, to the south side that I rarely walk to, near the railroad tracks, because it's in the less prosperous part of town. When I found the house, I thought it was perfectly lovely, though it needs a bit loving care. 

It is indeed a small one bedroom, though my neighbor told me she always thought it would make a nice taxi stand, given its' proximity to the town's railroad station. I see it's future in a much cuter and quainter way: that of the local pie shop, dressed up in brightly appealing candy colors, the trim hand-painted with floral motifs, decorated by the charming lady behind the counter, who shows the townspeople love and care with her crisp, frilly aproned self, briskly dispensing advice and attention along with her expertly made pies, in a feminine counterpoint to the many pubs in town for the men.  

What do you think?

At Home: The Houseplant

Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema Crispum ‘Deborah’) http://www.pennhillslawnandgarden.com/clean-air-plants/ 

My Mega Foes

The Evil Borg Kitty "Mecha-Anchovy", my first real foe.

Enemies are hardly new to humankind. It pretty much happens whenever there are more than three people in a room, and because of a basic principle called "factioning", the producers of the day stage morality plays in the guise of "reality" t.v. shows, catering to the interests of the drunk and/or mentally ill among us. Me, I prefer the classics in those old school renditions by Shakespeare, but as a publisher, I respect all revisions, updates, and new editions of this ever appealing and exciting classic tale of Good vs. Evil. Who will win?!

Harbinger of Gloom, the evil "Doom Shroom"!

It's all so falsely cliffhanging that students since time immemorial have created drinking games about spot societal clichés to pass the time; time that would be excruciating without a serious crutch to numb and dull the senses, which puts us on pretty much the same level as the morality tales' participants. And just like my college days, I still prefer cartoon enemies over the real, dull, and repetitive kind. After all, new foes are so fun to create, aren't they? Witness my ascent on the game Bejeweled Blitz, as I climb the ladder up, up, and away! The evil Tiki Gods get angrier and more powerful as I rise, and also, strangely, boringly, achingly repetitive. Thanks for watching with me.

I had a post-Apocalytpic dream about an Alien Yeti invasion=I won!

Summertime Blues

Hazy, hot, and humid, with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms.

The Glass Bottle

French Gloss

Years ago, I married a boy from the first college I attended, an upstate SUNY school for teachers, mostly because he needed someone to take care of him, and his parents were exhausted. When an opportunity presented itself as a gap after I dumped my longtime boyfriend from school (who wanted to lock me into a life of servitude to him, in order to feed his ego), my friend grabbed at the chance to romance me, in a wildly showy display of affection, love, and devotion that was planned and executed during one of his visits to the city. I bought into it, because our group of friends loved him dearly, despite his alcoholism and ineptitude. 

I wanted to stop the process many times, but once I was strapped to the marriage train, it was designed to move forward despite any protests: down payments were made, contracts were signed, classes were attended, supplies were ordered, etc. If you've ever been hurried down the altar, you know the effect I'm describing. Think of your high school friends' peer pressure to try a cigarette multiplied by a thousand. To get out of the dread and misgivings I had, I would have had to create my own staged scene as a runaway bride, not something my family relied on me to do. I carry through, as always. And so we had a ceremony, not of my choosing, but for the family.

Whitemore, Boston.

On my wedding day, just in case I missed every cue they gave me beforehand, the groom's father told me in a dramatic aside, "He's your problem, now", imposing his big presence upon me before leaving to get drunk, to later ride in their rented party bus back upstate. Despite his parents' obvious weaknesses, or maybe because of their gross needs that so matched my own family's, my father-in-law liked me very much. When we moved into a beautiful historic brownstone in Brooklyn with our very own garden, the garrulous, handsome old man (friends called him "The Captain", and I dubbed him "The Silver Fox") collected old bottles for me to place in the windows in a kaleidoscope fashion that matched the period of the place, once he discovered my taste for them. "Oh, I see those every time I go out on a job!", in reference to his plush union gig with an upstate utility company. Years ago, his family changed their definitively Polish name to a shorter, more Irish sounding one, so his grandfather would have a better fit to the trades. It was ironic to me, because after we were married, I had a cousin of Jewish/Irish descent in Brooklyn who took the exact same surname to mask his mixed ethnicity, a hiding-in-plain-sight maneuver if ever there was one.

