Weblog 287

August 14, 2011~ 12:00 am
We've been blessed in these parts with some mighty fine weather and I'm grateful. Though what's extraordinary about the human condition is that once one primary issue is resolved (and for me, it's been the heat and humidity these past couple of weeks)-as soon as that central concern is out of the way, we tend to fasten on something else that bothers us. It's true!

I'm feeling morbid. Part of that is fall approaching, bringing on Halloween, and these cool nights and yes, the FULL MOON have ushered in 'autumn' in my mind, but it's also because on Saturday evening Wayne and I watched 'Paranormal Activity 2'.



If you saw the first one, it's more of the same, but what IS it about houses and menace that brings on chills? For me, any abandoned house looks plenty creepy.



It's the implied darkness inside. The absence of life. The way the windows, uncurtained and showing only black squares or rectangles, seem to be watching. Staring.



There was an empty house at the bottom of a very steep street where I lived growing up, where a classmate in first grade died in a sledding accident. The house was Victorian, clapboard and gray-- with empty windows and creepers growing all over it. Years before I was born, a woman had been murdered there-- a victim of mulitple stab wounds inflicted by an angry beau. I'd also heard there was three year old who drowned in the upstairs bathtub back in the 30's. (Of course, asking my mother never did any good because she 'forgets' unpleasant things. Always has.) We called the house 'Heartbreak Hotel', and I used to use a path through the woods that ran right alongside it as a short cut to get to my friend Annette's house when I was a little girl. I was always scared, but the shorter route was too much of a temptation to forego... and the streetlights helped somewhat, but since then, all abandoned houses remind me of that one. They watch. Their silence is chilling.

It's not too far a leap for my mind to jump from scary, sad houses, to mourning rituals. I believe I've found the spookiest daguerrotype of a woman in mourning I've ever seen! She's COMPLETELY covered up in widow's weeds, with full, face-covering veil.



How in the WORLD did she navigate in that thing? Had life become SO AWFUL without her departed, she choose not to see it? Amazing. No one mourns like those folks of the 19th century. The customs and the fashions, the jewelry and the protocols were very exacting. It was nothing to mourn a few years, or even- in the case of Queen Victoria herself, a lifetime, after her beloved husband Albert died.

I think formalized mourning was probably a healthier thing than the way we rush to 'get on with life' after losing someone. Pills are prescribed, grief counselors, new hobbies taken up.... when perhaps just allowing a long, slow time to openly GRIEVE may actually be the healthier route. Look at this wonderful painting by Edwin Elmer.

Feel the stilted strangeness of the scene.



He painted that AFTER his nine year old daughter had died of appendicitis, when he and his wife closed up the house, got rid of all her toys and pets and left, but not before he painted this picture of what truly looks like two realms to me. The parents are remote, stiff as pokers, and so is their home with its black, blank windows. In a world divided from theirs stands the child, out of reach, but hopefully in a haven where the things she loved surround her still. It's a very moving painting to me.

After all these ghoulish musings, I'm happy to share one of the most DELIGHTFUL images from an old daguerrotype. I call it: Young Love.



Isn't that just the most impulsive, joyful thing you've ever seen in one of these stiff, oldtime photos? The young lad is quite taken with the little lady, and is forcefully PULLING her face to meet his. It just tickled me to find that one online.

I've been like a weathervane recently, swinging this way and that. Perhaps in true lunatic fashion, this full moon has called out the more arcane things from deep inside me, the squiggly and the sad stuff. Nice to know there are yet some warm, human impulses (like those two old-fashioned kiddoes in the grip of one) who do the totally unexpected, and grab the moment. Yeah, kids! You made me smile.




August 15, 2011~ 4:45 pm
I have Monday under my belt...... and I have TWO WONDERFUL SITES to share with you, both of which made me HAPPY today!

If you're a fan of CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, you may or may not have seen his 'gardener's skit' on Saturday Night Live. He plays (hysterically, of course) a reluctant TV garderner who is very frightened of his plants. His solution is to give them EYES, so he can better relate to them and hopefully, trust them. I forwarded a link of that skit to my daughter Holly, who immediated shot back

"All of my plants are getting googly eyes now!"

When I got home from work, this is one of the photos she sent along......



LOL!!! Now, to truly enjoy what that is all about, if you have updated flash enabled, feast your eyes on Christopher Walken, as he explains the rationale behind plants with EYES.

At work today (where I do have flash) I watched a remarkable little film about an owl and a cat.....together.



Just click on that charming picture to see how the strangest pairing of creatures manage to get along. (As was suggested to me, they must have been raised together-- but it's the cutest, darndest thing imaginable!)





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