Sometimes I dream of a small building, perfectly square, made of cinderblocks painted azure blue. Inside is a dark space, meant for unknown purposes - unknown to me, that is - at least, there is never anyone around to explain. Sometimes I find things there. Printed pages of stories I can't remember writing. Pictures that disappear when I look too long. Messages from people I've never known.
I'd forgotten that this was a real place, a real building, anyway, until I happened upon it on my recent trip to Victoria. There it was, blue and inscrutable as ever, broadcasting no hint as to its use. I remembered then that back in those times of my restless night driving, it used to have a moon-shaped light at the door.
2.
Sometimes I dream of a place that is an impossible combination of English lowland and Gulf coast rice field, the glint of wetland reflecting the grey-grained sky. Ghostly egrets stalk like emissaries from other worlds. Clouds of murmurating starlings glimmer like white noise. Far away in the distance, I see the beacon blinking. I imagine the wisps of fog, the salt air at your windows, the warped wood at your door.
It's a dismal anniversary, damp and melancholy, not unlike the day it commemorates. It was the 8th of May, 11 years ago now, when a low rumble of thunder got my attention. The heavy sky outside my window brought on a vague panic; I'd forgotten how dark the hill country could be when it rained.
I shuddered, a bone-deep sort of spasm. I wanted to wail out loud, because how could I hide from the weather? But there was nothing for it. Instead of wailing, I got in the car and drove to the elementary school where I registered one of my children for classes; the next day at the junior high I would register another. The littlest one, I could still carry on my hip, just barely. I remember pulling into the parking lot and having to sit for a moment to catch my breath, because it had been so long since I'd done anything without my husband that I wondered if I'd forgotten how. I remember seeing the gold-green live oak catkins scattered on the damp asphalt like runes. I was not versed in reading them, but I already knew they said, "you don't want to be here."
The next day, it was still pouring as I sat at the glassed-in office at the junior high on the hill, filling out paperwork while the pledge of allegiance echoed down the hall. It felt so strange, looking out on the silvery world on the other side of the glass. Vertiginous, like I might fall. Last month, last week, even, we'd been living our old lives somewhere else, and now we were here.
My black ballet flats were soaked through from the run-off, so after I'd left my teen to his classes, I'd gathered my toddler and gone to Walgreen's for a cheap pair of sandals and a bottle of Excedrin Migraine. I remember our reflections in the doorway glass, the sky behind us, the rainwater rushing down the gutters even as the clouds were beginning to break. I remember how I sought comfort in the drugstore's sameness, how it reminded me of Victoria, soothing my homesickness for moment, even though I knew I was fooling myself. I even remember feeling a little weird about buying the sandals, too, as if by purchasing new shoes, it would mean I was somehow betraying my old self, that it would be the beginning of the end of who I was before I came. But when the sandals were worn out by the end of the summer, I found I hesitated just as much when it came time to throw them away.
I went to back to Victoria for a visit a couple of months ago. I hadn't been there in a long time. It was equal parts more decrepit and yet also somehow revitalized. My family never had much interest in returning, so it was my friend who drove me south. He wanted to see the place I'd written about, the inspiration for the name at the top of this page. He wanted to know the "infernal geometry of the streets", the unnaturally silent corners, the haunting sense of being in a place that felt like no place much at all.
We sat on a bench downtown and drew sketches in our notebooks and listened to the clicking of the crosswalk lights. We watched the eerie shimmer in the intersection of N. Main and Santa Rosa while the palm fronds rattled in the silence.
We explored the places on the map I'd once made, climbed to the top of an abandoned parking garage where we found mysterious signs and wonders. We rested, hot and tired, as we watched cloud shapes drifting by.
And all along I had the unnerving sense that I could just go home, as if I'd only gone for a long walk in the sunny afternoon, or just popped out to pick up lunch, like I'd done so often. As if the landscape of my life had not irrevocably changed. As if I could just walk back to the gold house (now painted blue), as if my children would be there, still children, and not nearly all of them grown up now.
That's when I knew for sure that - in my mind, anyway - I'd never really left. That part of me (my heart, soul, psyche?) had remained there all along. Life on pause, transition incomplete. Those worn-out shoes I didn't want to toss. Unlike the rest of my family, I'd never really made the leap.
Maybe that was my way of surviving. Perhaps, perhaps. But it's way past time now to collect those parts of myself and go. The life I lived in Victoria and the quasi-suspended-in-transition existence that came after. I'm tired of dismal Tuesdays and dread at the sound of thunder. Finally, at last, I have a new key.
