Here’s where I want to live. See that hill? Well, keep going. There may be a house in there somewhere. There may not be. If the remnants of what appears to be a tractor path is actually a driveway it’s not marked by number or mailbox. I would have a box number in the town. I would need an office too, if I want Internet and such. Satellite doesn’t even work up here. You pay for the distance and the number of utility poles for electric hookup. It’s not a necessity. But that would be a giveaway if it was obvious a line ran back in there.

 

Well, right down the road from here is the Hubbell Hollow Gang, Elizabeth and family, several structures on a hundred-odd acres – basically the hilltop. Her mother is selling off 15 acres adjacent to the shale quarry. It’s OK. Hilly. She’s also selling the swamp. Who wants to buy a swamp? Sportsmen do.

 

Who remembers Swamp Castle from Monty Python and The Holy Grail?

 

Sixty large will take the lot. Knowing I’m looking for a place to die, Elizabeth made a point of telling me several times the land was for sale. I don’t know if she has fully considered what it may be like to have me as a neighbor.

 

It would be best for me if there were a pre-existing structure, something old. Most folks who buy land already developed tear down whatever house may be there and build a McMansion in its place. I suppose that says more about the quality of the people buying land than anything else. They probably decorate with big eye artwork and think Stephen King is literature.

 

Of course, that’s a danger around here. There’s a little trailer home in the woods nearby which bears a sign out front identifying it as “So-and-so’s Hideaway.” And just this last five years the hideaway has been surrounded on all sides by massive plywood palaces for young professionals who move up here from God-knows-where. Jersey, probably. So much for hiding away. The lesson is this: Be sure to build in the middle of a couple hundred acres. (Actually, you can do it with under twenty acres if the topography is right.) But you need land. The alternative is buying land adjacent to State land. That tends towards the expensive simply because of demand.

 

The Hollow Hills would be attractive, though the valley below is marked with numerous signs advertising the sale of condominium style townhouses which are to be built there. Within a few years it will be necessary to drive through a place that looks like the tackiest parts of Los Angeles to get to a little village in Central New York.

 

Prettiest little village money can buy, too. Money keeps it pretty. And lots and lots and lots of zoning laws. Does that rankle my libertarian soul? No – local government is the people in a community deciding how they wish to live and who they wish to live with. Just like me deciding I want to live in a shack in the woods. It has a lot to do with whether or not you decide to live in a particular community. Do you like the zoning? Do you like the ordnances? Will you fit in there, be happy there? No? Then go on down the road. That’s fine. Free country.

 

But – ah – it’s kind of odd to stumble upon a mainly Victorian Era town in the middle of – whatever’s out there.

 

 

Woods, mainly, lots of hills.

 

Here’s a nice barn. When this barn was built there wasn’t a single tree for miles around. Well, I should say there were only line trees – a line of trees to mark off one field from another, one property from another. This was farmland in those days. Nowadays we have too many bloody trees. You can’t see the forest for the – aw, you know. The farms went bust, the agriculture industry moved west, the trees grew back. Nature, huh? Save the trees!

 

Save the corn!

 

Spare me.

 

 

 

Guys would drink the fermented silage out of the bottom of these structures back in the day. Make you double dirty damn drunk, for sure. Make you blind, too. It may be safer to form a crack cocaine habit. That gives me an idea. If the economy really gets extremely bad I will open a Liquor store / check cashing / Lottery agents. I’ll clean up. Of course, the ATF will require that these not be in the same building, but hey – it’s a small town. Liquor is a sure-fire way to get rich under Socialism. Legally, that is. There is a multitude of illegal ways.

 

This ruin stands across the street from the remnants of a farmhouse that must have quite the million dollar view. Elizabeth said it had to be awfully darned windy in the winter, a regular Wuthering Heights. Or, half of one. Half the house had fallen down long ago.

 

And she wanted me to take a picture of her mother’s tree. Apparently, Ma Hubbell mounted a hose at the top of a pine tree and opened it a trickle so that the whole thing would freeze into a fairy land tree. Yup, I drove right by it. Didn’t take the picture because I am shy. I don’t like to stop the car near Pioneer houses in the hills without a formal invite – not even if I know the folks a little. You know I love houses. That means a picture of a house is a very intimate thing in my book. But there it was: the ice tree, right smack in front of the ancestral homestead. I couldn’t get the tree without also getting the house. It’s a house that plainly wears its 200 year-old history so that it may be read layer by layer, and I am a respecter of the privacy of persons.