Freedom, in a jar.

I still have some of the old glass bottles that were the apothecary and grocer staples of the day, holding everything from medicines, elixirs, hair gels, paint varnishes, to booze and the modern equivalent of snake oil cures. Like the ceramic pipes of their day, they were (and are) everywhere in the Northeast, in this very historic area that forms the original "Thirteen Colonies". I still think of my old ex-father-in-law whenever I use one, as the best part of that entire deal from beginning to end; a travesty that I can (and mostly likely, will) have annulled, as a standing example to me about the essence of duplicity, because, dear reader, in one last, finely executed move, this cornered Catholic girl had an outdoor ceremony presided over by a female Methodist minister, a "Get Out of Jail" free card for this very foxy lady.  

Thanks for the memories.

Wild Mushrooms

Mushrooms grow out of decay....

.....or from underneath a rock; such is the power of life.

Weird Trash

One of my neighbors went through his stuff, to sort it out before moving across the country, which is always a great idea. It's a great idea anytime, actually. You never know what you'll find (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-vintage-tee.html), 
and clutter is a real productivity killer, so, barring any deeply psychological hoarder-type issues that require strong, daily doses of anti-psychotics and almost constant, round-the-clock therapy, take a deep breath, open up a box, and just start. Call it "Feng Shui" if you want to make it sound extra exotic, like some Ancient Chinese secret.

"Hello, invisible ghost dog!"

Anyway, my neighbor was busily sorting through his stuff one day when I was throwing out my regular, dull, every day garbage, and we had a good, brief exchange about his brother's taxidermy gift, and his older model (but still bitchin') Harley bike. The next day, I found the remnants of his cleaning in the garbage pails, which I photographed. 

This is a "negative", or "film strip".

Don't wait for death or jail time: do it now. What have you got to lose, other than junk? Trust me, your tasteless knickknacks are worth jack shit, man, even on eBay, if you can figure out how to do that. Lose the baggage, and join us free people in society. What are you waiting for? A long holiday weekend?! JUST DO IT. DO IT NOW. Thank you.

Small Town: Carnival

The Vortex

Whoa! Check out those clouds, dude! Totally "Stairway to Heaven".

Lately, what with the common regularity of Doomsday predictions now fully realized and acted out daily on t.v. and in movies, we've become highly sensitized to news weather deliberately, in order to boost ratings through hooking viewers on the active creation of fear, which propels the vulnerable amongst us to tune in angst, seeking solace from those Doctors of Weather (called "Meteorologists") in some ritualistic pattern of fear followed by soothing comfort, the balm to our collective anxieties. Maybe news forecasters can wear big, peaked hats painted with stars, like some hammy old actor playing Nostradamus to the hilt, so we get the point more readily!

It's true, we did actively melt the polar ice caps due to our own selfish neglect, but that's hardly what one could classify as "new" (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/05/as-we-know-it.html). What is new is our collective awareness of how that neglect has caused fires to rage uncontrolled, waters to overflow in streams, and tornadoes to rip through towns in increasing frequencies of violent intensity. There must be strong language to match!

More beautifully lit clouds. Gorgeous!

Enter the evil "Vortex", what was once dubbed the "Polar Vortex" in winter (to describe a fucking snowstorm, or a heavy downfall of snow once called a "blizzard", a common occurrence in the Northeastern U.S. and the Northern Hemisphere), now re-purposed for the summertime (with its pesky regularly occurring thunderstorms, also common in the Northeast) as simply, The Vortex, like some villain dressed in all-black from a mythical fairy tale fable.

I do understand the challenges behind selling something as banal as a heavy summer rainstorm, (because I'm a publishing professional, and selling something as simple as a good diet combined with regular exercise in book form must be fashioned anew with some fucked up gimmick, like the Neanderthals), and while I do understand it is hard to make that seem "new", I really don't fucking appreciate a thunderstorm artificially heightened to some weird new height as a fake movie villain (which, once again, is really weird, man, and you should totally know upfront that I'm on to you, so, enough already), because it's incredible as it is: a beautiful, and sometimes scary, act of nature.  
See it, and wonder.

After the cloud vortex, the sun sets beautifully.

Bravo! Another winning performance on Planet Earth! Shows over, folks.