The hex of the past is unwoven. Maybe one day I'll even remember it fondly. For now, though, I must turn my attention to that which is pending, and for the time when not yet is no longer.
The past and the pending, watchful trees, murmurs from beyond the veil. Synchronicities on late autumn nights, a cold grue that I will speak about one day, but not now, not yet.
I'm back in Texas now but feel the lines of the map drawing me out and away. I see their shimmer at the horizon. It's been a long and patient wait, but finally, times are changing.
Our first order of business for October will be fudging just a wee bit by posting this video snippet from the very end of September, as I watched the butterflies migrate down union street in the late afternoon.
The next order of business is to virtually drift through other lands with faraway friends, putting my own spin on dreaming in the real.
Haunted Echoes/ Secret of the light, by the Mothwing Collective
Unheard music, Mothwing style
Bright pause at the monastery gates, inspired by seeing my compatriot's Zettelkasten entry on my metaphysical maunderings regarding my time living near a Poor Clare Monastery
If you are looking for a sign, here it is.
When Venus whispers into the ear of the sun.
The lovely thing about art is that it can be like dreaming out loud.
...and to celebrate the most blog posts I've ever made in a single year, here's a picture of the abandoned McCabe-Carruth Funeral home in Victoria, Texas, circa 2003.
It's since been restored and made into offices, which - last I heard - no one will rent for long, because, well...you know.
You may not want to look too closely at those windows, by the way. No telling what might be looking back.
At the medical center in Victoria was this imposing caduceus sculpture. It always struck me as a little strange. Victoria being such a conservative place in general, it seemed even less likely that the medical center would be possessed of such a flight of modernity. Especially one verging on a sort of Pagan spookiness.
It was one of those places where the dullness of Victoria had cracked and weirdness leaked through.
In 1840, the first sign of the Great Comanche Raid in Victoria was a flaming arrow. In an odd sort of commemoration, a neon arrow set this barbecue joint's roof ablaze nightly for 50 plus years.
Tonight I was rummaging through a box of various items when I spotted an old green notebook.It was my 1994 diary, which was interesting, in light of last night's post.
I opened it at random, to an entry that (unbeknownst to me at the time) would prove important to my future.
"Very cold today. I didn't go out once, except to get the mail. There was a strange letter from Victoria, TX, addressed to my true name. Mystified, I opened it. It was from N. This was a surprise. I didn't know she had moved.
She'd sent her number, so I called her and ran up my phone bill. It was a good conversation, though, it was really nice to speak to her again. She was outside on her balcony smoking cigarettes, and the sound of wind chimes echoed into the phone, like she was sitting in a new age temple or a psychic bookstore. I imagined her there in Victoria, beneath the wind chimes in the misty rain, flicking her lighter again and again."
This letter was the precipitating event in a series leading to my own move to Victoria less than 2 years later.
The Cosmic Joker, for his part, couldn't resist getting a poke in, either. The date on the entry was January 28, 1994. Exactly 24 years ago today.
Inspired by Uair01's latest post on psychogeographic maps, I decided to make one of my own. Not of the place where I currently live, but the place where I used to live. I haven't been back there in a few years now, so it's made strictly from memory.
Lacking the skill to build a map on my own, I stole one from the internet. Even better, I stole it from the 2003 schedule for the Shiner Comanches sports team, already helpfully marked out with directions to the stadium. Completely meaningless for my purposes here, as I never went to the stadium nor had any feelings about it one way the other. Still, these are the kind of details I find immensely fascinating.
Employing my epic MS paint skills, I denoted each site with a spot of color and a number. There are 20 on this map, and could have been many more, but my eyes could only take so much strain in one night. I decided to stick with the places that have strong, specific memories attached, or have something notably strange about them. Sometimes they are both.
Sites are approximate. More or less.
1. The apartment where my cousin lived, an airy place where her friends blew in and out like the breeze. Years later, after everyone had moved away, we drove past the area where we could see the balcony from the lane. We had the eeriest feeling that we'd turn the corner and see everyone waiting for us as if they had never left.
2. Hall Electric. They sold lamps and fans and things. In the old store, the window display had two lighted fans that looked like pinwheels. Even when the rest of the town was dark and asleep, the pinwheels would spin all night long.
3.The Denny's restaurant where we'd go to study. There was a palm tree near the door where grackles would roost, and a surreal hum from the power lines. This is the place where I met my husband.
4.A traffic light that always took an absurdly long time, even when there were no other cars on the road. This is where I first became aware of the disorienting creepiness that often came upon Victoria at night. As if it became an entirely different place when the sun went down.