 

I know it may come as a shock to some of you, but I’m a kind a old-fashioned guy. 

  

My friends:

The last several postings have been rather over the top. I will begin to share something which I believe will be entertaining to read and find that whatever more I have to say is impregnated with rage against a thing it can do no good to oppose. There are reasons for this, of course, but let us suffice it to say that there has been of late a great heaviness on my heart. It was my hope to be able to write through it - perhaps turn my attention to more light hearted subjects, snapshots and the like, but it has not been - ah - working, (for lack of a better word.)

I will proceed one day at a time, as it were, or not - depending on my assessment of my own ability to remain civil. I'm sorry for being a prick at times. Restraint of pen (or typing finger) is a skill I must work more diligently to acquire. It is my hope that the malaise of hopelessness that now afflicts me will soon pass and that I will be restored to my jolly self. Your prayers are of the highest possible value.

I should begin by saying, “Check out these hot models.” Confusing googlers is a bona fide hobby, is it not?

 

When I was – oh – 18, 19, 20 I was still living at home, or living back at home I should say, having returned from a disastrous mission to explore the world outside which it turned out was not to my liking. What I did then was to isolate myself, isolate and heal. It was really quite blissful. I know I must have understood by then that my world no longer existed, - my friends were gone, - and that my parents’ world no longer existed. The 40’s were over. The twisted, demonic, spoiled, materialistic, foul-smelling baby boomers had taken the field. One by one, everything good and everything pure, and everything beautiful, was being replaced by the corrupt, the ugly.

 

It was a matter of developing discernment, that which I did not yet have. No – by staying locked alone in my room day after day it would not help me to form the armor and ammunition necessary to return to the world; no, it was merely to hide. The power of Mordor had descended in black shadow over my Shire – everywhere except inside my room. During this time I obsessively drew a map of Fenrocia.

 

Night after night I added more 8 ½ by 11 sheets of typing paper depicting the land inside my head, its roads and cities, mountains, to my ceiling. My room was under eaves, and the ceiling on both sides followed the line of the roof at the same angle to a knee wall. It was only really possible to stand fully upright in the center. Along with the map – roads, rivers, desert plains – there went a story, an epic story of a ruling family at war. It would later become a graphic novel, with the help of a few friends – much later, though.

 

Now that I think of it, I dream of a house, a good house. I call it the White Lodge and it is the whole universe. And – before I entered into that obsessive phase of drawing Fenrocia, when I was younger still, I clearly remember loving model railroads. I visited the public library often to pore over articles (and better yet, pictures) in Model Railroader magazine. I drew endless layout plans. I bought dozens of model buildings, modeling materials. I built scenes, little worlds, never having the space for a complete layout. The pictures which are peppering this post are the kinds of pictures that I would have preferred over the most salacious offerings of Penthouse magazine.

 

I like buildings much better than people, as you know.

 

 

There are several 3-D architect programs on my computer. I play them, as if they were computer games, recreating the world. As I write this blog I often have a window open to alter a creation of mine, whenever the spirit moves me, as I am writing. And at last, my approach towards writing is itself a computer game: what we all do here is really just a game to me. Life has become like a game – and that’s precisely the attitude I needed to acquire if I was ever to leave that room and rejoin the world in progress. Rejoin? Yes, but never completely. I had to learn how to be in the world without being of the world. I had to learn how to discern, how to reject and rebuke all that was rotten with kindness – all that was rotten and not of my doing. And, it wasn’t sitting in my room drawing Fenrocia that taught me how to do that; it wasn’t model railroading, either – it was everything that happened between the time I was removed from that room by force and now, right now – today, this minute.

 

I’m still learning.

 

Isn’t it odd though that I had forgotten all the joy I once derived from model trains until just now, just a few weeks ago. I was reminded of my former hobby by something in conversation. It was a key which unlocked a particular door in the White Lodge, a door that has not been open for a long time. Within the door there is a beautiful train layout, with mountains, cathedrals, a river, and – oh yes – a train. The rail company is the Gastonaaga – Berwick Railroad, the same famous line that Suada Graene Alexi defended in order to keep the supply lines open for the Nefarians’ war with the usurper Rhumineetahuck – (as no doubt you will recall) – in vain, as it happened, for the usurper would reign another 230 years, famously exploding when at last the life force left him.

