Petra Norma Van Heuss, the singer Sophia Trousseau, was born
Victor, while reading Vanity Fair, comments on the brassy costumes which adorn, one after the other, tucked and taught persuasive figures; looks down upon the dirty child in his lap and while lifting the small fragile hand, kisses the palm,
“One day, one day, you will put them all to shame; but there will have to be soap and water involved.”
She examines her fingernails, perfect dark moons, looks down at her toes to confirm they match. Her dress has quite some stories about it, her hair, a mass of aggravation. She compares herself with the women he’s referencing. They are tall and mature and stiff and uncomfortable and their performance is a one time shot. She isn’t interested.
After having thought through his statement she pulls his hand from the page, turns the palm to the sky as she fits her face inside his spider like appendages, kisses his palm and turns up to face him,
“One day, one day, dear Grandfather you will stop telling me how I should appear; but there will have to be bourbon and young men involved to distract you”
“It’s true” he closes the cover and looks out the window as the rain crashes haphazardly against the window.
“I love this weather” she says with a tickle as she flops her head over the edge of the chair to observe with him.
“It always brings a turn of events” He taps her stomach.
“Then we should turn events to get the jump! What is very difficult?” she questions; leaping off his lap and pulling desk drawers about for hidden ideas.
“Changing your mind” he points.
“Learned it from you” drops the ink blotter which has long dried from disuse and turns to the candy dish sweeping a handful of coconut treats”
“Changing your clothes”
“Not interesting enough”
“Changing the weather”
“Why on earth would you wanna do a thing like that?”
“I was placating you”
“Oh. Let’s change the family!” she spins the brass frame to face him. The photo is a year old and
“Changing a family takes a death, a marriage or a birth”
“No” she snatches his magazine and begins to march about flipping the pages. “It’s all in the name; this isn’t just any old magazine teaching you how to make applesauce is it?”
“I do not like apple sauce”
“Precisely! And a magazine which taught such a thing would never be called Vanity Fair would it?”
“It may”
“But it isn’t likely” She stops and points to bring the jury to attention.
“Would you like a new name
“A lot is more than 2” Suddenly she’s 7.
“It is not, it’s undefined. Your favorite”
She leaps back into his lap; kneels upon him and holding his cheeks, with noses engaged she forceful demands
“Stop fighting me, if we change our name than we can get rid of the Moop Wop”
A quick Note on the Moop Wop:
There are many variations of
Just inside the front door, roped off, waits a wooden chair upon which stands a handsome bugle, complete with royal red and gold silk dressings.
She can hear the wheels of his car round the end of the drive from any location in the house and no matter what she is doing; bee lines to the front door, grabs up the bugle and stands upon the chair stiff as a lawn jockey. As she sees their shadows approach she jumps the knocker with a vicious bugle call and using her pulley system she yanks open the door without leaving her post. Staring at the wall ahead she belts
”THE MOOP WOP, THE MOOP WOP-ESS AND THE LITTLE MOOPS HAVE ALL ARRIVED. WE SHALL BEGIN THE FESTIVITES!! End with bugle call, usually directly into her uncle’s ear and a stiff jump off the chair and march away down the hall.
It was
A Moop is a form of unwanted goods, refuse, compost, very succinctly trash and a Wop is what stores the trash. It is supposed that the Moops were ancient land fills that had been brought to life by a very unattractive man because his wife had left him for a handsome plumber. Victor was of the understanding that the Moop Wop was a form of revenge for gluttony and lust.
Moop Wops could be detected by the number of moles one had exposed when dressed sharply and by their tendency to hoard spittle on the outside of their mouths. Also they smelled like fowl.
Back to the library and getting the jump on the weather
“I’m going to tell him”
“He won’t like it” Victor draws upon his cigarette like a Victorian prince.
“Ha! It isn’t a matter of like. And he will like it. With a name like Vanity you’re assured a long and blissful life”
“You could be dooming him.”
“How so?” she spins mid stride.
