Discriminative Foundering

Oh Ho Ho. Today's little ditty circulates around the beloved AmVets Thrift store and so while I'm at it, had better give you the ins and outs of my preferences. Years ago I was strictly a Salvation Army shopper since that place was well lit and familiar, Grandma would take me to the one on West Ferry Street in the city. It's where I got to get my first sea shells-stuck-in-plaster-with-a-lightbulb decorative piece for twenty-five cents and good things have happened ever since. I rediscovered the shop in my early thirties, and made a nest out of goods found there, not to mention clothing that I could now afford.

I tell you, having to live in clothes you scrounged from other people's garbage may be sensible, but can be personally hurtful...I wore green corduroy pants and castoff beige and blue saddle shoes for over a year. People would invite me to pick over whatever they were donating or tossing out and I only had the sense that as a member of a one-sided marriage, I was doing my job in not asking for things because I once had been in love but saw the result as a pledge to stick it out and pull my weight in a most uneducated manner. Very blue-collar, live on a string martyrdom while the noise had special biking shoes that locked into special pedals, running sneakers, raquetball sneakers, hiking boots, dress shoes, you name it shoes all designed to make him go faster. Didn't work fast enough, I say. So I grew vegetables and found two dollar tops at the thrift shop. It really was a salvation of sorts with the choices I was able to bring home for myself. I shopped there until I found out their Christian values did not include my gay friends. I headed over to the Goodwill.

The prices were maybe a dollar higher there, and they organized clothing by style and color, not size which is fine because that varies so much from each designer. Just remember, if anything is from a Chinese or Japanese line, it won't fit unless you are the size of a wet cat. I found that the dresses from Goodwill were a bit more label-oriented than from the Salvation Army, and was able to dress for my job for five bucks a pop. But something wasn't right, something was calling me to give AmVets another try; my first forays were overcome by the chaos and funky linoleum floor that usually somewhere wore a dried red splatter of Kool-Aid, which had since become a sticky geography of human hair and paper tags. My friend Karima swore by the place, and since she is one of my heroes, I sucked up and proceeded and learned.

The cashiering young women dress in abandonment, layering in oddments and painting spiderwebs at the outside corners of their eyes. Hair is teased into updo stratohysteria, wrapped in bands of scarves or torn tees. The local puppet woman who brings her bike into the store is seen here gathering supplies for her characters and costumes. Gays, trannies, down and outers, college professors, Mercedes-driving suburbanites, Goths, the rambling elderly, and a lot of school teachers shop the aisles for recycled clothing, china, books, furniture, and etc. Head manager Helen is in her late sixties and wears a sensible smock; she can swing an immense canvas bin of items like she was taking a tray of brownies out of the oven. It is art at it's most humane and elevated. Come on in.

Mondays, a 25% discount is allowed for seniors over 55; Tuesday is student day. Military receive 25% off anytime they come in. Local Tops Supermarket prints out $4 AmVets coupons with a purchase of $15 worth of goods on the back of its receipts. You don't even have to buy anything at Tops, just go over to the parking lot and grab discarded receipts as they blow by or check the carts. People leave them everywhere, and to me, that's $4 for myself or the person behind me in line.

Buy good, well-made stuff without stains or rips that can't be fixed; avoid cheap labels. You will find Eileen Fisher, Ralph Lauren, and Kate Hill with some lucky digging. Do not buy anything Banana Republic, the stuff they shill these days falls apart and they are living on past glory. Same for GAP, JCrew, or Laura Ashley. I'm pretty happy with my look and thrift, and if I ironed, no one would know.

So this is the crux of today's submission: I recently watched a Threadbanger vid on YouTube showing how to make several styles of scarf from t-shirts. Looked like cheap fun, which is my middle name. I dropped by the A-V today to see what could be had and went up and down the Ladie's Short Sleeves aisle hunting for colors that go together. Hum, hum, hum. You should stay within the size range, so that you have enough material for each piece especially if you intend to mix 'em up a bit. Each of the Ladie's X-Large tees were $2.48 - $2.98, and I had ten selected for approximately a total of $30. Well, a neuron was coincidentally launched and caught by the related synapse, so I thought geez, how much are the Men's tees? Guess. What.

Bigger, made of thicker material, same selection of colors and only $.99 each for a savings of almost half of what the original booty would have cost. What? Why? Why are the women's tees $2 more? My grand total came to $16 dollars including a Peruvian pima cotton long sleeve tee for four dollars that I will mail out to my son. I was gratified, even though I forgot to turn in one of the four dollar coupons....could have gotten that last item as a congratulatory freebie.

