The Game Of Signs

It's hard to remember now who taught me to play the game of signs. It may have been my sister, who - being annoyed with my childish pleas for attention - told me to go outside and look until I found something. Then again, my cousins would also play this game when they'd run out of other things to do. Since we'd all had the sort of parents who tended to give us withering looks and tell us to entertain ourselves whenever we complained of boredom, it may have emerged out of sheer necessity. 

At any rate, being much younger than my siblings and there being no other kids in the neighborhood to play with, the game of signs became the solitary child's treasure hunt.

It's easy. First find an object. Any old object will do, as long as it catches your attention. Take this leaf, for example:

Which way is is pointing? Well, go that way. Keep on going until you find something.

Ah, here's a renegade marigold, growing out of place. How many petals does it have? There's five, so walk five paces (or five feet, whatever works). In this case, to the shrubbery, where a butterfly flits among the blossoms.

Following the butterfly (he was too quick to photograph, so you'll just have to trust me on this) leads us to a couple of twigs shaped  sort of like a "t"...

What begins with the letter t? Tree, of course, so we must head over to the biggest tree in the garden and see what we find.

A feather, hiding in a crevice. Feathers mean birds, and the place to look for birds is a birdhouse.

In the grass beneath the birdhouse tree, there's a lost penny. Maybe that's our treasure? Or perhaps not. If it's heads, we stop. If it's tails, we'll go on.

Tails. So we must continue, but a nearby rock helpfully points out the direction...

 where we find a heap of colored glass baubles. That fits my definition of treasure. Score!

Though when my five year-old plays this, his usual definition of treasure is bugs. Well, to each his own. You can find all sorts of things, when you play the game of signs.

What this is, really,  is just some imagination and playing close attention to things, and when you pay attention, you are bound to find something.

 It's one of life's little miracles.

Invisible Monster Update

A while back I posted here about the "invisible monster" of anxiety and depression, and my use of  theta wave isochronic tones to try to reduce it. I promised an update back then, so here it is. 

Originally, I had planned to use the use the tones regularly, then take a break to see if the positive effects lingered. As it happened, I couldn't take a break for very long, as the anxiety levels would start creeping up again. I also experimented with many of the different types of theta wave tones available. Some of them make very pleasant listening, but for my own anxiety reduction effects, I still haven't found any better than the ones posted in the linked entry. YMMV.

Despite these not being brainwave frequencies, I also experimented with tones from the solfeggio scale. Even though any scientific evidence of these being beneficial is suspect in the extreme, I've personally felt that some musical tones can have positive effects. 417 Hz is a very comforting sound to me, though 528 Hz seems to be most popular. Regardless, this method didn't help and actually was starting to make things worse. I kept at it for a while, because I really wanted it to work, but eventually couldn't deny the detrimental effects. I found Buddhist and Hindu mantras to be more helpful than these. Again, YMMV.

What I did find to be extremely effective - and gives a huge boost to any calming or anti-depressant effects of the tones - is combining another form of media with the sounds. There are a lot of  videos on youtube that combine tones with visuals or music, but I found creating my own version to be much preferable. Here's how I made it work: 

I'd play the tones with headphones, through a phone or tablet. Using the television in my bedroom, I'd select either a piece of music that had only pleasant associations for me, or video that I'd found particularly calming, pleasant or had especially good memories attached to it. The aim here was to keep my mood elevated and thoughts focused while in the meditative state and not have them veer off into some grim or frightening territory. With depression and anxiety, the thoughts are already trained to go in that direction, so it was important for me to counteract that.

With music, the volume on the television didn't need to be especially loud, just enough to hear it behind the tones. For some reason, this tended to work better than the tones that were already embedded in music. Not sure why - maybe it was simply down to the music being a personal choice.

With video, the one I find most helpful has a particular hypnotic effect. It's a section of a playthrough from a video game I once enjoyed, called Rollaway (or Kula World, or Kula Quest.) I don't play a lot of video games, but this one I recall being unusually happy playing way back in the day. Given what I know now, this makes perfect sense -  imagining a ball rolling away from you while you're standing still is an excellent hypnotic technique. (Go ahead, close you eyes and imagine it right now!). 

Here's the video, for reference: 

The music in this section of the game is also one of my favorites (Hiro, by Twice A Man). With this video, I don't even bother to lower the volume, as the ringing sounds of  the collected coins and keys, along with the music, strike me as both calming and upbeat. The combination of visuals and tones in this case create a more lasting positive effect. 

There are a few others that I've been working with, too. I suppose ultimately it comes down to which ones give you the effect you want. 

So, my assessment today, having done this for a period of several months, is that these techniques have been more or less effective, at least for me, and none of them (save the solfeggio tones) have been detrimental. None have actually made my condition worse. Of course, my condition at the start was pretty damn bad, so this is not saying that I'm anywhere near "normal" for an average, non-depressed person yet. I still hold out hope, though.