“Women won’t prefer it” He approaches and grasps a clump of her hair, lifting it just so, “They will not feel like Vanity is a man they could assign to, it’s the name of a passer by, a dream, a memory. He will never re-marry with such a name”
“So what you’re saying, supposing you’re right, is the converse and really that by naming him Vanity, I will be saving him. All of my lessons do nothing but prove that Wives only beget tragedy.”
“But man loves tragedy”
“Man, and this is a direct quote my grandfather - lives in the presence of tragedy, yet is always looking for the right strike of the clock to run out on it and have a dance with more enjoyable treats.”
“It’s true”
“You are a wonderful educator, you should have had children”
“I loathe children”
“Yes, as I’ve been told”
“Scandalous is a word undeserving of you’re curtsy”
“Again, I learned this from you” and she spins, curtseys and flies down the stairs towards the first floor.
“No, that you were born with, everything else I am to blame for” He speaks one last time to the jury as he quiets the lights and bids them ado, leaving them to age and talk amongst themselves as books are wont to.
Vanity Van Heuss was born Profi Norman Varekamp V
“Perfect” Victor says as he rounds the corner. “a lawyer is just what we need”
“I’ve made a discovery” she says from the floor.
“Well I won’t listen to you from there” her father lifts her to her feet. She turns to the Toad and smiles broadly while extending her delicate hand.
“Sir, Petra Van Heuss, it is wonderful to meet you.”
“You as well, please restate your name, I missed it” the toads palm is like a wet ham.
“Van Heuss, isn’t it lovely? She runs over to her father’s desk and jumps into his lap.
“Victor, what have you done?” Profi asks with a flare of the nostril and a glimmer of amusement.
“Me? Oh it gets better, go on Pe, tell him what his name is”
“Van Heuss!” she says playing with his tie.
“And”
She smiles jumps up so that she is eye to eye with him. “Vanity”
“No.”
“No?”
“No”
“I told you he wouldn’t like it”
“But you haven’t even tried to like it, you have to try.”
“I’m a Varekamp and quite a bit more distinguished I might add”
“Than a Van Heuss?” she was stunned “Victor he’s mad”
Victor in accordance
“Your mad”
“See, your own father!”
“Why am I a Van Heuss?”
“Because dearest father. I like it. And so does Victor”
“Well it’s not our name”
“Now” –
“Now” – Victor echoes “It’s genius really. This man” cane prod towards the toad “Will change our name, the 3 of us, and then my dearest son; you will no longer be burdened with my brother and it will please me to no end”
“It can’t be that easy”
“It’s not” the Toad stands, creaking the chair beneath him. “But, I think I can make a contract so that by changing your name he is removed from the family unless he so makes a move to change his last name as well”
“Which he won’t” Victor grins
“Because it’s wretched” Profi confirms.
“Vanity, Vanity, Vanity, Vanity” She trails off as she leaves the study “Let me know when I need to sign” and she was gone.
In the Lounge with Missionaries
The nameless woman talks to the missionaries as they sit quietly, backs straight, hands clenched about white handkerchiefs, beading with sweat and trying to ignore the sensation about their bellies that will not allow them to remove their eyes from the only life sized naked portrait of Sophia in existence.
“So it was then that the family name changed to Van Heuss. Victor’s brother, Daniel, refused, as he knew he would, and when the change became legal the Varekamp name was cut out of the family fortune completely. This was Victor’s real intent. It was then that
They had been there for an hour; had spoken about God for just a moment.
There was a time when all cellars were filled with old treasures. Moments of the past tucked away from the generations before, memories held safe and quiet within the earth preparing themselves for rediscovery. Still Mansion had one of these; filled with tools and dirt and spiders and the occasional snake, old pictures, a record player with boxes of records, big band, small band, scratchy voiced blues and summer love songs; microscopes and chemicals with forewarning labels, odd glass jars filled with preserved aunts and uncles, cracked paintings of the family, hidden photos, a statue of St Jude and a myriad of damaged instruments.
All moods lurked in the treasures beneath the mansion. But it was not until Freddie and Alfred found the hidden room that Freddie first felt love. It's where their Grandfather, Vanity had stored himself and where they learned about the wive(s).