 

Ah – good times.

 

The pieces of the body of Rhumineetahuck remain uncorrupted – why? – so that each ruling Suada, from Estare to the Great Bank may have a piece of it to insure that it will never be reassembled, and of course, to remind the people – Huck, Nefar, Harlock, all – that the Darkness never shares power with mortals; it exists merely to consume and to destroy; it fornicates endlessly with no hope of having issue; it spreads like the black smoke of Agnalbo from mind to mind.

 

Well, I don’t know. Do you think I should revisit this old hobby of mine? I would have to begin entirely from scratch, just in the same way I rebuilt my music collection, in just the same way I rebuilt my life – one piece at a time. 

      

 

Dozing through Mother Angelica and her girls praying the Rosary can be a restful experience. I had intended to return home after feeding the cats at Chateau Creekside, but I was just too comfortable there. Walking outside to start my absent friend’s car I happened to notice someone was swallowing the moon. I enjoyed that for a few minutes.

 

My Dad is one who appreciates astronomical phenomenon. He is always pointing out which of the points of light is Venus, Mars, and so on. We enjoyed school trips to the planetarium when I was young – yes, just like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, not to be confused with Jimmy Dean who makes breakfast sausages. There was a rather well endowed planetarium only ten minutes from my home. It was funny to return there as a teenager to view laser light shows, something they presented to make a little moolah – Pink Floyd music and the lovely smell of cannabis.

 

Well, I am certain Dad was enduring the bitter cold to observe the lunar eclipse, assuming of course that his sky was as clear as mine.

 

The lights began at about 11 P.M. I was trying by that time to sleep for real but I was in no hurry. It was the south side of the house that was affected. I therefore chose a bedroom on the north side so as not to be disturbed by the activity. The Red Lady only seems to appear when my son is there with me. I think she likes him.

 

I know people who believe Creekside is demonic, as though anything that doesn’t fit into their less-than-roomy view must be. But no – it is merely in an odd place. The haunted hills have their share of those.

 

Oh, to speak of which, I have been meaning to lambaste the preposterous reality TV show which features a group of morons scaring themselves silly in various haunted tourist traps around the country – and now, around the world. Indeed, my son and I caught a commercial for a program called “Ghost Hunters International,” the pitch going something to the effect of “Watch out, ghosts – here they come!”

 

Ah yes - watch out ghosts, here they come to wet their pants.

 

Oh my God – what was that? Did you touch me?

 

That was weird!

 

Did you get any on you?

 

This program is followed by another reality show called “Destination Truth,” in which another group of morons travel to various places of legend to conclude that folkloric creatures must not exist simply because they didn’t happen to see any. What we have here is one program insisting that every dust fleck on the camera’s lens is an apparition, which is followed by another program based on the idea that mythological creatures of exotic cultures will certainly want to be interviewed for television or else they simply can’t exist.

 

Oh really, - as the WT would say.

 

She stretches out the word really in a way I couldn’t hope to imitate.

 

You have read here that a myth is a story which tells a truth that cannot be fully expressed in any other way. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Who cares? History must also be about the stories people tell, not just the dates at which certain events occurred. One of my favorite examples is the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. You may recall it from childhood. The point of the story is to teach children about the value of honesty. Its protagonist is a larger-than-life American hero. The story tells a truth: it is virtuous to be honest. That the best known symbol of our Nation’s founding – in the person of Washington – is invoked to help tell that truth adds another moral level to the meaning of the story. Did it happen? Did Washington really cut down a cherry tree with his new axe and then admit to his mum that he had done so, declaring “I cannot tell a lie?” No. It is a myth, a folkloric tale which illustrates something which is true – in this case, a virtue.

 

When History is stripped of its stories it is stripped of its truth. Now, do we know that George Washington had a reputation in his time for his honesty? Yes. And do we know that honesty is a virtue which it is imperative to learn and to teach?