Using my blog posting habits as a measure, I've been able to post more than in a long time. This is significant, because it's something that has to be planned, constructed and time being made to actually write something, as well as the power of concentration needed to do so - and it does create some amount of guilt for me because it feels more like "playing" than any kind of work. The fact that I've been able to do it shows improvement, I think. 

The invisible monster is not defeated yet, but the battle continues.

The Hidden Cameras

Follow These Eyes

The weather is warming and this music sounds about right.

The Grave Dancer

 Dream archive - May 24, 2009

In the dream, we are driving home late at night. The only light is the full moon, and I can see the silhouettes of  palm trees lining the road. Nearing home,  my  husband says, "there's someone outside the house".

I look up and see a glimpse of a veiled woman underneath my window. We know it is the grave dancer.

My husband pushes me down and says "hide, hide!"  He stands guard at the window, but we know she's out there. There are bells attached to the grave dancer's veil, and we can hear them outside in the dark.

The Mysteries Of Fate (And Other Publications)

While coming to the uneasy realization that I did not fit in with my peers and was indeed the proverbial square peg in a round hole, it made sense that I would draw closer to my cousins. We at least understood each other, and visits with them were always an adventure

It was in March of the year I was 11 that my sea-side cousin came up to Grandmother's house for Spring Break, toting a bagful of old Fate magazines. Her friends' hippie parents, she said, had stacks of them, and had given her these to keep. These were digest-sized magazines, printed on newsprint stock, full of (as stated on the cover) True Reports Of The Strange And Unknown.

These true reports might never live up to skeptical scrutiny, full of anecdotal evidence and personal accounts  as they were, but that was not a worry to me. As far as I was concerned, this was news from from the world of strange phenomena by people who'd wandered the territory, either by accident or design. The sense of wonderment that ran through the articles was very appealing as something that seemed - as near as I could observe - to be missing from the ordinary world.

Which isn't to say I was too credulous. Even today I only believe 50% of what I read, and which 50% is always liable to change. It didn't matter so much if it was objectively true, since perception is a funny thing. It was more that someone believed it to be true, and was willing to share their thoughts with the rest of us. The reader could decide for themselves. Also, the columns on Cryptozoology, UFOs and parapsychology provided a more detached view of things.

That said, one of the best parts of Fate were the ads.

 

Many proclaimed secret knowledge or hidden truths, to see into your future or past, or to bring good fortune. Many seemed to communicate with the (endlessly fascinating) language of signs and symbols.

This was satisfying to an unconscious mind devoid of spoken language but hungry for meaning. It made sense, too, because the invisible world was in so many ways beyond description. Words just end up in a tangle. A symbol gets right to the heart of the matter, the thing you know without being able to say how you know.

It seemed to us (while we sprawled on grandmother's floor among the pile of magazines) that the part of you without language was the part of you that perceived the Unseen. The part of you that just knew. That's what they called it in Grandmother's family, "knowing". It was no more complicated than that, really. To try describe it in words just confused matters.

Despite the appealing nature of these ads, I never had the urge to order anything. I was a do-it-yourselfer by nature. Learning about a subject was all well and good, but where was the fun in having it all done for you? I was content to ponder such subjects, but several of my cousins independently decided to take it to the next level.

There was an ad that had appeared, not in Fate, but in the back of  many other publications. It was for The Magic Power of Witchcraft, by Gavin and Yvonne Frost.

My recent Catholic schooling, with its emphasis on the dangers of the spiritual world, had made actually buying a book on witchcraft a bridge too far for me. Besides, I couldn't imagine how I'd explain such a thing to my mother when it arrived in the mail. The promises made in the ad didn't necessarily appeal to me, anyway -  spying on people's antics behind closed doors and the power to crush my enemies weren't my sort of bag. My cousins, however, had no such compunctions, and ordered away. The book even came with an amulet - that was pretty cool.

This state of affairs probably leads to a couple of questions, such as - why would buying a book on witchcraft be so much worse than the fortune telling, second sight and casual spell casting that already existed in the family? I suppose it was the ritual content, for one thing. These family quirks could be seen as "natural" or even "god-given" gifts that needed very little training to achieve - most of it was a matter of intent and grabbing the right signal from the ether, or whatever it was. No need to invoke any spirits, or anything like that. 

I don't necessarily feel this way today, mind you - I don't have any problems with such books or rituals when used wisely (though I do believe some of the books are booby-trapped - not necessarily the one mentioned above, but some of them are). Even so, I'm still not a big ritual person. For me, it's the simpler, the better in most cases. 