A gargantuan mirror with a broken frame sat against the far wall on the south side of the cellar. In order not to chip more of the oversized gilded frame the mirror was angled against the wall which left enough room behind for a small child. During a game of hide and seek Freddie had made her way into the space between the mirror and the wall. It was from there that she noticed a deliberate break in the stone on the floor and once Alfred had found her, which he almost always did, they collectively drug away the carpet covering the trap door. A finger hole was embedded in the ground, and within, there was brass ring, which did nothing to assist opening the door but did a world to encourage their curiosity.
Either it was too heavy to just lift by the ring or it was locked and if it was locked there had to be a key. The two began to search behind the paintings, stained glass and sculptures, through the stack of musty beaver pelts, along the wall of hat boxes and tanning materials. They moved records and travel trunks of clothing. The skeleton key drawer would only be useful if there was a key hole to be found. And they found nothing. Alfred was now wearing a redcoat's hat from the revolutionary war and trolloping about on a taxidermied greyhound while swinging a cricket stick. He was waging war on the trap door. They would be certain to get to the other side.
**The nameless woman interjects
I want to address the cellar of the mansion and its place in their story. The cellar is just a location as is any location but some locations are stronger haunts than others and it is in this cellar where I fill the cracks in my story. The stone walls have a cold breath and if you stand quietly in the center of the room you can hear them talk over each other. I moved into the house 8 months after the tragedy. I have been there just over 11 years, myself a haunt. I move slowly throughout the house cleaning as my body allows. My hands have begun to curl under and the veins rise like blue mountain ranges dividing my skin which is a litter of dark places. I appear much older than I am. The house has worn on me more than I would have thought possible. I'm by trade a restorer, a historian, that's why they let me move in; so that I could maintain the contents while they wait for Meredith to die.
Every room, every hallway, coat, hat, work of art and piece of furniture has a story. There is nowhere in the house that doesn't speak. But the cellar is where they keep their secrets. Vanity, Douglas, Victor, Clara, Petra, Freddie and Alfred and before all of them, the great great grandfather, Norman Douglas Varekamp III, his story was my last to find, although it should have been the first. My mother talked about him the most, but that isn't saying much as my mother rarely talked about Still or Danbury.
She raised me upstate at a boarding school where she found employment.
Petra sings in the cellar
Petra has turned eleven and is wearing the small sequined hat she's just found with the four peacock feathers, her white undershirt, a silk maroon scarf and no shoes. She is playing a record on her brand new player and singing into the mirror Vanity had recently taken out of the front hall. By placing her former (and much smaller mirror) on the other side of the room she easily multiplies herself.
Vanity is above her in the first floor office. A splintered wooden cane and two crutches mark off where the walls are above so that when Vanity is in his office, she is in his office just below. Petra has become an expert at tracking his movements. He starts at his desk, his feet tapping in his favorite orange leather shoes as he pursues the numbers. That's what he tells her, "I'm pursuing numbers my love, because they are running away". And after some moments he will walk to the bar, west wall 4 paces Vanity, 12 paces Petra. Then on to the window overlooking the river where the factory looms to the north, 3 paces Vanity, 8 paces Petra. He pauses and waits to hear the scratchy sound of one of Victors recordings begin. Petra touches the mirror she has place just below where the bay window lies above and begins to sing. She wants to take away his frustration and worry about the state of affairs of the factory, the town and the industry. She wants to steal his attention away from the legacy of lunacy he feels responsible for.
Pe's voice trickles slowly through the floor boards and penetrates the bottom of his feet bounding up through his body and piercing his chest. He will not move for as long as she sings. His eyes slowly closing he stands statuesque sipping his whiskey. He knows he has no control in these moments.