5. The Victoria mall. If you park around back, you enter through a dim and echoing hallway. There was a restroom there where the lights would buzz and flicker like something out of a David Lynch film.
6. The former location of the Maranatha used bookstore. We'd raid it every couple of weeks, before it became glutted with romance novels. It had that distinctive smell, like paper and dust. I found my copy of John Keel's Our Haunted Planet there.
7. The place where my husband's ex-wife saw a ghost. Also notable because that bit of road always seemed like an afterthought. It gave me the uncanny feeling that it shouldn't have been there at all.
8. The Cimarron Express, where the cashier was always careful not to give me the ojo. She told me once she sensed I was about to receive an important message, and it turned out to be true. I'd go there for frozen coffees and later, my Sad Cheese Sandwich. One day, I will write about the Sad Cheese Sandwich, but not today, not today
9. A place where we used to live.
10. One afternoon, while peering out my bedroom window, I was startled to see the silhouettes of Nick and Jeff on top of one of the university buildings. Turns out they'd found a trap door and decided they ought to go through it.
11. The Sonic between Red River and Rio Grande. There were other Sonics in town, of course, but interesting times seemed to revolve around this one. In fact, we'd just come back from there the night of Reynaldo. Which reminds me, I need to write a post about the night of Reynaldo.
12 (b). Nearby spot of pink I'd forgotten to number but can't be changing everything now - An intersection bordered by a creepy Victorian mansion, Cap'n Jack's rooming house, the crosswalk light that never gave you enough time to pass, and the Coastal Mart which can be seen coming up on the left at the end of this video:
13. The cash machine that seemed oddly out of place, although it was always there when you needed it. It just had a weird vibe, that cash machine. As if the world had ended and the only things left were you and this ATM.
14. Here the little green dot is having to stand in for several things. One was the basement club where we used to dance. Another is the loft where the band used to play. Something dark in the atmosphere there. Chills right up your spine. Across the street was the murder apartment.* Around the side was the funeral home**. If you were quiet very late at night, there's no telling what you might hear.
This is a wretched photograph of me, but it does give a good view of that corner.
Come to think of it, we took quite a few photos in that spot, and they are all wrong somehow. The landscape looks normal, but the people do not.
15. The very cute but suspiciously cheap house we didn't buy because it was bloody terrifying.
16. The radio station, the first place I came to in Victoria and where I realized I'd come to the place I was meant to be at that time.
17. The shopping center that always felt empty even when it was full. The doves' coos and pigeons' wings made a sound as if the place had been abandoned 30 years.
18. Resurrection Cemetery (I missed the location by a couple of blocks on this one, sorry.) One evening, I was waiting at the stoplight when I saw a car full of people unloading flowers at a gravesite. It seemed unusual, seeing a car there so late, but thought perhaps they'd come to pay a last visit after a funeral. Then I turned the corner and in my headlights saw that there was no car, no people...there had not even been any place to park.
19. The original site of Hasting's book and music store. Later, they would build a bigger store across the way, with a coffee shop where we spent many pleasant hours. Still, it's the original location that sticks with me. Perhaps it was because of the high windows in front that let you see miles out into the sky, or the back corner where the off-beat people would gather. I remember standing at the counter there in March, 1996 and having one of those unexpected moments of pure bliss that happen sometimes. If nothing else, that would be worth a marking on the map. The Hasting's franchise went out of business last year, so it's all just memories now.
20. This map is so old, the HEB is still marked in its original spot. The shopping center there had an uncharacteristic good vibe. Everything just felt better in that area. No idea why, but it did. When the store was moved further down the road, the mood became cranky and dour - excellent brick-oven pizza not withstanding. So if we're going to get all New Age-y and ask which place in Victoria was a node of positive energy, I'd point to where HEB is marked on the map. One might say a shopping center is an unlikely shrine, but hey...this is America.
...
One day it would be neat to mark all of the significant sites, then connect the dots to see if they make a shape. Although knowing Victoria, the shape will turn out to be a drunken redneck.
Note - the piece of music in the video is a hidden track at the end of High Roller by The Crystal Method. IMO, If any piece of music captured the feeling of Victoria - not the people, but the place itself - that would be it. Set it to play in a loop while reading the post and the feeling comes through quite well. It's the kind of thing I can never manage to convey with words.