Secondly -  the question might be asked, does witchcraft work? Short answer: hell, yes, it does. If things were already weird before the actual practice of ritual magic came into it, things became really, really weird afterwards. Incredibly, flagrantly weird. There were reports of ghost lights and apparitions. Tales of levitation at inopportune times. Visions of the future appearing in bowls of ink. The night hag of sleep paralysis began to visit, and we experienced shared dreams. Some of us had to cover our mirrors, as things that shouldn't be seen there had begun to turn up. This is to say nothing of the mysterious aura (for lack of a better word) that began to develop around one of the cousins and her entire house. We had become weirdness incarnate. 

I suppose the moral of this story is that it's never a good idea to let a group of untrained pubescents practice ritual magic. It probably opened some doors to things we were not ready to handle. But it worked, all right. It still works, for good or ill. In the aftermath, some of us tried to put these things aside, or sought other forms of spirituality or faith, but it was not easy, or even very successful. It's like trying to disown your eye color, or the talent you inherited from your old auntie.

Today, so many in the family  - whether we consider ourselves practicing "witches" or are affiliated with a religion or not - can still feel the crackle of magic in the air if there's a working going down, or feel a spell or hex that's been thrown at us like sticky glue.We know how to listen to the invisible world with one certain part of our attention while keeping the rest occupied. We also know that we shouldn't think about it too hard, or want it too much, because otherwise it will run. These are things we know in our bones.

We can hide it (some of us better than others) under a guise of normality, because we know these things have no place in in the ordinary world. But underneath we know. We've had to embrace our inner weirdness.

I've come to think that the title of the magazine was accurate. Some things are fated. Ultimately, there really is no escaping your true nature.

Yay For Muffins

Join me in a short muffin break while I try to make sure my next post doesn't suck too much. Also, Happy Lunar New Year!

Strange Days

The first time I heard about Mothman, I was about three years old. It was  before I could read, at any rate.When the famous illustration appeared in the paper (probably attached to some retrospective, probably titled "whatever happened to Mothman?") my sister gleefully embellished it with dripping red fangs.When I asked her to read the story, she demurred, saying it was too scary, but since that excuse has never worked with any kid ever, I pressed until she relented.

 She said that Mothman appeared to people driving late at late ("when they've had too much to drink" said mom, from the kitchen) on long dark roads. He'd fly alongside the car, staring in at them with glowing eyes. I immediately imagined the road to our grandmother's house, which was just like that, and shivered. Oh, they were all quick to say that that Mothman wasn't real, it was just hallucinations and whatnot, but I wasn't so sure. I'd already heard my teenage siblings talk about Goatman, who (they said) lived out in the canyons, and Fishman, who lived under the third river crossing ("knock on the bridge three times and the water will  bubble. That means the Fishman is coming"). Mothman seemed to fit right in.

It was scary, but not so scary that I wasn't interested, and every time we drove the long, dark country road to grandmother's, I kept my eyes peeled.

Trips to the Grandparents were always mysterious events anyway. Despite our Grandfather's ban on talk of  such things, there was no avoiding the fact that Grandmother's family were weirdness magnets back to time immemorial. No one had to say anything, it was intrinsic to the people and the place. Still, the stories leaked out. Hexes and spells, fortune telling and ghosts, and all manner of unusual things. Grandfather (who'd married into the family) wouldn't hear of it, but Grandmother and her sisters might talk if they were alone. Some of the aunts, too, and the numerous cousins who were always around. Mother took Grandfather's dim view, but blood will out, and we cousins were just as likely to be found reading tea leaves as doing Mad Libs or playing tag.

Plus, their house was haunted. This was scary but also not. It was part of the landscape. It didn't matter if you didn't believe in ghosts, you still had to contend with their disembodied footsteps and cold spots or having the bed yanked out from under you by Unseen Forces. That was just a typical evening at Grandma's.

This being the case, when a girl who worked in my mother's shop said she had a book of ghost stories that was too frightening for her, I eagerly asked to borrow it. She brought it the next day, saying I should keep it. This was when I was about 7, and just beginning to read really well. The book was called  Haunted Houses  by Larry Kettelkamp, and quickly became my favorite reading.

 

On the cover was the tulip staircase ghost, and inside was the tale of the brown lady of Raynham Hall. This was the first time I'd ever seen the famous photograph of the alleged ghost descending the stairs.

The tale of the Brown Lady was chilling enough. but  it also had stories about Borley Rectory, the Tower of London, time slips, and assorted poltergeists. It had theories about time being another dimension, the possibility of astral projection and repressed emotions causing telekinesis.

It even had diagrams:

Needless to say, for the burgeoning weird girl and map nerd, it was a gold mine.

It wasn't exactly frightening, though. Even if the contents were enough to scare the spit out of the other girls at the second grade slumber party, it indicated something else to me. There seemed to be an invisible world of unexplained phenomena that existed alongside of us, only making itself visible occasionally. A sort of abstract world that lived within our concrete one. This was not a frightening thought to me, but comforting instead. It seemed that the world was full of mystery and the possibilities were endless. This was a good thing.

