Have a seat. I know I’m tired when I speak those words aloud. What an odd thing to say. I wonder why? Last night as I was walking Mrs. Uppington I heard myself say “Have a seat” to the dark river behind my house, to the peepers who are peeping in the flooded field.

 

Peepers. I long to hear them, those harbingers of the springtime.

 

My younger son has copyrighted “Pickle Monkeys” which is the odd thing he sometimes says aloud. When I tried it recently he said, “Hey! That’s my thing to say.”

 

I used to work with a Puerto Rican fellow named James whose 7 year-old son came up with “Cockarangus.” Forgive me those of you who speak Spanish if that is a vulgarity. James was not beyond a little leg pulling.

 

I think I must be entertaining an imaginary person when I say “Have a seat.” Perhaps I am a consultant of some sort who is having his first meeting with a new client. What would I be? I’m far too sane to work in the field of mental health.

 

Sanity is defined most basically, most legalistically, as soundness of mind, as in the famous Last Will and Testament language, “…being of sound mind.” It does not mean being free from every eccentric quirk of character. It does mean having the faculty to tell light from dark, day from night, up from down, and so on. When one attempts an insanity defense in a criminal proceeding it means having the ability to tell right from wrong.

 

The world is still on the other side of my door this morning, thank God.

 

Yesterday I drove my caterer friend’s loaner car back to the dealership in the grubby little city to the south, (and it was a grubby little dealership), and exchanged it for her own freshly repaired vehicle of an identical make and model, and noticed that the loaner car, though it smelled like cat pee and had never ever been washed, handled better than hers. There was no CD player in either vehicle. On the radio was a discussion of Atlas Shrugged which was – of course, I hear you saying – formative to my soundness of mind.

 

I took a road I had taken only once before. I took it again to see if what I remembered from the first time would materialize a second time. And yes, in the middle of the ridge of high hills which separates my big river valley from the western valley there is a small hidden community of camp-like homes surrounding a lovely unexpected lake. I had lived in this region 14 years without knowing if its existence, until a month or so ago when I was trying to find a shortcut from job site to job site on the back roads, some of them seasonal, Elizabeth beside me with a bare wet foot wedged under my car’s console in the heating duct as she had accidentally stepped into a bucket full of water and was suffering from Flu or some such illness and quite knackered generally.

 

Anyhoo, it was still there. Lovely little place.

 

How to create your own better world in three easy steps: 1. Throw away your television, 2. Start your own small business, 3. Write a blog. It can be taught.

 

It helps to crack a book now and then.

 

It occurs to me now that I haven’t yet given those hills a name. I have named the Hollow Hills, of course. This is a similar ridge, and it is also filled with wondrous myths, (though you feminists may prefer Ms.), and I am Adam. It is in my power to give names to things in my world. I must come up with something suitable if the people who live there are to become real to me.

 

Have a seat.

 

Sometimes I get lonesome. I still have all my ribs, you see.

 

I’ll leave the Gentle Giant a while longer. My gauge is on E now. I’m done. I shall answer comments from yesterday later this evening. I'm pressed for time. The gal below was kind enough to allow me to get a shot at her. Usually the deer are in my kitchen door yard, but with Mrs. Uppington here they've been sticking to the brambles behind the house. Oh she's just so ferocious! 

 

Good day.

 

Last week this lake was only partially open. Two weeks ago I shut off the dock bubblers. Three weeks ago there was still an ice shanty or two out in the middle of the lake, under the hill in the center. It happens quickly, (though we are expecting a touch of snow this weekend). But the good news is some of the color is returning to the world. You can see the sky is clearly blue, the water blue, the little bush in the foreground to the left is red-ish. There's even a little green in the trees on the hill to the right. You can also see the pilings for the marina dock sticking up out of the water. Out of frame on the shoreline are stacked the many pieces which workmen will soon be restoring.

This year I'll have my canoe. You won't hear from me much. I'll be paddling.

The title refers to an unlikely-sounding banner advertisement at the top of my page. I suppose I should be grateful that it does not read "Gothic Vampira Wig Ringtone." If that were the case I would have to become quite moody.

Well, I promised color and now I have delivered. I once worked as the narrator on a boat offering a sightseeing tour of this lake. The boat, a 1910 mahogany twin-screw laker powered by two six-cylinder gas engines, belongs to one of my customers. He was loaning it at the time to the tour guide company - owned by a family friend. Blah blah blah. It was fun.

OK, I'm done. Good day to you.

