Mannequin and Doll Musing

It’s the startlingly lifelike mannequin that has been standing at the shop’s window for the past 85 years. According to local legends, the mannequin is in fact the preserved, mummified corpse……

Untangling a Humdingerdoozer of a Holiday

(Yeah that’s me. I love my photoshop.) This is my father, seen below- in his prime. (he’s 83 now) My aunt used to think he looked like Robert Mitchum, and in some pictures he really does. My father was a great mechanic. (Still is. He owns a race car now and takes great pleasure sitting […]

Distorted Reality

My first reading material was my set of World Book Encyclopedias. I would buy paperbacks at tag sales. Books like The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe, Elvis’s Autobiography and Chariots of The Gods. I read voraciously. I liked comics too… Richie Rich, Casper, Little Lotta and the scary ones were my favorites- the ones where […]

My 101st blog

WILHELM: This has the distinction of being my 101st blog; which is more of an achievement to me than having completed my 100th blog, because 101 has two ones in it and as such is a better number than 100! That said I wanted to mention the infamous Wilhelm scream. It can be heard […]

Interpretting White Roses

salus in ardunis sancte et sapienter Alice In Wonderland Syndrome…(or as it’s also called: Todd’s Syndrome or Lillipution Hallucinations) sounds made-up but it’s a very real condition. People seem fine optically, but they have weird visual perceptions. They have what’s termed a “rare form of migraine” (migrainous ischemia?). All of their senses are strangely distorted. The […]

URNS Dilemma

URNS Check this out: These are on display in the corner of my cellar. The four of them, (two pets, two people) have been on display for some time now. I know it’s a bit of a macabre theme but go with it. Think of this as a pre-Halloween blog or something. It’s become a dilemma, […]

Between hell and hopelessness: Works In Progress

I don’t understand it. Am I taking the weight of the woeful world’s troubles on and internalizing it? Lately I’ve had trouble seeing the positive side of things. I won’t mention the bullying, cruelty and atrocious acts I’m referring to here, but you have access to media; you know what I mean. Even if I […]

IF

If it weren’t for the moon, to slow Earth’s spin, we’d have 6 hour days instead of 24. If Teddy Roosevelt hadn’t been carrying his speech in a metal eyeglasses container that October night in 1912 when John Schrank shot him, the bullet would’ve killed him. If Al Capone hadn’t compulsively carried his trademark mirror […]

Is It Profound or Is It Poop?

Have you heard about the tiny skeletons appearing on the streets of Mexico? Urban artist Isaac Cordal can tell you about them. He created them. The following quote is from his website, which has a link following this blog: “These small sculptures contemplate the demolition and reconstruction of everything around us. They catch the attention […]

Emotions With No Name

Where can you find the remains of a giraffe, an upright dining table, a claw hand and silver bars worth millions (all in the same place)? Underwater, in NYC, that’s where. Weird finds in New York’s waterways are the inspiration for fictional stories on a “digital journal” called Underwater New York. But I’m more interested […]

Sharp Little Pencil Addresses My Faux Pas and Makes Me Smile

I need to get something out of my system: “Fizzling Fireboxes!” “Well… Flatten my funnel!” “Oh! Trembly tracks!” There, that’s better. I’ve been watching CPTV’s Thomas The Tank Engine with a 2 year old. Thomas gets into mischief on that program. He’s called the “cheeky” engine for a reason. He’s also an example for […]

Rantings of a logophile

I’m into obscure things. If you’ve read this blog you already know that. This forum, for me, is kind of an information purge of sorts. It’s like a safe place where I can say things like moon pigeons and alphabet juice and electric ketchup. Oddball conundrums keep my brain cells happy. Let me explain the […]

It Rains Diamonds on Uranus; Happy Mother’s Day Carol

…I was thinking that sometimes inspiration isn’t so bold that it’s wearing a velour jumpsuit. Sometimes it’s as simple as a cartwheeling spider or a rainbow tree. Noticing (and seeking out) beautiful eccentricities enhance my life. But I’m getting ahead of myself… So, picture this: A young black man is scheduled as keynote speaker to […]

Work ethic, Dr. Suess and if I was a Tree

I ‘met’ someone recently who used to work in retail and I did my share of that too so I was reminiscing about my years ‘working with the public.’ I told him that I did my best. That’s all anyone can do. I found lots of expired merchandise in my “Health […]

J. Moore’s Book, Memory, and Tattooed Pigs

JJ has this theory that memory is still there; like in a computer; in the recesses of your brain. Like you never really forget things; not even in regard to Alzheimers. He feels that you never really delete anything from your hard drive per se. As in with […]

Some of Crows’ and Ravens’ Roles in Fairy Tales and myth and Literature

I think of ravens and crows interchangeably. I can’t help it; I just do. Ravens are bigger in size although there are other differences too; like their voices. Supposedly the crow can say ‘uh-huh’, ‘caw’, ‘eh-aw’, ‘kow’, ‘aww’, and sound real nasal, whereas the raven is harsher and says things like ‘kraa’, or it makes […]