And anyway, you could feel it, couldn't you, the hidden world? Sense its existence somehow? Like a vibration in the air or unseen lines connecting everything. A bit like fishing. You could feel the tug on your line or tug the line yourself. Or sometimes it was a faint distortion of the air, like heat waves on a hot day. Some of the signs of this invisible world felt more dramatic, like the crackling energy of a ghost, or very subtle, like knowing someone's thought as if you'd simply thought it yourself. It was strange, and it wasn't 100% - these things came and went, like a radio going in and out of tune - but there was no reason to doubt it was there. Wasn't it obvious?

It would take a while before I would realize that not everyone held this view. Indeed, some people were not okay with this view at all. At Catholic school, it was more or less fine, because we spent a considerable amount of time learning about God and angels and other unseen powers. As long as you weren't dallying about with evil forces - and even if you were - no one would argue about the existence of the invisible world. In fact, you had to keep on your toes, because it was always watching you. And television in those days had shows like In Search of... and Real People. Even PM Magazine did segments about the Phillip experiment and things like that. But outside of church and television, things were rather different.

Upon entering public school at age 10, I rapidly discovered I was a freak. There was no interest in spiritual matters; instead, designer clothes and tennis held utmost importance. Also, shiny hair. Roller skating came in close behind. Well, at least I could roller skate. But still. Anomalous phenomena and preppies are mutually exclusive. Even my collection of Nancy Drew mysteries was suspect ("why don't you read anything about horses?") There was no room for weirdness in a place like that. Not unless you didn't mind being MARKED FOR LIFE. But as I said in the previous post, there's no escaping your true nature.

It was late one night during this unhappy time that I was wandering about the house, sleepless.as usual. Among the books on the living room shelf, one caught my attention. It had...I can't quite remember now...either a little green spaceman or a sea monster on the spine. I picked it up. It was one of my brother's old books, Frank Edwards' Stranger Than Science.

With a table of contents like this, it was irresistible:

 I opened it right toThe Devil's Footprints and kept reading until sunrise. Thus began my double life - Hello Kitty collecting roller skater by day, secret Fortean by night. I couldn't pull it off for long though. You know what they say - cuteness is only skin deep, but love of anomalous phenomena goes straight to the bone. There would be no denying my essential weirdness for much longer. I was a Hopeless Case.

I never did give up roller skating, though. :)

Februrary Musings

February is the time of year I'm most drawn to seek sustenance from familiar comforts. Maybe it's the feeling (left over from schooldays, perhaps) of being the dead zone of the year, a grey month punctuated with embossed foil artificiality.  Maybe it's because it was always around this time that my mother would go on a tear (a special, rage-at-the-whole-world sort of tear) making my already busted home life that much more wretched. It doesn't really matter, I suppose; just that when times are hard, people seek solace where they can. 

At the time I'm thinking of, I was an unfortunately tall and ungraceful girl stuck in that phase of puberty that seemed to go on forever, lonely and with few friends. It was also at this time, thanks to an offhand remark by a teacher, that my mother decided I should be a fashion model. Ho Ho. It seems like a cruel joke, but in retrospect, I suppose I should be grateful. Thanks to this, I was left alone to wander the malls of the city after our junior board fashion shows and Sunday supplement photos, which was probably the best part of being 11. 

Of course, being 11, the Hallmark shop drew me like a fly. It was even better than Spencer's (where you could get electric blue mascara and fiber-optic lamps). At that time, it was the only place that stocked Sanrio products,  which evoked a level of cute that made even me feel small and girlish.

It was usually only the more advantaged girls at school who had access to the such adorableness (you knew a popular girl had a made a mistake on her social studies test when you smelled the heady scent of strawberry or bubblegum eraser). I was never one of those girls, but patience and careful use of my pocket money bought a small and secret entrance into the world of cute. 

Even if I never felt I truly belonged, it was some solace to imagine this sweet and tiny girl-world, some Hello Kitty land where nothing bad could ever really happen. I decorated my copy of A Little Princess with stickers and carried it around everywhere, even if I related more to Becky the scullery maid than to Sarah Crewe. They were like talismans, really. Some charm signifying an existence I wished to understand. 

My other main solace (and one maybe more true to my personality) was comic books. Not superhero comics - that was my brother's thing. None of that muscle-y guy in tights business for me. Unless it was Captain Hero. Riverdale, USA was another safe haven. Wacky, but safe. And Jughead, dear Jughead, was my guide. Betty was cool, too, but  Jughead's almost Zen weirdness was an inspiration. 

I knew Jughead. I was Jughead. Just a girl and not so lazy (or gluttonous).

Witness this classic, drawn by my favorite, Samm Schwartz::

See? Not even being kidnapped by a religious cult phases him very much. His main complaint is that their god's name is Harold. Who couldn't get behind a guy like that? 