I did not know Maila Nurmi died on January 10. Until yesterday, that is. She was the model and actress who created and portrayed Vampira, TV’s glamour ghoul, who introduced classic horror films to audiences in the early 50’s. She was born in Finland in 1921. She had a 17 inch waist – yes, there is such a thing – and called attention to it, (and not to mention the boobs), with her BSDM inspired costume. Sex and death were to be forever combined in the Vampira style thereafter. Call it proto-Elvira if you like, but as a later law suit would have it, the two are dramatically different in several particulars. Certainly, Cassandra Peterson was inspired by her illustrious predessecor in the medium, whose career was cut short by the blacklist. Why do I care?

That’s a fair question. I have a friend whom I’ve never met – well, I have about a dozen such, thanks to this electronic fairyland – who sends me delightful holiday E-Cards from Hallmark featuring these two little animated runts carrying on in the cutest manner. I cherish them. Now and then she calls me up. She lives in Maryland but came from New York, and has the accent to prove it. And she inhabits the world of fantastic costumery and is herself an exotic and theatrical costume designer.

 

Remember dressing up in Mom and Dad’s clothes from the closet and then playing a part that seemed to suit them? Or dressing up for Halloween? Imagine making your living by continuing to do that sort of thing. Well, it has been said, Do what you most want to do and you will never work a day in your life. What’s fascinating is how much work such avocations require. Acting, for instance. When one’s work is play it’s still bloody work.

 

 

But anyhoo, she got in touch with me out of the blue a few years ago because I had written something on-line about the woman whom I call Sister Midnight, and Sister Midnight is based in part upon a real-life person whom it turns out was known to her. They inhabited the same world of comic book and Science Fiction conventions and such – that would be anybody who knows Forrest Ackerman, and Forrest Ackerman, who was a young correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft’s, has entertained millions of interesting people at his home, including Maila Nurmi, Ed Wood, Sister Midnight, (or, that is, her real-life prototype.) My E-Card friend calls him Uncle Forrie.

 

And so it happens that Maila Nurmi met Ed Wood at Ackerman’s house, and he was a fan of her Vampira persona and very much wished to feature her in one of his movies. It was not until a few years later, after the blacklist had knocked her into a state of wretched unemployment, that Nurmi consented to appear in the now infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space, which is usually appended by the tagline “Worst film ever made.”

 

Ed Wood was something of a people collector, gathering an ensemble of misfits, including most notably Bela Lugosi. Sure and despite the fact that he would eventually become a pornographer, he seemed to be a friend to the friendless. Nurmi had been ousted from the mainstream by the political climate created by the attempted communist overthrowal, and Lugosi had been cut down by drug addiction and disastrous ego-driven career decisions. Hey – a paycheck’s a paycheck, and Wood’s movies were nothing if not sincere.

 

He might have ended up like Arch Obeler, author of the late 30’s radio thriller Lights Out Everybody, or John Dickson Carr of the 1940’s radio thriller Suspense! – featured here in the White Lodge every week, both commanding a reverence as pioneers of genre today. Obeler made some remarkably awful movies, but for all that they’re a darn sight better than Wood’s.

 

But, in any event, taking the time to commemorate Vampira seems perfectly appropriate for this out-of-the-closet Vampirella accolyte – that would be yours truly – who has had a little bit to say about all things Gothic, from architecture and romance novels to silly adolescent girls who puncture themselves with metal.

 

I shall have to alert my friend to this post so that she may read it and then call to yell at me about how inaccurate it is in whatever particulars.

 

I'll leave you now with a picture of my ideal woman - or, that is, the girl most likely to be. Good day to you.

 

A morning in spring. Listening to Bebel Gilberto. Waiting for my car to come home. I used to have a Fiat. A concrete wall fell on it. The spring rains. I remember a school field trip to the Immaculate Conception Seminary, the rain. I was in love with a girl who made her plaid school skirt shorter than the other girls. I don’t know how. It was a warm day. There were several structures on the grounds, the remains of formal gardens. Mansions long ago boarded up. Mansions from the old Gold Coast days. I remember the birds in the morning. I would put a little whiskey in my coffee and sit out at the picnic table, and smoke. Well, that was back and forth across thirty years, but it’s all the same spring day. Today it’s the same day.

 

I think of the woman who made her house out of children’s gravestones, how overgrown it was. Could I have had a more Gothic childhood? That’s funny.

 

Have you ever seen Gray Gardens?