Once I finish this post and launch Snowbelle from my lap, the cutting and experimentation will begin. You may see me wearing something creative and think, now what? I have to decide what to do about the prices, if a letter should be dashed off because for heaven's sake, women are the ones supporting the family or taking a big hit after divorce and sure could use those two bucks for cereal.

This day never saw the sun, it was dreary and dank, undecided about snow or drizzle. I had also stopped at the hardware to scan paint colors and saw ideas that were sunset rose and orange with streaks of purple; suggested dayrooms painted in fresh green hues, all enveloped in the best light the paint company could afford. I brought home more pamphlets than necessary, just to look at those images of light and living saturation, presented as a palette of chromatics bright and clear. Gaudy gold Christmas is done, I am hungry for the luminosity of nature and lots of it. Ah, to go to the tropics in dark Northern winter, now that is rich. I shall jump into tonight's salad bowl, and wallow in crisp, green luxury. If you see me wearing a lettuce leaf, take me by the elbow, gently, but of course you will understand.

Dark day, darker evening. Cozy and close to loved beings, books, papers, stories, and a bowl of something warm, perhaps. Sleep well, sleep peaceful, rock a bye, nighty night. Love to all.

Christmas Eve

What mischief is this, this Christmas Eve business? Today is Thursday, and tomorrow will be Friday, and what oh what do you mean? I woke up in AmVets today, had taken in some books for donation and rambled about the unpopulated aisles searching for the magic cloak amid racks of women's wear. And there I was. Good Lord, why am I here? Friends had gone off to relatives, household readiness, or were wrestling enameled roasters out of hidden cupboards. Me and four other people poked and pawed like squirrels in the park, looking for acorns under fallen leaves. Ach, I had to get out of there, but did find a text on plant biology that had a chapter on fungi. I saw Becky, the young floor manager, as I paid for the book.

I made a few rounds to other shops, got through a festering line of backed-up carts driven by people who had lost their minds, and loped over to a grocery store to pick up figs and lunch. Again, two-legged humanity waved salamis and loaves in air, harrumphed about ice cream choices, and left footprints on the elderly who didn't move as fast. Murry Krissmuss we growled at each other, over shoulders laden with plastic bags full of tomorrow's sod. To home. I dropped by the post office and gave dear Beverly a gift card, she is a whirl of efficiency and patience, and wobbled under packages as I traipsed up the sidewalk to the apartment building door and ye gods what is that smell? Dark liquid seeped forward from the inner doorway, and I saw men with strained faces wheeling machinery and hoses through puddles of stench. Sewer backed up. I picked around the melee and ran into neighbor Adele as she scooped up her mail. We both shot upwards in the elevator hoping for escape, but by this time the entire building was rife with thick, swampish odors; I lit incense and flung windows open upon entering, leaving my clogs outside the door to disinfect later. Aough.

The tree is lit and soup is in the pot, simmering cabbage for zero points of calories. Christmas Eve was my favorite holiday, even better than Christmas in an imperfect world. Yet it has come to this, a Thursday and tomorrow is Friday except stores are closed. My son couldn't get off from his job, and this will be the first Christmas Eve I haven't seen him. He is thirty, and forgive me for my bad manners and self-pity, but after thirty years of son-centered holidays, it's hard to look at a calendar and then look in the mirror back at myself. Who hasn't gone through change? As my dear friend Barbara would say, put on your big girl pants and get on with it.

And so I will. Tomorrow I will make something. Dunno what, but there shall be art, something I've wanted to fiddle with. The men will have parked their machine away and gone to bed, maybe to wake up to coffee and eggs and Christmas morning. The people in the stores are home and winding down except for those who will be up till three-thirty wrapping presents for children. The bags of groceries will be divided into categories, chopped, stuffed, and baked. Some folks will enjoy their loved ones, others will have tantrums even though they are grown. Really, how is this different from any other day? Only in that we look for our loved ones, urged on by time, constricted by shortened daylight. Years do count and pile invisible weight on our bones that only reassurance and continuation can lift.

But you, you listen for sounds in the night and I don't mean the cat. Tonight is a glory, quietly rich in human warmth for us lucky ones and ever watched by the stars who have seen billions of our years pass in a tumble of eternity. Sleep well, sleep peaceful. Love you so.

Aunt Dorie's Christmas Tree

I loved my Aunt Dorie, and she loved me extra much because of the crazy circumstances in my childhood household. There were summers that my Mom would let me go stay with her and my cousins Ginny and Stevie for a week. It was a break. My cousin Ginny would toss me into the clawfoot tub with bubbles from bubblebath every night before bed. At home, I got scrubbed in Spic and Span on Saturdays, like the floor. I was flabbered at this fuss but it helped me feel elegant, dainty, with no fear that the girly bubbles would turn me down the road of prostitution, as advertised by the noise at my own house. These visits provided relief and a power of choice I had no where else, and helped my sense of another world outside parental walls electrified by lightning bolt fear and honor thy fatherism.

