When I die and they lay me to rest Gonna go to the place that’s the best When I lay me down to die Goin’ up to the Lizard in the sky
…. (apologies to Norman Greenbaum)
Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storms but to give colour to my sunset sky. – Rabindranath Tagore.
Half moon at sunrise.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
- Percy Shelley
When I was in the garden, this small plane flew overhead, reminding me of a sad anniversary. My father used to fly over our house when we were kids in his little Cessna. He loved to take us up with him but mostly so he could scare us into never wanting to go up with him again. He would have been 100 years old on January 15, 2024. I’m absolutely positive he would not have wanted to turn 100 but we miss him none-the-less. Hi Dad!
I wish children didn’t die. I wish they would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the wars end. Then they would return home safe, and when their parents ask them; where were you? They’d say “We were playing with the clouds.” Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani
I did not intend to watch Netflix’s Fall of the House of Usher but, once upon a midday dreary, as I pondered weak and weary, there came a rapping at my door.
“Turn on the Boob Tube or die!”
Let me begin by saying, I am truly astonished by anyone who can read Poe without an open Google window or a set of encyclopedias nearby. In the volume I’ve possessed since wretched youth, now sadly long gone, many stories commence with quotes in French, Latin, German etc., from such well-known sources as Buckhurst’s Tragedy of Ferrex & Portex. If you’re like me, you have to decipher the opening quotes before reading a story. And then you have to figure out why the author picked that particular quote which means more investigation of the source. In Poe’s case, I’ve found some interesting rabbit’s holes to get lost in.
Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher is actually a series of flashbacks. I won’t go into details about each episode, but they are interesting rifts on Gold Bug, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Deathand the Pit and the Pendulum with many references to Poe’s poems thrown in for fun. The fact that they are set in modern times with cell phones, Tiktok, podcasts, designer drugs, (and even Fox News!) makes the Usher family’s depravity contemporary and therefore much more perverse*. In Poe’s day, decadent families rotted behind the walls of crumbling mansions. Now they can go on social media, have millions of followers, corrupt more innocent young lives, and ultimately become the kiss of death for decency and honor!
Murders in the Rue Morgue, illustration by Harry Clarke*
In my opinion, the series is too preachy. Verna, a character who is either an avenging angel or soul-seeking devil … it’s hard to say which, gives each of the Usher children the chance to change the likely trajectory of their lives. But do they care about the environment, the cruelty of animal testing, medical ethics, the plight of animals in shelters etc, etc? No and so guess what happens to them?
And then there’s that ending …
* Perverse is an adjective Poe used extensively. If you were perverse, you were willfully going against what you knew was healthy for you and for others. Perversion led to suffering and death.
* Interesting fact: Harry Clarke (1889-1931), the illustrator of the above images, also created stained glass windows for churches. He was apparently a deeply religious man who really believed in heaven …. and hell.
Henry Clarke stained glass window: From the Irish Cultural Heritage Tours
Anyway, the next midday dreary that comes along I think I’ll clean out the closet or bake chocolate chip cookies. No more Netflix series’ to remind me just how perverse it’s becoming out.
I wrote about this place back in 2015. These are the ruins of a hospital that treated small pox patients back in the 1800s. Today, they’re known as Resnick* Ruins.
The Ruins are located on an island off Manhattan that, these days, is reachable by subway and gondola. However, when the hospital was in operation, the island was only reachable by boat thus the patients could look across the East River and see the glittering lights of Manhattan, but until they were healthy they were basically entombed.
We visited on our way back to Brooklyn from Manhattan and stopped only long enough to take a look around. It was a cloudy, moonless night and we were the only people around. The only living, breathing people that is. A slight breeze carried the moans of those long gone … whose suffering still remains.
A daylight shot from Bing Images – nope, I still wouldn’t go in there!
In 2018 a group of people decided to try to save the Ruins. They removed the ceilings and interior walls and fortified the exterior walls. They planned to transform what remained into a walled garden. A memorial for all those folks who never made it off the island, many of whom had only just arrived in the United States. Then came the Covid. Now it will be a memorial for all pandemic victims. Their plans look lovely indeed, however, would I want to go back there even during the day? Nooooo.
Is there anyplace so frightening that you wouldn’t go into it, even during the day? And I don’t mean the dentist’s office or the IRS.
*Resnick is the name of the unfortunate architect (James Resnick, Jr)who will forever have his name associated with death and despair.
In 1984 I stumbled upon a class in sculpting the human form. It was being held in the community center next to my son’s nursery school and during the same hours as he would be in school. Perfect for a hyper-busy mom. For the next three years our small group of amateur sculptors met once a week. Then our instructor began having health problems. Others in the group also faced life changing issues (including me) and so the group dissolved.
Thereafter I had only friends and family members to cajole into posing for me. Probably my easiest catch was my father. I guess he may have been a little vain!
After his unexpected death In 2006, my stepmother told me their two basset hounds sat beneath his sculpture every morning for about a month and howled piteously. Sometimes she’d enter the living room and there he’d be, sitting on the couch next to his sculpture reading a book as though nothing had happened. As though that night was like all the others he’d spent in that room, on that couch, reading a book. Death had been only an illusion. Anyway, my stepmother had a few good years after his death and then began to rapidly decline. Their house was sold and the sculpture came back to me.