Update - I also just realized that the corner you can see behind me in the picture above is the site where the townsfolk hid during the great Comanche raid.. Could this have to do with the spooky feeling that pervades that block?
further notes - Once, I dreamed that the secret name of Halletsville, TX was actually "Bohemavaria". This struck me as so appropriate as to be hysterically funny and that's why it's listed at the top of the map. Also, having had another look, I see there's too many dots and a couple of number 16's. That's what I get for working until 4AM. You get the idea, anyway. *Am shocked to realize I haven't mentioned the murder apartment **or the funeral home, for that matter. And this blog is called Victoria Phantasmagoria. Sheesh.
Riverside Park in Victoria, Texas is not exactly an inviting place, so when I came across this little anecdote over at Ghosts Of America, I felt a little chill down my spine:
"My friend Brianna was at Riverside Park with her cousin Mary by the kayaking trail on the Guadalupe River. They were away from their family whom were in the parking lot above. Brianna, who was not a strong believer in the supernatural, was down on the bank looking for animals on the other side.
Mary stayed on the cliff, she was very scared. All of a sudden there was a loud screaming coming from down the Riverbank. Brianna quickly looked to see what was wrong, it was a young woman who looked no older than Brianna who was 16.
She appeared to be drowning, so Brianna decided to go help but when she got there the woman was gone. There was no sign of anyone but the word RUN spelled in the sand."
Sounds just like the kind of tales we used to whisper in the girls' bathroom at school. And knowing Riverside park, it's not so hard to believe.
Whenever we spent time there, I always had the urge to keep looking over my shoulder. At the same time, I was always afraid of what I might see.
Waxing nostalgic (ie conveniently denying reality) about my old neighborhood this week, here's a picture of my favorite house. I was always half-thinking of schemes to buy it, being in love with the weathered carved wood and peaked roofs.
Ultimately, I'm glad we didn't, having become all too familiar with the risks of living in an historic house. Dark wood that seems to absorb all the light, the freezing floors, the ever-collecting dust, ceilings you can't reach, the lack of insulation that suddenly becomes PAINFULLY OBVIOUS during the rare cold snap.... all things that can make a house un-homey indeed.
We've learned our lesson, and the next place we live, we want it to be bright and airy and full of windows. Preferably on a beach.
But still...doesn't this looks like the perfect house for a dark and stormy night? I'd wander through the rooms wearing a long white nightgown and carrying a lantern. Or stand on the balcony invoking strange old gods. I would scare the hell out of the neighbors.
(sorry, this picture is a photograph of a drawing and rather dim and crooked, but...never mind. It's all I got.)
Having written about the Forlorn Intersection in the previous post, I began to think about the drab grey little street that led through it - might as well call it the Forlorn Road. The Forlorn Road could be seen from my window across the vacant field, its drabness evident in the glow from the street light at night.
The day before Bill Clinton came to town on the stump for Hilary, we were sitting on our porch when a big truck labeled simply "fruits and vegetables" rumbled by.
"How much you want to bet that truck is really full of secret service agents ready to stake out the neighborhood?" I asked, thoughtfully.
"Oh, I'm sure. If not that one, then it's another. They're bound to be all over." said my husband. "But 'fruits and vegetables' certainly seems suspicious."
Early the next morning, around 5 AM, I awoke in the dark. As usual, I could see the Forlorn Road through the window, but something was strange. There a bright light hovering in the sky above it. At first I thought it must be a plane, but as I lay there and watched it, it continued to hover there motionless. After five minutes had passed on the clock, I grew bored and turned away. It stood to reason; things were bound to be weird when the Secret Service was in town.
I don't know what the light was or if it really had to do with the Secret Service. It could have been a black helicopter on silent mode or could have been that old standard swamp gas or an usually bright planet Venus. Who knows?
But it's more fun to imagine something much more dramatic happening over Forlorn Road. Certainly more fun to draw. But I still can't decide if that shadowy figure is being picked up or dropped off. :)
So, I was driving through Victoria last week and noticed that the creepy, ever-present angels looming near the cemetery gates seemed a bit different....
Okay, I'm pretty sure the missing head of the right-hand angel was an accident - there is a broken tree nearby and a chip in one wing as well. The burning question remains, however - Where is the head? No, really. Where is it? It was certainly not in evidence nearby. Did someone abscond with it? Do they have it in their bedroom where it stares at them in the night? I mean, those angels always seemed about to turn and look at you, even when they had both their heads....*
* "Oh, I have an animation program that can make them do that, easy!" said my brother happily, thinking he was being helpful in that special way he has. Erm...no, I prefer not to see my recurring nightmares come to life on screen, but thanks anyway, bro. :p
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