Well, I could recount the hallways, the rackety spiral staircases up to the attic, the beautifully shaped appointments in the bathroom, the creepy basement, the immense rooms with sliding doors, the phone that still worked in the back hall off the kitchen that decades earlier was used to call servants; this house was a part of the years when the City of Buffalo flourished in the quaint grandeur of gaslights and horse-drawn tradesmen. The city was also once a center for wrought iron, and elements of twisted intricacy still remained as paeans to the working man as artist. Railings, gates, speared fences or hitching posts arranged themselves within the neighborhood rising from grass like soldiers on watch, some with animal or human faces meshed in vines cast as medallions, melded amongst the worked undulations of decent iron.

'Bout time I got to the Christmas tree part. Christmas in the 1950's smelled different than these safer, modern times. No one was insane enough to light candles on the tree, but the large, hot, leave-a-blister-on-fingers Noma lights glowed like fire on the real tree branches and were just as dangerous. Anything electrical in the Fiftie's was scary and crackly and smelled like a fire was coming, soon. That didn't stop us. My Aunt Dorie loaded her tree with bubble lights and long strands of the incandescents. Ancient real aluminum foil ornaments were heated by the lights and smelled bitter metallic. Foil also starred as tinsel, hanging in heavy, kinked formations--the success of the tree hinged on how well and how much tinsel you got on--and added to the Christmas aroma of pine and blast furnace. Glass balls bobbled in place, giving off a seething incense when swinging over the electric bulbs and the remnants of a clingy attic dust burned off. The lit tree heated the room, the papery wallpaper, the wood moldings, and the mohair upholstery. Garlands curled, wax angels drooped, ribbons on gifts smelled like they were just ironed. My aunt was happy at her exuberant tree decorating skills; she allowed me to have one spinning, metallic decoration, so that my tree at home might create emanations similar to an overheated TV dinner tray. My parents would unplug our own tree after fifteen minutes, just in case.

I admired and envied the exuberance and daredevil ways of my aunt, if you can call a lit Christmas tree an adventurous risk. Well, perhaps back then you could. I envied my cousins, living with my Aunt Doris, for they got to see the glorious, dangerous tree everyday until early January when everything saved was packed in boxes and the remainder taken to the curb.

She took chances in life; not all of them went well, but I could say she always jumped in with both feet. No testing the water with a tentative toe, her motto was to live for the day. You could try that out to see how it goes for you, tomorrow. Enjoy something fun, nice fun. Think about what that might be, as night enters when the lights go off and morning alarms are set. Maybe tomorrow, I'll hold a piece of foil over a flame, or pine needles held in metal tongs and set afire. Could that bring back a moment, a memory of Christmas chances taken, of the pleasure and joy found in ordinary things? I'll let you know. Sleep well, my friends, and dream of life lived.

Sunday With a Purpose

The plecostomus regards me with antediluvian eye, which he pulls into his skull from time to time in a fishy wink. He is happiest after a water change, for he battles the vacuum siphon as an invader and he gets to win every time; it's good for his psyche to imagine victory in an uneven fight. He's a pretty thing, mottled grey and black in spotted camouflage with about thirteen inches to his exoskeletal bulk.

Plecos jump, so there are rocks on top the aquarium to keep him humble. My last large one jumped in the night, and if the cats had anything to do with it, they would have brought him to me in bed as a gift and there would have been reunion and rescue. These fish can stay out of water for a bit, but a sad ending concluded this life, for he was dried out and stiff as a board when I found him behind the tank on the floor, poor creeter.

The recent puddlejumper has attempted escape twice, for his fishy nose gets skinned as evidence and owch, I squirt medicine in the water for healing. Starting out as a $3.50 two-inch baby he is now over a foot, burgeoning upon fourteen inches. He's a good boy. May live for twenty years. Lives like a small, crabbed king.

Oh, I have ideas. I want to paint the apartment in colors deigned to lift mood and O, it's the winter solstice tomorrow! Daylight will begin extending into summer frolic and late nights on porches with cool drinks and friends. Reading the Almanac daily gives increments of hope and light but look at me, living in the future as compared to being here today. What else is new.

