An unusual tree stands sentry at the approach to West Hill, Rhubarb Valley. The weather has been fair of late, opening the road at least to intrepid walkers if not yet to vehicles.

The creek which runs alongside this road branches off of the Darkly Ravine about half a mile into the valley.

 

I should have taken a picture of the large animal tracks I saw which reminded me I was in a somewhat – though not extremely – dangerous area, but I have seen them so often, as indeed have all Rhubarbians, that it didn’t occur to me. Although it was mid morning, and the sun was like a reflecting disc floating in milk above, I returned to my car post haste when I heard the dog pack begin to sing. An accessory I was missing – which most trekkers hereabouts carry on their persons at all times – was a shotgun. I was armed only with my camera.

 

The ice collects on these trees long after it is no more than memory elsewhere. This little falls is at the top of the ravine. The Darkly homestead is up a seasonal road to the hilltop, not far from here. The plow truck had virtually hidden the road from view, using it to pile excess snow from the road shoulder. In more clement weather I may climb the hill to get a picture of the 1804 homestead. It’s remarkable that a house which has stood vacant for nearly 50 years – and of such advanced age – remains relatively intact when so many others like it have long since fallen in. It is almost as if – and, of course local folklore would have it so – the Darkly home is still inhabited by the remnants of this legendary pioneer family.

 

Far from being dark – the name deriving from the Darklys rather than the aspect of dark or light – the Darkly Ravine, which divides West Hill from East Hill technically outside of Rhubarb Valley proper, is a not-unpleasant place in the daytime. There’s no building here – no development - and no plans for any. The problem, of course, is the werewolves.

 

The hike to the historic homestead is one which common sense would dictate should be done in pairs, but not, interestingly, in groups of five or more since it is said that such “posses” may well seem threatening to Edward Darkly and his – ah – offspring, if indeed the stories about nocturnal goings-on at the house are true. It is also considered prudent to remain on the road itself, assuming it is still discernible in the overgrowth which is road and which is woods.

 

The kids’ version of the story has it that there lives a King of the wild dogs in the Darkly Ravine who goes by the name of Snarl. Older Rhubarbians still speak of the connection with the tragic early pioneer family whom generations of inbreeding and devil worship had changed into – ah – whatever it is they are supposed to be. A werewolf of sorts is the only kind of information I can get out of anybody, and I don’t know but that the two stories have commingled over the years to create a third. For instance, there is no indication in recorded Rhubarb Valley history – of which there is quite a store – that devil worship of any sort was ever practiced by the Darklys, or anybody else in the valley for that matter. These rumors often get started because of a feud – one farming family impugning the morals of another because of a fight that actually all began in dickering over the price of hops many years ago.

 

But werewolves there are – of their particular type. That much is well documented.

 

As for the inbreeding, well it is common enough, even to be expected that in the period between the hops blight of 1913 and the advent of satellite TV the older families – or, the first families, once quite prosperous – who stayed in the region had little contact all of a sudden with the wider world. The annual stream of thousands of migrant workers to the area ceased altogether to arrive, and with them the city hops merchants and contact with the wider culture in general. Moreover, no new settlement was occurring as the region had become impoverished. As the pioneers were already somewhat inclined to keep their lines ‘untainted’ by the crosses of Negro, Indian, Gypsy, and Papist blood, it didn’t take long before the remaining residents of now isolated towns so closely resembled each other that you can now tell a Rhubarbian from a Hollow Hills native by his family resemblance. Of course, this is all now beginning to change.

 

Anyhoo – I’ve really gotten started into something it would require a book or two to complete, but I do find the local history fascinating.

 

Good day to you!

A few scattered demons.

 

What’s a demon? Daffy Duck is a demon: a personified (demonized) animal. The word also means a non human person, a person who isn’t human. I have to exclude extra terrestrial persons who are not human, if there should be such a thing. But I think it is more likely that all intelligent and sentient life in the universe is human. Angels aren’t human, but most of us believe they are persons.

 

 

These photographs, and many others sprinkled throughout The White Lodge, are the work of Fantasy artist J.K. Potter. He (the artist) doesn’t call these demon images per se. I do.

 

When I imagine a demon – other than Daffy Duck – I think of a creature of nightmarish aspect, perhaps even a horror archetype like a manticore or a hydra. The influential and extremely weird H.P. Lovecraft came up with the cthulhu, which is usually depicted as person with a head, and some other parts, resembling an octopus. When I think of a demon I think of a person whose appearance is an affront to humanity, whose appearance is an obscene parody of the physical human form, perhaps incorporating non-human characteristics, or perhaps with human body parts in inappropriate places.

 

 

Parts is parts, yes?

 

 

Speaking of my favorite Looney Toon, Daffy Duck, a story which has as its protagonist a talking animal – more specifically, a personified animal – is not usually about animals. Animals don’t talk. Charlotte’s Web is not really about a pig and a spider. Ducks don’t really sing The Merry Go Round Goes Round to torment pathetic but persistent duck hunters. The pig – whose name escapes me – is “standing in,” as it were, for a person, and the message of the story is a message not for pigs to understand but for people to understand. The crazy duck is “standing in” for a particularly nasty (and funny) sort of wise-quacking person, like Groucho Marx in many ways – the point: to poke fun at authority, the establishment, and so on.