My treasured collection of double-digests helped me embrace my inner weirdness, which is a good thing, 'cos there's just no escaping your true nature. 

Which, by the way, will be the subject of the next post.

Confessions Of A Map Nerd

 I admit it - I'm a map nerd.

But it's not just any old map that strikes my fancy. It's not things like precise mileage that interests me - though I do feel a certain thrill upon learning that the nearest Bath and Body Works is 10.3 miles away (or an even stranger thrill at the odd directions that Google maps gives to get there - why is it necessary to circle the block first?). No, the map has to be special, unique, or peculiar somehow.  

For instance, MUFON's live UFO map is a thing of beauty and perfection. And I'm not even that interested in UFOs. I mean, The Truth Is Out There, and all that, but unless they are buzzing my house or rustling my livestock, it's just not that much of a concern. But (at least here in phantasmagoria-land) that map is glorious.

Or maps that are temporarily, oddly specific, like this one of the downtown area, marked with little ghosts for Halloween festivities. Suddenly, it looks as if that boring old warren of shops is awash in spirits. Very conveniently located ones, too.

 

Especially nice are hand-drawn maps. I always like to receive invitations to out-of-town weddings, despite not enjoying big social occasions very much. It's because they usually include a hand-drawn map to the venue, printed on little cards. When you collect something as random and ephemeral as that, you'd be surprised  at what begins to look like a free gift.

Even better than that is the found hand-drawn map. Usually discovered crumpled on the sides of roads, or in the damp grass on the edge of  a lawn. Like this one:

One wonders how so many come to be lost in such a way. Do they fly out windows as the driver squints at street numbers? Or is the seeker so thrilled at reaching their destination that they joyously fling their map to the wind? There is always a sense of mystery about them. Who drew them? Why and what for? Was the journey dreaded or highly anticipated? Or something more in between? The chances of ever knowing is slim indeed.

The particular map above has a nice synchronicity attached to it. One summer evening, we were walking along while I bemoaned how I wished that fate, the universe or whatever it is out there would send me a guidebook or a map. What direction should I go with my life? Just then, the wind (or the Cosmic Joker)  blew this crumpled bit of paper at my feet. Judging from what's drawn there, I can only surmise the universe was guiding us away from Myron's restaurant. Which is unfortunate, really, since Myron's macaroni and cheese is most excellent.

As far as psychogeography goes, there is pages worth going on in that tiny scrawl. Just take the area marked "underpass". That's really the MKT railroad bridge, which has a nice echo underneath for screaming (no child can resist) and popular for teenage activities ("Do you wanna go throw eggs off the MKT bridge?" said every high school class for the last 90 years). Or that little bit of stream (unmarked, but seems to have a tiny  dot over it) that feels like it should belong in another world. Plus many, many more things that I may or may not write about one day. 

Even Google maps can sometime reveal secrets only dreamt of, quite literally. Off and on, I'd had a dream that there was an extra, hidden street in our neighborhood. It seemed so realistic that it haunted me, but it was  impossible; I knew every nook and cranny of this place. It must have been one of those dreams like finding hidden rooms in your house. Until I looked at the satellite view and saw  - wonder of wonders! - there was a hidden street in the neighborhood.

Maps. Ordinary, utilitarian items containing infinite mystery.

Old Victoria

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.

Well, wouldn't you? ;)

Cheer Up!

Cheer up, frowny anthropomorphic tree. Things will get better.

Forlorn Road

 (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. :)

The Fringes

Going through my files tonight, I came across this crude map I'd drawn of  my immediate neighborhood, back in 2008. It was obviously meant to be somewhat humorous, but it was also meant to illustrate a particular problem at the time.

What happened was, I had found a set of knives (marked in red text, above) on the ground outside my bedroom window. This was disturbing, but it was not possible to tell if someone had been lurking outside the window for some nefarious purpose, or if they had been hidden there after a crime, or they had been flung there by someone needing to get rid of them fast (for instance, a parolee who'd just seen a cop).

We took the knives to the police station, and while the cops seemed unimpressed, it was still worrying. I drew this map illustrating how all three scenarios had potential, and posted it to an internet forum so my online friends could give it a look. (For the record, most people thought scenario 3  - someone  running from the Forlorn Intersection had flung them there - was the correct one and since nothing ever came of it, I assume they were right.)

Looking back on it now, though, what I see is a psychogeographical map of a fringe area. Fringe areas are of particular interest to me, being transitional places where one thing becomes another. Fringe areas are often overlooked, even though they are around us all the time. Entrance ways and exits, alleys, the outskirts of towns. Fringe areas are also frequently places where crime is more likely to occur - though I hasten to add, my family never personally experienced any crime there.

There were a few transitions occurring in the scope of this map. First (and most noticeable in person) was the petering out of the gentrified neighborhood of restored houses into unrestored houses and then, across the tracks (off the map) into dusty slums. There was an overlapping of social backgrounds and economic status. Then there is the blending of traditionally racially identified areas. Many different types of people came together in this street.