Petra's songs are all her grandfather Victors. He died of tuberculosis when she was 9, they would record together in his "conservatory for one" but when he realized he was not going to recover he recorded all of his instrumental music without her and on her 9th birthday presented her with a library of songs and records. He spent his last 4 months teaching her the numbers she had never heard. The ones he felt she was too young for. It was in those months that Petra grew up. It was Victor who taught her life's lessons and Lo who would show her how to handle herself. Vanity just watched and admired. He was hopeless with her after Victor died. Later in life Petra would perform in front of hundreds and yet every performance was for Vanity alone, every performance was in front of her mirror, every performance was to gain his attention alone, no one else.
Her favorite song, the one she sang today, was about the child who had gone into the woods and become lost for years. It was about wanting to be home in the arms of the ones she loved most. The child eventually makes her own way in life and finds love of her own, but nothing like the love she'd once known. At the end she discovers that she'd been abandoned by her family, not lost at all, and kills herself. Most of Victor's songs we're about women who killed themselves. He never believed his father when he was told their mother died in childbirth. He believed she had become forlorn and hung herself for some dramatic reason or another, "male intuition" he would tell Petra and wink.
Fear – it is my fear that while the party rallies forward in the name of itself, members will lie down and provide the pavement
I will say it here. I voted for Obama and although I was immediately nauseous in the hours following, I have since calmed, only to re-agitate.
And it is not Obama that has me furrowed and pacing, wondering when, while eating the mealy apple, you come across the worm; it is us (our thinking). I call myself an American in the title of this rant and it may be a first for me. But suddenly I feel like there is a need to discuss what is happening before it has happened… or perhaps I am too late. I may be too late.
When a government watches its citizens and those citizens allow themselves to be watched under the premise that, “unless I am doing something illegal, I don’t mind”, we are in for a very long and very painful national root canal which will result in only one set of remaining teeth and be sure, they will not be yours.
KYW reports on AIG execs leaving a spa last week using phrases like “living high on the hog” and “Hidden cameras watched AIG employees leaving the spa at a swanky hotel.” What gay says swanky hotel? But the media is not to blame for their lack of creative writing – this is a
The underlier is the spook in my spine, businessmen are being watched, recorded, tattled on and strung up to dry for taking part in their everyday course of business but because the government felt the need to bail them out ‘for the better of the country’ and they, as fools (and rightly representative of the national mentality) allowed the government to bail them out they are no longer a public company but a government body. We, by elected official, purchased stock in a lame duck and now we, uneducated in our purchase feel the rights (and we have them) to watch every move this company makes. Although we know nothing about the industry or the practices or the balance sheet for that matter – but we sure as hell understand “high on the hog”.
Pitchfork anyone?
And if you think it’s just the elite, stop by 13th and Pine. There are some beautiful new pillars rising that will host the cities surveillance officers, because men in stockings should not sell blowjobs to the lonely.
Under Obama we will see things worsen, under McCain/Palin we would have seen things worsen because nobody talks about what it means to really understand liberty both economically and socially and we are wire tapping ourselves for failure.
It is my fear that as we begin to roll over for safety and security we will fall so far into the fray of lost rights that this notion will once again need to come to life…
Just a few words that were useful in the 1800’s “jury Nullification”
Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a verdict of "Not Guilty" despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation charged. The jury in effect nullifies a law that it believes is either immoral or wrongly applied to the defendant whose fate they are charged with deciding.
“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.”
John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States
Here is a notion I hope we start paying attention to:
"Those who would give up essential
Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
someone thought this was important enough to put on the statue of liberty.... what were they thinking??!!? nonsense
Steam from the first shift at the factory intermingles with the air, forming orange tinted clouds; relics from a more toxic era. The river wraps around the edge of the mansion and moves at a crawl towards the town. And Alfred and Freddie are six; they have been in the playroom peeking through the nursery door for two hours. They have a newborn sister. She has dark hair. They are blond. They ask the baby keeper where the mother is? She ignores them. The ignorer’s heels are thick like hams attached to the bottom of each leg and her stockings, although white, are brown just above the shoe. Alfred suggests she change. She closes the nursery door on him.