I have to remember not to live in the When of time, for When usually doesn't appear. If it does, there arrives another When immediately to supersede whatever victory was achieved in the last uneven fight. Or a cap falls off a tooth, or the car needs repair, or the cat gets sick, or the student loan people don't like me anymore, or too many papers are due requiring in-depth research like I'll remember any of that stuff. Everyone has a When, I think. Or a You. Or an If. Hm. Write me what you think and mail it in with a boxtop from Jesus H. Crispies, the cereal that multiplies and feeds the hoard. See you later, another chill night is coming. Close the doors and pull up the blankets. Count your whiskers, as I tell the cats, and be grateful. Dream.

Oobilldiddy dooo

At least that's what it sounds like, this garbled ZZ Top concert on cable tv, have mercy. I was looking for Christmas music and landed in the eighties. What is news today is that Washington DC has at least a foot of snow and is closed for business, so my son who lives there is showing the populace how to slide down Capitol Hill on a piece of cardboard. My boy. Take pictures, I said.

He'll use his Buffalo, NY ways to maneuver the drifts that throw your everyday DC-er into a milk and bread-buying panic as if they were the feathers of a thousand miniature white hummingbirds. His mighty sneakers will kick that fluff aside, and plow ruts in the road for cars to follow; he'll clean sidewalks with a swing of his mighty northern-born arms using his Blackberry for a shovel. His laughter and Russian muskrat hat will melt icicles and extremist Republicans into puddles. Go forward, my son, I am proud.

Time to push some more things around. Be back later, I can just tell.

Eez Chreestmoose!

I tell you, get an organizer in your life and BAM! they facilitate the necessary details that just are difficult for me to divine. Jeanmarie D. came over to help get the tree up and decorate, and now I also have furniture arranged so that there is more room than ever before. Plus, a narrow, white, pre-lit tree that Lord please Lord the cats will not bother. I tethered it to the wall with twine, but they could still steal ornaments.

Boris the New Cat had started the day with his continued fascination with the bathtub, he jumps in and digs like a badger in the corners. Today he stuck his face into the drain and meowed, so I turned on the tiniest trickle and wow, was that ever what he wanted. He stuck his paw into the stream and licked, he let the water pour onto his head while he drank what ran down between his ears. I've only seen this on YouTube, this weirdness that ended up with a soaked, happy cat. He let me towel him off, and seemed to be smiling. Okay by me, whatever floats your boat, champ.

Then I called up Jeannie, who had said she could help with the tree. But, she wanted the tree in front of the mirror, not in the corner I had cleaned out. Sure. She directed the moving of rugs, the couch, chairs and sundry and it looks terrific. She made me straighten the curtains, suggested I go back to the pink walls I once had, and prodded the plastic tree into glory. Myself, things usually look like of course this matches when I have no clue to decorating, which is part of whatever charm I can claim. Things are dashed together and as long as there is cat food in the house, the rest can take care of itself. Jeanmarie has subtly pointed out the ways of symmetrical peace, and well, she is right in that balance makes a better picture. At least, today it does.

The white tree sparkles. So do you. Nighty night.

Self-indulgence

Something inside is trying to get out it aches like anticipation. Apprehension and joy in one torn scab of pain and pleasure. Here I am again in the sterile environment of blog, sans paper and pen only because it's quick and easy to edit, this electronic robotic mechanism of keyed words.

What is it? The holidays? Raymond Scott's Powerhouse? The new cat? That I found a penny today, looked for someone I knew, or am full of milk? You may suffer, O Anonymous Reader, whilst I plod forward. Paint the apartment. Toss out junk. Feng shui myself into arranged auspicious life. Everything at once, and make that now.

Zounds.

Quick Saturday Morning

So much so much to do, I wish humans only needed four hours of sleep. This is a busy Saturday, cleaning, cookies, gas fill-up, fabric shop, groceries, post office and solace, I need to schedule some of that in also. I cannot pass the image of my friend Nancy without a pang, it is not real to me that she is gone. I miss my colleague Barbara, another friend who passed on two weeks before my girl's death. Ah, sadness performs the necessary contribution to hope. And so life does not stand still after that moment of the first gasp when the news comes. Oh speed, it does not allow withdrawal, but you dig in and leap forward, only older in body and mind.

Jump in with both feet, my loves, for that is the continued contribution to creative success. There is a new cat. I finished this semester in bumps and starts at college, few more to go. Milk tastes good. The aprons arrived to make for my students. A little girl gave me a beaded necklace she made herself, all more precious as she can only read a struggling 20 words a minute and lives in chaos. Kai plays with her cat toy as if it had a heartbeat, doing somersaults of brown furry victory. My son Brian. My sort of son, Scotty. Friends and new avenues of thought pull me forward.

This post is only a map of destination and travels from before. I must write, write, there is so much that needs to be charted.