In June 2019 I was on my way to answer the phone in the kitchen when I noticed that my father’s sculpture had begun to glow.
So I took a quick picture and then answered the phone. My stepmother had just passed away.
The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins.
This time of year is always difficult for me, although I love the weather we generally have here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mornings … always chilly; afternoons … warm and sunny; evenings filled with golden light. It really is magical.
Cobwebs on the flimsy birdhouses outside mean, it’s time to bring them inside
Pretty soon Margaritas won’t sound so tempting! Although my husband will drink them at any time of the year.
Untitled watercolor by Connemoira, circa 1986
The other day I found a watercolor done by my friend Connemoira many, many years ago. It shows a woman peeping out from what appears to be a tattered curtain, her eyes reflecting what could be a bomb blast. When we were teens we knew for certain that all wars would end during our lifetimes. They just had to, otherwise why else were we here?
Untitled oil pastel by Connemoira. I would call it Feather Bird.
Toward the end of her life, Connemoira’s work became deeply disturbing, as though what she viewed through that tattered curtain became too much to witness. But I promised her that I would “protect my novel” and so, after some revisions to the Oncle Boob story, I am ready for an editor. Do you have any recommendations? Synopsis here.
My friend Carol, who I’ve written about many times, fought for over twenty years to preserve a piece of the Richmond California shoreline known as Point Molate. From this bit of relatively undeveloped and little known shoreline you can see Marin County.
The Richmond/San Rafael Bridge and beyond Mr. Tam
When she first began the fight, both Chevron (which has refineries near by) and the Indian gaming industry were interested in developing the area and the cash-strapped city of Richmond could hardly refuse their offers. So you can imagine what a struggle it was to convince city leaders that both industries would do irreparable damage to what could be an asset for the community.
Saved from a gaudy casino or smelly refinery
Yesterday the city decided to finally honor Carol’s contribution (she died in 2021) with a bench reveal. It was a grey day, portending rain, but a couple of dozen folks showed up to speak about their friend and sit on her bench. Lots of tears, as you can imagine.
I live too far from Point Molate to have been active in the cause but I was invited to the unveiling. And welcomed warmly by an amazing group of people. Read here about their work.
The view from Carol’s bench
Anyway, if you’re ever in the area, check out Point Molate and have a rest on Carol’s bench. She did so love to laugh so tell her a funny story!
Yesterday I took a break from beating my novel to death to take a walk around the nearby reservoir. Something I haven’t really done since the pandemic and my little whoopsy on the kitchen floor. I wasn’t expecting to run into any interesting doors but what do you know …
How could I resist adding this gem to the pantheon of beautiful doors? I don’t know what sort of high tech gizmo this outhouse uses but I guess unless you close the lid, the smells don’t get vented out. Don’t ask me where they vent to. I don’t wanna know!
And from the local news (a requiem for the family farm):
From the SF Chronicle.
A group of multi-billionaires here in California have proposed building a utopian city on land between the San Francisco bay area and the rapidly expanding Sacramento metropolitan area. Their efforts to keep the project hush-hush have apparently backfired.
When I was a child that area was famous for fruit and almond orchards. We would stop on our annual pilgrimage from Reno to San Francisco at a place called the Nut Tree (satirized above as Wealthy Nuts Tree) and load up on all kinds of local goodies. Sadly many of those family farms are now gone.
Also in the ridiculous news from the west, this:
For those wealthy, well educated (mostly white) folk who’ve tired of luxury vacations on tropical islands, what better way to blow thousands of dollars than to buy an expensive RV and load it up with generators and supplies and head for Hell on Earth Nevada to live like a druid? A disclaimer: I have never been to Burning Man but I have actually camped in the desert sans generators, fancy tents and prepackaged meals. So I guess I’m unimpressed by their claims to have found enlightenment in the wilderness. I only recall insect bites, dust storms and a whole lot of canned beans and dried fruit. Enlightenment was getting home and into a hot bath.
The other day we meandered down a few roads in town that are … shall we say … off the beaten path.
The town’s only shoe repair shop.
When I buy shoes, which is thankfully a rare occasion, I often splurge. So I was delighted when a shoe repair shop opened in our town. Nothing is worse than throwing away an expensive pair of shoes just because the soles are wearing thin.
Phairs Mercantile
Across the street from the adorable shoe repair shop is this abandoned building. I really don’t know that much about Phairs or why it has remained empty for over twenty years. Haunted perhaps?
The golf course you can see reflected in Phairs’ now shattered windows belongs to the Orinda Country Club. They only admit legacies at the OCC and they’re so old-fashioned that events held there are notoriously dull. But that’s the way they’ve always run things, gall darn it, and that’s the way things will always be done. No fancy technology for them!
Also across from the shoe repair shop is San Pablo creek. Although it’s protected by a chain link fence, it looks like someone’s been getting down there. The dream of many people in town is to revitalize this and other creeks which have been neglected for too long.
On the same block is a shop selling antiques. I can’t give my grandmother’s fancy china away so I don’t see how these shops survive.
I believe this is the bathroom window for a small cafe next to the antiques shop. Some mighty scary scarecrows guarding the cars in the parking lot.
Lastly here is a seldom used door leading to a mostly abandoned parking lot behind Phairs. Hopefully this block will get some love soon.
Saying nothing in particular 