 

Elizabeth said I could post her picture. One out of ten people can do that with their tongues. I can’t. My brother can turn his eyelids inside-out. (Oh look – the whole Frank Zappa Freak Out! Album just finished downloading. I already have the vinyl, but I never did buy that old CD burner so if I want it in my car I have to have a digital version.) It’s very possible that we lose the ability to turn our eyelids inside-out as we get older. I shall have to ask him.

 

 

There – I just put the snow shovel in the carriage house. It’s official. I went barefoot, a little tenderly, bliss. Why was I worried? You must know I’m a very positive person. I’m not a worrier. I was carrying Elizabeth through the winter, albeit very part time, because I didn’t want to lose her. But there was no money coming in. Of course, now it’s beginning to pick up. Soon I shall be overwhelmed with work again.

 

Sadly here in the depths of winter…

 

I learned recently that my mother kept a journal into which she recorded her worries. Now, I knew Mom was a worrier, deep down. But it was deep down. It never showed. It rarely rose to the surface. Only just enough so that when I became old enough to understand such things I could say to myself, “She really is a worrier, deep down.” But when the car broke down in the middle of nowhere she would show no signs of negativity, none at all. She would smile and remark at how fortunate it was to be given this time to play, or pray, or have a picnic in amongst the pine barrens of Long Island’s East End.

 

Deep down inside she was tormented all her life by a voice to the contrary. She wrote it all down: Oh my Jesus, I am so frightened. The roof needs repairing and where will the money come from? Jack’s health isn’t good. It’s too much to ask of him.

 

In the final five years when her body was failing her she began to feel that she was a great burden to my Dad who took care of her. She couldn’t lie down but had to sleep in a sitting position. She couldn’t eat solid foods because her esophagus had been wrecked by cancer treatments years ago – in the 70’s – and now it was catching up with her. Continuing bouts of pneumonia, and exposure to the slightest children’s sniffle was to be avoided. This took her out of the picture when it came to family. I remember a reunion we had in the Catskills. It wasn’t that long ago. My Grandma was still alive then, and we knew it would be the last time most of us would see her, the matriarch.

 

Mom didn’t allow herself to fail until her own mother passed on, but she wrote it down. She wrote it all down in prayer to Jesus, in lamentations. To talk to her at that time you would never know that she had a care in the world. People remarked on her strength and her courage, and most of all how joyful she was, and how her joy spread out to infect everybody around her. It was no secret that she kept a journal, but no one was to know what it contained until she too was free.

 

This is what we’re supposed to do if we are to be saints. And saints is exactly what we are required to be. Mom offered her suffering for my help, and for my Dad, my family. Like a lightning bolt – what it means to have redemptive suffering: it isn’t for your redemption, which is already assured, but for the redemption of others. Jesus didn’t suffer for His own sake. How many years has it taken me to understand that?

 

Anyhooooo    

Why didn’t I know about Gentle Giant? I mean, here’s a 70’s progressive ensemble every bit as daffilicious as King Crimson, perhaps more so. I remember in High School every now and then someone would say something like, “Blah blah blah blah Gentle Giant blah blah,” and I would say something like, “Oh yes.” Like I knew.

 

Well, I’m making up for lost time now. Last year Prank had them featured a few times in his blog, and I remember thinking to myself at the time, “Blah blah.”

 

That reminds me, I was taught never to use the phrase “thinking to myself,” or “thinking to yourself, himself, herself” because who else would a person be thinking to? I suppose the person who taught me that was not a believer in telepathy. Avoid reflexive thinking is the lesson there.

 

Of course, when we speak to each other, write to each other, or communicate with each other in whatever way – a knowing glance, a smile, a smack on the ass – we’re really thinking to each other. The thought always comes first, doesn’t it?

 

Thinking of you, my lovelies…

 

Catching up on some Gentle Giant…

 

Coffee…

 

Waiting for the White Tornado to arrive…

 

So, the sort of music one appreciates, assuming one appreciates music, is largely determined by others – peer groups and what-not. At some point along the line, at some point in my life, I had to be introduced to whatever it is I so enjoy today.

 

I have Pink Floyd “Echoes” on a CD with several other moldy oldies, courtesy of Limewire. Was listening to it last night. I swear to you I had not heard that song in 30 years and it was like I was there – or then.

 

I love the Internet. I love it, I love it, I love it. I’m getting all teary-eyed. I hate it, too. It’s a love-hate thing. I travel through time. I pick things up along the way. I think them to you here on this imaginary page.

 

Ack! I don't know why I thought (to myself) that last night was Tuesday and time for Fibber and Molly, but there it is - I went and posted FM&M last night. Well, if you want to listen, it's right below. Click, click.

 

Good day to you.