 

Ouch! This guy really is nasty.

 

 

Will there be animals in Heaven?

 

My answer to that question is that I hope we will find out. But, if you want go part way down the rabbit hole to speculate – for whatever reason who is to know? – to answer the question one must ask “Are there things in Heaven?” If there are things in Heaven then it is not unlikely that many of these things will be animals. Why? – because we like animals! I gather God rather likes them, too. So, can we bring our pets on board? Perhaps yes, in a manner of speaking. Our compassion for animals is virtuous; our affection for them a fundamental course in how to be loving, how to love. If there are animals in Heaven, and more specifically our animals in Heaven, it will not be because the soul of the animal is saved, (animals having none), but because we have re-created in Heaven our own animals for whatever reason, - presumably to continue loving them.

 

But, are there things in Heaven? Well, we know there are mansions – houses. And we know that if Jesus Christ ascended bodily into Heaven rather than evaporated into spirit then His human body – which is a thing – is in Heaven, uncorrupted and uncorruptible. If this is the case then yes, there are things in Heaven. Would they be just like, or exactly the same as, things on Earth? No. Things on Earth change and die; things in Heaven don’t.

 

So there.

 

Well, my alternative of activities this morning – alternative to writing about all this stuff – was to play Bloobs on my computer. Maybe I should have stuck with the Bloobs?

 

I'm just fiddlin' with you.

 

 

 

Here you may see for yourselves the photographic evidence that I still haven’t put away my Christmas Nativity scene, but as I didn’t impress a date upon this picture (since I haven’t yet figured out how) you will have to take my word for it that it was taken only yesterday.

 

As you can see, the Magi are in attendance. One of them is rather a small man, and another seems to have a crooked neck – the poor blighter. He is not as badly off, however, as my cherubic garden statue who was recently decapitated by a falling icicle. I’ve decided not to post that photograph because it is just too gruesome.

 

John and Alice Coltrane do that thing they do musically. I know I have mentioned it in earlier postings, but my Coltrane obsession began at an age when it is probably not a good thing. (I’m not sure – there are varied opinions amongst jazz psychologists). It was a distance of about four miles between my home and the Public Library, the which I used to walk to check out Coltrane’s album Om, forty minutes of improvisational impressionism that gave the listener nothing to hang his whistle on, and played it again and again. And again.

 

I was trying to decipher it. I was trying to let it blow my mind. I was trying to force an experience of chaos by coming to understand the order of another plane. What is free jazz? What mysteries does it conceal? What great logic guides it – a logic so alien to our hum-drum thinking that it should require a spiritual experience to grasp it?

 

Well, it turns out to be a bunch guys just fooling around. When it occurred to me that such was the case I entered into a… well, a dark period.

 

Ah, the life of an egg-headed twelve year-old! It is fortunate that I would soon discover drugs, and Frank Zappa – in that order.

 

A girl I knew in college gave me her copy of Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch. I still have it. You know my turntable is out, being repaired. When it is returned to me I will probably be at such a loss about which album I would like to hear first that weeks will go by before I use it again.

 

This girl! She was an extraordinary hugger. I’m not always comfortable with hugging, and huggers. She hugged with all four limbs. Her chosen victims, in which group I was included, were closed up in a death grip by her longish musculature, and rendered helpless by a sort of mental venom which excited extremes of attraction and fear simultaneously. Her feet – which I assume were prehensile – would actually end up somewhere above, or at a level with, her victims’ heads. Whereas displays of casual physical affection of any sort can be terrifying, hers was the Mercedes Benz of horrific hugs.

 

Anyhoo, I am looking forward to the return of my turntable so that A Love Supreme may once again fill my living room with its – ah - love supreme, and when it does, and after I have reinstalled it in the cabinet I bought at a garage sale for $40 last Spring – the one with the pegboard back through which the many wires and patch cords may pass – I may at that time get around to putting the Nativity scene away.

 

There were several deer in my driveway early this morning. I was going to get them to pose for a group picture, but the lighting wasn’t yet adequate. It occurred to me, moreover, that only the most hardened city dwellers among you would be at all impressed by the cloven hoofed beasts whose dull black eyes stare at you not unlike that girl you used to pursue when you meet her again at the High School reunion and wonder, What on earth did I see in her?

 

Beautiful creatures.

 

Good day to you.

 

 

Watching vampire movies brings out some interesting questions from children. No, it was not I. A friend's child asked if a person is blessed, and that person being chiefly composed (as she had been learning in school) of water, does the water in the body become Holy Water?

A good question, yes? For if vampires melt into undead goo when they come into contact with Holy Water does it not follow that anyone who is blessed - literally full of this deadly (to vampires) substance - would be perfectly safe from vampire attack? More than merely safe withal, but would not such a person be a far greater threat to a vampire than the vampire to him?

Out of the mouths of babes...