Still for a moment he swiftly turns and exits the playroom, minutes pass and he returns with a wagon load of goods; his mothers. Freddie helps him move the desk to the center of the room which is being piled high with lotions and stockings and elixirs and masks. The ignorer has to pass from the nursery, through the playroom, to get to the rest of the house; and babies are needy and the majority of the things they need are beyond the playroom.
He takes his seat, arranges his wares and dons the proper hat from the collection, The Regent (less distinguished than the Wellington) as he is taking a rather “clerical” position.
Three minutes pass. Nursery door opens.
“You Miss are quite portly, diet pill?” he offers the glass bottle, she stops, looks at him, looks at Freddie, who waves at her and smiles (Freddie’s trademark) “Just 50 cents a pill” he encourages. She humph’s her way past.
It was not unusual for the help to hate Alfred and in turn hate Freddie who quickly lost interest in the current goings on and took to staring out of the window at the river imagining what her mother was doing.
Clumph, clumph, clumph the ankles carrying her back down the hall into the playroom; “You’re hair is very dry perhaps this oil” and the nursery door slams.
Time passes and Alfred does the math. “If I sell this many, than I can restock and employ a secretary” looks at Freddie; silent glare back. Nursery door opens, scramble into position, “I see some skin peeling off just above your lip” playroom door, slam - Alfred freeze. Finger in air, mouth ajar, re-enter the ignorer, resume Alfred; “where the hair is in need of some bleaching” nursery door slam.
“I just want to help” Alfred says to himself in an escalating voice “to save you, from a tired life of misery, ugliness and pain. You can buy your way out of this. I can help. I can save!” The ignorer opens the nursery door just enough to slam it shut again.
Alfred paces thoughtfully back and forth until the only thing left for him to do is to climb up onto the desk and begin to kick his wares against the nursery, as boys do.
“When do you think mother will be back” Freddie interrupts.
“When she’s done” Rose scented face mask careens through the air and bounces onto the ground. Alfred grabs a pair of bone handled scissors and just before he releases them at the nursery door, the ignorer emerges “Chin hair? These small scissors” and she leaves. Alfred freezes, one foot balancing behind him, the other buried under lotions and perfumes, right hand extended offering his product, eyebrows raised and mouth fishlike in mid sentence. Freddie looks to see if he is breathing. He doesn’t appear to be. Some time passes and the ignorer is yet to return, but Alfred doesn’t budge, 5 minutes now. Freddie walks over to the nursery and peeks in. She sees the little brown haired baby in the giant crib and waves at her new sister with mixed feelings. There was such high hopes that the baby would keep their mother around more, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect.
Behind her she felt Alfred struggling to hold his position. What if the ignorer wasn’t coming back? What if no-one came back? And then she heard the footsteps thundering up the hallway and the ignorer returned to relieve Alfred. “can easily get between those chins!” Alfred blurts, the ignorer, mid stride, stops. Freddie backs up assessing the situation; it was also not unheard of for a nanny to beat Alfred. It was certain job loss, but not an impossibility. The ignorer turns slowly and takes a step closer to Alfred. Freddie stares; Alfred goads and the ignorer with a motion like a toad tongue snatches the scissors out of his hand, turns back around and promptly slams the nursery door.
“Did you see that?” Freddie nods “Hey you owe me two dollars!” Alfred chucks foot cream and a razor after her.
“But when do you think she’ll be done, she’s been gone for 2 weeks?”
“24 days total” eye cream hits the handle and splatters. Then a lavender shampoo and a ballerina perfume bottle. Alfred’s internal music begins and he is soon flinging everything from his wagon across the room at the nursery in mad harmony. Freddie turns out of the hurricane of stockings, bobby pins, hair sprays and scented soaps defeated, “I knew you were going to say that”.
The Grandmother Clara’s legacy
24 is Alfred’s favorite number. When he learned to count he would count to 24 before he ate, before he left the house, before he dove into the swimming pool, walked down stairs or turned on a radio. It became intolerable to everyone except for Freddie who was never in a great rush and had learned to accept the time limitation.