Studying the map (and also from memory) the true fringe area must have been the Forlorn Intersection. I knew quite a few very nice people who lived on the other side, but that intersection - just a drab little road, really - was always the place where things went down.

It's interesting to note that right on the edge stood the convent house - A Poor Clare monastery, to be exact. Quiet, peaceful, shining like a beacon on prayer nights. No one ever, ever messed with the Poor Clares. Regardless of status, they were there for everyone.

All these years later, it occurs to me that there should be many more things marked on the map. Like the house with stained-glass windows, or the silent hedges. I feel lucky that some of these things are captured in the early part of this blog (which was kind of the point, really). But there are other things that aren't so easy to capture. Dust and silt. Humming streetlights.The church carillon that rang every day at 8, 12 and 5. These are little things that make up the secret nature of a place.

One white hot summer day, my friend Arturo was riding past on his bicycle and we stopped to talk. He waved a copy of the local newspaper. "Did you hear? About the creature?" he asked, pointing at the front page picture of the Cuero chupacabra. We both thought it was fascinating, but agreed that sometimes things were better if we never learned the whole truth.

If I could, I would put that on the map, too.

(apologies - I ended up posting this yesterday before it was finished. (long story))

The Anatomy Of Remembered Spaces

 

 A friend rang the other morning. He said, I'm calling from inside your old apartment. They are about to tear the building down.

And just like that, the place we used to live moves from tangible to intangible. It exists solely in memory now

Live long enough, and it's bound to happen. We don't only lose people, but we lose places, too. It's been happening at a steady clip as long as I can remember. It's progress, and commerce, urban development and all those other things. The grocery store of our daily errands is now a call center, the club where we used to dance becomes a gym.

 If  we believe in an afterlife, we can imagine that our lost loved ones are with us in spirit. Aside from the occasional time slip and trans-dimensional gas station, though, the existence of remembered spaces is far more nebulous than even a ghost. Unless, perhaps, the shades of long-ago shoppers still patrol the rows of telephonists, reaching for loaves of bread circa 1996.

 

The house of memory is a peculiar place; everything  lives on top of each other. The boundaries of such a house are permeable and strange. The empty room is never really empty. Minus space time and plus soul time, as Nabakov once said.

You wouldn't know it but there is someone hiding in that picture above. Of course you wouldn't, because he has concealed himself behind the bench. You could raise a legitimate point and say it doesn't matter, since until now, only he knew it and I knew it. If either of us forgets, is the meaning of the photo lost? If a 10 year-old boy hides behind a bench, sometime in the summer of 2001, and no one remembers, does he disappear forever?

For all practical purposes one could say yes, but as long as there are tales of long-dead monks roaming ruined churchyards and Roman soldiers marching along no longer existent roads, then I am not so sure.

 

The place had stood for 30 years, housing any number of college students, young marrieds, the elderly and refugees alike. Hardly any time at all in the great scheme of things, but more than enough time for the drama of human life to play out.  I would be delighted to learn, in 50 years time, of reports of disembodied laughter  and running footsteps at twilight, or the sound of splashing from a nonexistent pool. I can even imagine the astonished murmurs as a mirage of the lighted corner store sign (now also gone) appears in the night sky. 

And by then, only the old folks will remember why.

The Clock Tower

It was about 10 minutes 'til midnight, and I had settled into watch Late Night With Conan O'Brien when  I realized the electric bill was due. I didn't have a car in those days, but judging the distance between my doorstep and the utility company, there was just enough time to drop a check into the night deposit before deadline if I walked fast enough. I grabbed my sweater and scampered off down the hill.

Walking through a small town late at night can be a special experience. The quiet streets, empty shops, traffic lights shining in the dark. Even the striped barber shop pole curling upwards into nothing, straight out of a Ray Bradbury story.  It's these kind of things that a night walker treasures. Though at this point I was mainly concerned with getting downtown before the bell struck twelve.

The fastest route would take me past the Protestant church, with its own lighted clock tower, which could be seen from my bedroom window on Winter nights when there were no leaves on the trees. The glow from the gas lamps was soft and comforting and I wasn't at all afraid.

For some reason I don't know  - maybe a windstorm or something like that - several of the frosted panes of glass on the west facing clock (the left side, above) were gone at that time, replaced temporarily with clear ones. So on the night of which I speak, the areas between the 7 and 12 could be seen through, though not much of interest was ever visible - except on that particular night.

It was only natural that I would look at the clock as I approached the church, worried about the time as I was, but I was not expecting to see what appeared to be looking back. A huge, grey, leathery-winged creature leaned on the edge of the window, peering down at me with an affable grin. I was startled, to put it mildly. Not only was it unlikely to see what looked unnervingly like a real, live gargoyle, but even more unlikely to see one in the tower of a Protestant church. It did occur to me, before I sped away, that at the very least it looked friendly.