Actually (ach-choo-allie), more than a blessing makes Holy Water holy. A person may be blessed, and blessed often, but the substances within his body, already beloved by God, do not then take on any magical characteristics. The readiness to receive miraculous gifts is either present within the mind of the person, or it is not. It is not only the priestly blessing over water that transforms the substance but the sacramental use to which that water is subsequently applied which makes it holy.

So there.

But it's typical of a child to confuse the miraculous with the magical, even to be expected. I would never dream of dissuading her from her well reasoned conviction that, having been just blessed, she was safe from vampires. Indeed, she is safe from vampires anyway, for a multitude of other good reasons she was not to know. For instance, it was a Tuesday, and as everybody knows, (except perhaps young children), vampires always take Tuesday off.

Or is it Friday?  

 

The multi-voiced Bill Thompson (The Old Timer, Horatio Boomer, Nick DePopulus) actually will get drafted later this year. But this 1941 episode of the hugely popular Johnson's Wax Program is pre-Pearl Harbor. Here Thompson appears as The Old Timer. The ensemble also includes Harlow Wilcox, Isobel Randolph, and Harold Peary. Jim and Marion Jordan are Fibber McGee and Molly. If you listen carefully to the last scene you will hear the cast members doubling as crowd extras, with The Kingsmen and members of the Billy Mills Orchestra presumably portraying various soldiers.

Last night I clicked on the ‘random’ button at the top of this page many times. I’ve never done that before. What I saw moved me to – well, tears. I saw hundreds of people shouting into their own computers, looking for a reply. Some were selling something but most of them were simply trying to do exactly what I was trying to do.

 

I didn’t expect anybody to read, or see, or ever know. It would be just like all the other blogs and message boards the world over, I thought, having posted random writings before from my office at the print shop and from the cyber café I was helping a friend to get established here in town. I got the impression there were many people who, unlike me, did expect a reply. And those first posts, most of them, were never followed by a second one. It would have been just the same for me if TR didn’t comment on that first day back in January of ’07. I’d have written maybe three or four times, and not again.

 

At the same time I was The Squabbler on MySpace (of all spaces) because my friend had a page. My second White Lodge post is about me deleting it.

 

Do you know there is a thirteen year-old girl amongst us who has written about 50 posts without a single comment? She is not without eloquence. Why – does she have cooties? Well, perhaps she disabled the comments portion. But what if she didn’t? (Obviously, I didn’t try to comment on account of her tender years, otherwise I would know, but at least she demonstrated perseverance.)

 

 

Most of the blogs arrived at by clicking on the ‘random’ button are comprised of a single post, the first one. They are a year old, two years old, three. Yes, there are many going back to ’05.

 

I was moved. Who wouldn’t be? Yes, I know there are many people who wouldn’t be. My own son thought it was ‘funny,’ not horrifying. I was horrified.  I won’t be clicking that ‘random’ button again. Pathos isn’t funny. I never laughed at Charlie Chaplin movies. I could never develop the necessary detachment. They made me cry.

 

So, for the first time in many months I visited the Blogstream home page, remembering vaguely that there was a list of recently updated blogs there. I happened to see one that I didn’t recognize at the top of the list. I clicked on it, and lo, I discovered a “First Blog Post” written just moments before. It was short, and in English. The author was male, close to my own age. I wasn’t at all curious about who he was or where he lives, or any of that. We are bloggers. We exist because we say we do, and we are who we say we are, but what we write is all anybody can see. We live nowhere. We are nobody. The only thing we have of each other is our words. So I read his, and I left a comment, a brief one.

 

“Welcome.”

 

And now I have absolutely no idea which of the hundreds of writings I read last night was the one to which I replied. There was only the one that was recent – brand new. It was that one. Do I remember his “name?” Did I look at his profile? No. I just replied “Welcome.” All that mattered at that moment was that I acknowledged this person.

 

I’m still troubled by this – troubled and moved to morbid reflection. Whatever I think I have to say, it isn’t all that important. I actually put some thought into these posts day after day. I actually have to refer to a story outline to iron out possible inconsistencies in how this electronic double life is developing. Have I introduced a new character recently? I have to sketch him (or her – usually) somewhat in advance so I don’t slander the real life person upon whom the character is based, if indeed there is a real life prototype. Is it all worth it? I suppose it must be. I’m still doing it – Still! And I can tell you it is sometimes a real pain the ass. 97 pages of this rubbish, each one containing five posts, and it’s bloody work. And here, all it would have taken was for TR to somehow miss me that day, or not find me, and there would have been one page with three or four posts on it, and no comments. Would my life be different? Of course it would. Would yours? Some of you are saying Yes.

 

Do you know that for the first few days I didn’t know I could reply to comments? Or – perhaps I knew, but for whatever reason I chose not to. It’s very strange. But there’s TR. Every couple of posts he had something to say. And then came Sherry, and somebody named sinann whom I never replied to. Day after day, week after week, the chances of my just shrugging it off and forgetting about it became smaller and smaller. Funny thing, isn’t it?

 

No, it's not funny. They deserve acknowledgment. There are too many of them. There are just too many.