Peeves, Yeats, Hurdles, Goldilocks, importance of full stops

I function “best” when I’m in the Goldilocks zone. That is to say, when it’s not ‘too’ this, and it’s not ‘too’ that. When everything is going along just right in the world in a nice practiced routine. But who doesn’t function best like that, right? But take for instance a family member I once […]

Loss of A Dear Friend, Zsolt Megai

Please don’t be put off by the length of this. I’m not sure how long it will roll on; but I’ve lost a dear friend so here goes. It was October of 2007 when I first met Zsolt Megai. My husband had died in 2005 and The Ct […]

weather patterns, Donna Williams, fruit salad, Buddha

Donna Williams says (in a brilliant analogy) that autism is a fruit salad, which I infer to mean, that everyone’s fruit bowl looks a bit different. Mine has Aspergers bananas in it, with selective mutism lemons, sensory processing dysfunction prickly pears, and dysthymic mangos. There are other fruits in there too. Like anxious horned melon […]

Augusten Burroughs and me and also Egyptians and Stuff

“Guess I have to kill you now”, I joked during our ‘bathroom time’. He rolled his eyes and had this stern face which was his mask, the ‘mask of ALS’ (Lou Gehirgs) as it was called in the newsletter we got delivered to the house. His facial muscles were so weak that he had a […]

Here Be Dragons…When Pipes Are Not Pipes

Stephen King once wrote a short story about the heyday of youth with all it’s freshness and trials. He called youth: Pony days. We all have a brief time as ponies. There were two times during my pony years that I was given horses and both times my father said no, absolutely not, she can […]

Christmas is… and isn’t

Do you get a little sick of all the warm-fuzzy hoo-ha this time of year? I’m not embarrassed to admit that I buy into all the good cheer to an extent and then slowly I feel like…where’s the New Year? I want all this behind me now. I wasn’t even going to get a tree […]

Digging In Boxes

Digging In Boxes There are ‘noun friendly’ languages like English and then there are ‘verb friendly’ languages like Korean, Hindi, and Japanese. In the latter languages, nouns are frequently dropped and names for activities are emphasized in the earliest years of life when parents are teaching children to speak. On the other hand, parents […]

Neologism, weight loss, rebuilding Lost Identity

I’ve become a shack again. My body is no longer my temple. Time to rebuild. I’ve done it before. I’ve done it many times in the course of this life. Redesigned my self… There’s a lot that goes into that: rational belief, toughness, emotional strength, endurance, resilience and the jump starter: desire. Example: I’ve been […]

Acts Of Kindness and the HEART

My grandmother died when I was about 13 years old. It’s the last thing I expected even though she was nearly 90. (Or was she in her 90s? Memory fades that detail…) To a child, death only happens to other people; not to people you know. It was a special relationship. I was mute most […]

Comparing Luigi to the Voynich find, a look at two of the weirdest outsider art books ever!

Imagine writing and illustrating a book so bizarre (but intriguing) that decades later people are still drawn to it and NO ONE has been able to decode the secret language you made up, nor are they able to understand what your mind boggling illustrations mean?! Hey that’s a feat, eh? Look at one of the […]

Fascinating modern architecture to 1700 manor houses…it’s all good

Recently I’ve been reflecting about architecture. I’m reading a historical book called The Manor: Three centuries at a slave plantation on Long Island by Mac Griswold. This 70 year old woman, Mac, is a cultural landscape historian, a fascinating job. When she was a little girl in the 1950s growing up in New Jersey, […]

Believe In People and also Levi Brown, “Graffiti” and Photography/Art taken to New Lengths!

There is a mysterious local New Haven artist going only by the moniker: ‘Believe In People,’ often shortened to BIP. Watch out! A giant baby holding a briefcase-wielding businessman! This particular painting ‘sprung’ up “guerrilla style” on the side of a business along State Street. In this instance, the painter had the permission of the […]

My kitty and my view: satisfied

I am satisfied enough with my lot in life. In this particular grey house, I have lived for almost 22 years. I didn’t intend to stay this long. It was ‘temporary’; yet here I am, two children nudged from the nest to find living space elsewhere. One daughter remains. So for years I’ve had the […]

Contemplation on Dead Greyhounds and Women’s Rights; Ultimately Life Lessons

Some people are surely meant to be in our lives, but not necessarily to be in them for a lifetime. I think of course of those people in my own life who came and went on in death before I would’ve liked. My spouse left three children whose ages were 23, 14 and 9. I […]

Dog Walking As an Exercise In Art Appreciation

The sidewalk I stand on is most common: pitted, crumbling around the edges, cracked, with the common faced weeds of suburban blight sprouting between those cracks. Between a “rock and a hard place,” yeah. Empty lots, exhaust-bathed roadsides and overpass embankments are breeding grounds for “weeds,” which are defined as undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially […]

Oil Slick Harbingers and Colorblind Crooner

Years ago, before my husband’s diagnosis of ALS, there were subtle signs; harbingers if you will, that times were going to be changing. We were at a grocery store. I live close to the eastern coastline and department store parking lots are often filled with seagulls that scavenge for french fries. They’re drawn in by […]

Category: symbolism