I've never maintained that what I saw that night was real, and not just a trick of the light, or an instance of  pareidolia, or even some piece of statuary that had been stored in the tower for reasons unknown. Maybe it was a hallucination, inspired by an unconscious whimsy that the local Protestants were sadly lacking in gargoyles. I've never maintained it was real, but on my way back from the utility company, I still took a different route home.

That was a long time ago now, and I suppose I'll never know what I saw in the tower that night. There didn't seem to be any way to find out. Pulling the minister aside and saying "...so, about that winged monster in your clock..." would probably be a real conversation killer.

Sometimes in life, there are questions just better left unasked.

But Then Again...

When I get really obsessive about something, I have to ask myself, who would be more fun to spend time with? Howard.... or Vince?

By the way, I do dearly wish I could have a subscription to Cheekbone Magazine. That would be awesome.

Catherine's Eyes, Or The Peculiarities Of The Human Psyche

It's been one of those frustrating weeks, when the behavior of other humans seems endlessly, irritatingly confusing. Do people really not know what they do or why they do it? Do they really lack so much insight into their own foibles or worse,  hypocrisy? This eternal headscratching is one of the pitfalls of the bookish introvert (me) who must spend the requisite several hours a day in relentless examination of  this thing they (horror of horrors!) don't understand. 
 

When my overwrought brain gets stuck on this particular spin-cycle, a memory or two will come to the surface, much like lint from the towel you didn't know was buried in the bottom of the washer. A couple of years ago, such frothings produced the saga of Heinrich and Peggy; this time - due to a specific situation that's been developing -  it's coughed up a story about my friend Catherine, or more properly, the effect Catherine had on men.

Catherine was (well, is) a fun girl, beautiful, very clever, and as such had a cadre of friends. Male friends especially, but female friends, too. I'd known her for a long time and very well, so...how can I put this?...it was normal for Catherine's male friends (the heterosexual ones, anyway) to be in love with her. She has a way of making a man feel like he's the most fascinating thing on the planet, so whenever her lovely green eyes lighted on him, he'd get this massive ego-boost and come over all soppy in love.

 This was just par for the course, and not something it ever occurred to me to think about overmuch. It's just a Catherine thing. In other words - don't take it personally, she's like that with everyone.

On occasion it did come up, when one of the guys came to me hoping for an inside track of Catherine's affections, or just to talk about their anguished unrequited crush. Then I would shift to the motherly role, giving them a pat and talking in soothing tones. I did not give them false hope -  in those days, Catherine herself  was suffering a bout of crazy love for one particular man, and frankly, no one else had a chance in hell. Oh, I'm sure I was kinder than that, but that's the gist. For her part, Catherine was glad I was there as a comforter of desperate love angst - that way she didn't have to hear awkward  confessions like "I feel like a giant blinking neon penis whenever she walks into the room."  ;)

This was the situation, back in Catherine's single years, and as I say, par for the course. This is not what's been preying on my mind, the lint in my mental load of washing. No, it's something else. It's that there were other men, too - also "friends" of a sort, but not so close, more on the periphery of Catherine's circle, and they were not like the sweet yet passive buddies who came to me with their feelings, or even just garden-variety friends. These were the ones about whom Catherine would sometimes say, "don't leave me alone with him" or "if he calls, tell him I'm not here".

There was no more promise of a romantic relationship with these guys then the others, but something was different. I could feel a cold, hard-edged rage coming from them, and the rage was not directed at Catherine - it was directed at me. This was an uncomfortable situation, and I tried hard to understand it. I knew they didn't like me and worked extra hard to be nice - though of course mindful that my friend did not feel comfortable alone with them - but the overwhelming feeling I kept getting was that I had ruined everything, that the only thing keeping said guy and Catherine apart was me, champion cock-blocker of all time.

 There were only a few of these guys, but that was plenty. It's never a pleasant situation to feel so much hate flowing your way. Had I been more sophisticated at the time, I likely would have identified this as the kind of red flag situation akin to the the man who fawns over his date at dinner but denigrates the waitstaff. But if I'd been more sophisticated, I  probably wouldn't feel the need to write this. Strange as it sounds, it's  possible to be naive and knowing at the same time. It's the nature and sensation of being hated - that particular sort of hatred (disgust? derision?) that's been puzzling me. Being the target of a sort of blame I didn't understand.

This is where it gets muddled. It's hard to put into words. The best I can do is to say that, in the eyes of these men, Catherine was a sparkling treasure, and I was clearly some slimy thing that had crawled out of the bubbling muck at Innsmouth and was STOPPING THEM FROM CLAIMING THEIR PRIZE, DAMMIT!