 

Ah – but there’s the trouble, right there. At a certain point in our own history the philosophy known as determinism began to infect the teaching of History. Determinism, the root of moral relativism, cannot tolerate the fact of virtue, for a person’s actions, being the result of his environment – context – cannot be considered objectively right or wrong. There can be no objective right or wrong, good or evil, nor can there be free will, for each of us is “programmed” in a sense by our experiential context to behave in whatever way we do.

 

This is the point-of-view which, when it is coupled with sentimentality in a practical application, will say “because he is poor it is understandable that he will steal; moreover he must therefore steal.” Poverty is the cause of theft. The teaching of virtue is anathema to this absurd view. Over time – and it took some time – each and every mythological tale which had evolved in order to impart a greater truth than a mere recounting of names and dates could have accomplished has been stripped from the story of humanity. What we end up with is a meaningless journal of atomistic events which is hardly worth retelling.

 

But you’ve read my riffage on the real purpose of mythology before. I’m warming to it here again because I have no choice except to do so because of the environment in which I was raised. Of course.

 

And now, as I have wandered far from the whimsical beginnings of this post, and have little or no hope of being able to conclude it in such a way that ties it neatly all together, I will resort to finding an extremely weird picture on Google to distract you from the fact that I am raving. And these train tracks below lead straight from my Lodge to yours. You will hear my whistle blow as I approach. Good day to you.

 

“The number you have reached…” So says the automated operator’s voice. Well – Operator hardly applies to a mere recording, but the title harkens back to another time when the telephone Operator was someone you knew, someone who also inquired in a neighborly way about your grandmother’s health as she passed you the mail from your box number. But it’s that word reached that came to mind in my dream stupor this morning. It’s an active verb which is applied here in a passive way. “The number you have reached…” makes it sound for all the world that you have really accomplished something.

 

We have reached the summit of Everest.

 

When I was in school I learned about Edmund Hillary’s triumph, and within the context of all the other historical events I was learning – the lion’s share in antiquity – I suppose I must have made a subconscious assumption which equated them all with each other in the shadowy depths of the dead past. Sir Edmund died on January 11 of this year, prompting me to say to myself, “Heavens, I thought he was long dead!” Of course, I knew better; in fact I had been surprised to learn he was contemporary each and every time his name came up.

 

But, to reach something is to make an effort, to at least extend one’s arm to its extreme. When the automated operator’s voice tells me I have reached a certain destination over the telephonic ether there is a definite mystical quality to the experience. In the case of computers that quality may be magnified a thousand times – all of us reaching each other even now as you read this, all our many arms colliding and entwining.

 

Some persons I have known have wondered about my insistence on maintaining physical distance from others. I really dislike being touched. It’s something that I do when it is absolutely necessary – and some people seem to feel so slighted by my sense of boundary that I will permit them to hug me; their overpowering need makes it necessary. But I have always been sensitive to the way we reach each other, and touch each other, with our thoughts. If you smile at me, or if you express a kind thought about me, I receive all the benefit which may be the result of physically hugging you without there being any risk of my making you pregnant.

 

Indeed, the only context in which I am fully at ease with physical contact is in the act of love. In that context it is most appropriate. More than once, at AA meetings in the early days, some guy who just got finished “sharing” (bloody thanks!) that he had done some awful thing - and that is the only thing I now know about him – would approach to lay a hug upon me, and with such insistence that I was compelled to explain he would be picking up his teeth with broken fingers if he tried.

 

The firmament in which our bodies swim is alive with the tentacles of our thoughts for one another, all of us reaching each other, touching each other, caressing each other – even slapping each other. If I look at you with desire and you are not comfortable with being the object of my scrutiny I am slapped by your thought. I feel that. We all do, without necessarily knowing that we do. There is part of us which dwells entirely in what would appear to our eyes and ears the unreachable sub current of experience. We may easily enough deny its existence simply because it is subtle.

 

Passively reaching.

 

When you hear that automated operator’s voice it is always to report a problem of some sort, a non-working number, or a number that has been disconnected, or a number that has been changed. Nevertheless, you have reached it, - this corrupted and/or faulty number. Never do we hear the automated operator’s voice saying, “The number you have reached… is the number of your friend so-and-so who is only just emerging from her bath, but is quite pleased overall to have been reached by you, and will presently complete the connection by picking up the phone on her end – and thereby reach you back.”