But the thing was, I knew this wasn't true (about Catherine, not the Innsmouth thing). Catherine wasn't interested in them that way. I wouldn't have been there if she was. I was only there because she wasn't. For Pete's sake, who would bring along a friend if they were trying to make a sexual conquest? No one with any sense, and certainly not Catherine. So what did they think was going to happen? 

And more to the point - was I really that awful, so wretched in comparison? Is my low self-esteem justified? These are the questions that keeps the bookish introvert up at night. 

Long experience has taught that whenever something is muddled, there has usually been a failure of logic somewhere, or some clue that's been missed. In this case, the kind of clue that your average fourth-grader would have picked up, but must have slid right past me at the time. These particular guys - no doubt the more aggressive, possessive type - had misread the light in Catherine's eyes as romantic (or at least sexual) interest. In their minds, she must have been a sure thing, if it hadn't been for "the friend". Because the human psyche is full of  peculiarities and blind spots, they didn't get that she was like that with everyone, or that she wasn't a possession to be claimed, or that this very attitude made them even more unappealing to her. Hey, there's nothing wrong with me, so it must be Cthulhu over there at fault. Not questioning why Cthulhu was there in the first place. 

Well, it makes sense, but it's really not that hard to grasp. Surely I must have known this at an intuitive level? I'm not that dumb. Yet the subject still seemed muddled. Logic was still failing me somewhere, and therefore I had to worry it like a dog with a bone. This sort of obsession always means something is wrong, a blind spot in my own psyche. What was it that I couldn't see? 

It seemed irrational, on the face of it. If someone is a close friend of the object of desire, it stands to reason that it would be foolish to alienate them from the start. After all, they're in a position to have information that one might want to know, aren't they? A potential way to someone's heart? Even from that strictly Machiavellian perspective, it makes no sense. And then I understood. The reason I fielded so much angst from Catherine's lovelorn buddies was the same reason for the cold-blooded disdain from those other guys.

This quiet girl, sitting there, contained one particular piece of information - that they would never, ever sleep with Catherine.

Omens

Maybe it's just one of those nights - too still, too quiet. Heaviness hangs over everything, like a watchful fog. Outside, two owls (great horned ones, by the sound of them) call to each other from each end of the street. A bad omen, according to legend. Witch birds on the prowl.

Then again, roosters crowing at night are a bad omen, too, and if that were true, this whole neighborhood would be doomed. Regardless, I can't be too careful. Last night I dreamt about dark magic: a handmade doll, with burning candles choking the air with smoke. One of those dreams you can't shake, no matter how hard you try.

Time to circle the house with salt and say a few prayers, perhaps. Stuff my pockets with ash leaves and rosemary sprigs. Wave some sage around. Ring a brass bell. Write the name of my enemy and tear it into nine pieces on the edge of town. Why not?

It all seems perfectly reasonable, on witchy nights like these.

Cold, Dark, 45 degrees

I can't recall a New Years day that wasn't so. There is no fighting the dead of winter.
There's only one song that fits my mood on days like this.

Might as well curl up with a cup of tea and dream of old romance.

The Topiary Angel

I was the last to notice that something was wrong about the woman in the corner apartment. She was only very aged, I thought, and maybe a bit out of touch with reality. Lawrence said she gave him the creeps, though, he didn't like walking past her door. Angela said she was crazy, but when I asked how she knew, she just said, "I know."

The first time I understood was when the topiary angel appeared, set up in the garden facing the woman's windows. I should say, it was once a topiary angel. Now it was something else, and we felt cold when we walked by. It still had the vague shape of wings at its back, covered in ragged greenery like the rest, but its face was greyish with mold.and its crown was a triad of spikes. It was no longer the thing it was meant to be, but had become something chilling and strange.

We could see the angel's dark shape beyond the ash trees, and learned to circumvent that part of the garden. Sometimes we'd forget though, and realize too late that we would have to cross its path.We'd hurry as quickly as we could, feeling the gaze from its eyeless, moldering face.

The woman watched from the window. At night, she would creep into the garden to talk to the shape in a low voice. Sometimes she would place objects inside its frame; marbles or bits of colored foil. Then she would take them away again.

Stephanie said, I want to get rid of it, just run by and snatch it and hurl it into the nearest dumpster. But I can't stand the thought of touching it.

The woman on the corner muttered and whispered. She talked about poison, how they all wanted to poison her. There was a strange smell in her apartment, in the vents. They had killed her dog, she said. But the angel was watching them.

She disappeared one night, the woman, along with the angel. Only the crown of spikes remained, wedged in the boughs of the ash tree. We all stood, staring, wanting to take it away but too afraid. Eventually, the crown disappeared too, and the fear at last began to fade from the garden.

This is the last I know of the topiary angel.

Little Pink House

One night, I dreamt of a little pink house. I lived there in blissful solitude, under a starry sky.

Moments later, my friend Theo busted through the door carrying a watermelon, but that part of the dream didn't make it into the painting. ;)