"It’s the Clara in him” noted Petra once, “I had thought I beat it out of the family completely. Shame, at least he’s the only one.” And she would take Freddie’s hand and walk past the counting Alfred, 17, 18, 19…
But Petra was wrong, Clara was to make a much more profound return to the family.
**The nameless woman
Everybody thinks they have a story to tell and most of the time its true, just a matter of who’s interested in your story is the real question. The reason I write this memoir is to satisfy my own vanity, as is true of most memoirs. It’s my fear that if I do not correctly pass down the truth that would otherwise die with me, it will be abandoned to the calloused hands of the uninformed, reduced to pulp fiction from nothing more than the vultures view. I cannot allow that to happen. The family would have laughed at me, all of them, basking in lies and slander was their noon time game. I’m the one that cares.
.
I do not have any children. When I was of a child bearing age it was determined that I was barren. My husband, soon after, left me and I gave myself over to charities and art houses, the places where the barren haunt. I would have been forced to leave a legacy if I had children, but the intimate parts of my body chose against that fate. Where I was once prepared to throw open the gates and push my way through the front door; I would now knock, ask for work, serve and quietly study.
Now that I am older I understand that one can leave a legacy to the air and it will settle upon someone, somewhere. So I am now going to dismantle the truth for the curious and unsettled, to the children of the town once overrun with shakers, their bodies and minds riddled with mercury, to the spinsters who held on to hope for too long, to the admirers and lovers left waiting by streetlamps and subways. I am going to share the real story behind the Van Heuss family, the hatters of Danbury, of poor, mad Danbury.
Visiting Meredith
It’s an average thick morning and I’m watching the naked trees fly by as we hurry along the quiet winding road, my mind lingers in the past, always treading backwards to a history I am only now beginning to weave together. I look forward to these trips as I pass the monolithic abandoned Danbury Hat Co. and consume the scorched countryside from the comforts of the estate vehicle. I run my hand gently across the hard leather interior which still holds Petra’s perfume, a dark caustic addictive scent. Momentarily it throws me back years, watching her perform, mesmerized. I then peek in, as I always do, at the store of cigarettes left untouched now for thirteen years. I have always wanted to smoke one, turn my wrist out as she was known to, slowly drag, look off at nothing, tease with the soft white of my skin, display how easily I could disappear, as young women were want to do in this town.
I have found stores of photos of Petra, otherwise known to the world as the raspy voiced singer, Sophia Trousseau, her green gaze staring out across oceans leaving her audience begging to hide in her luggage; but there would never be room for them, and so they would bask in a thin trail of exhaled smoke and her lingering scent, as I am now, 13 years after her death and 15 years after her disappearance.
I remember being in the same room with Petra Van Heuss when I was just 22 at a Still Mansion gathering.
I watch her, the hatter’s beloved daughter. She moves past each one of her guests without addressing. He stands with his back to the room, a broad shouldered cover of a magazine. His hands are long bored of the parties everyone so demandingly expects as they tap the vine like railing overlooking the frog pond. She enters my view from the left; her thin enviable figure transforms as she slips her hand in his arm and leans onto him. He kisses her forehead, lingers. I am staring in my pale blue silk, with the white trim and pink flowered breast. I am not jealous, I am in wonder. Almost instantly she has disappeared, I turn to track her; the pale yellow sash which follows disappears as a man in suspenders twirls a young boy across the dance floor. And I look back to the balcony, in what is less than an instant and he is gone as well. The sinking feeling washes me and I force myself to the balcony only to confirm that I have missed my first opportunity to introduce myself to Vanity Van Heuss, her father.
Our car careens around a turn and I’m thrown back into my present body now, older more prone to dreaming. My lifelong friend, the kind Herbert drives with his brimmed hat cocked slightly to the right and his moustache perfectly groomed, he chews a stick of licorice and gruffly hums a working song, about the town, the legacy from the factory. His father died when he was sixteen, poisoned. When we get to the hospital Herbert will polish the chrome and wait outside for me, he’ll do this for me only out of loyalty, his hatred for Meredith Van Heuss is unparalleled. He is justified. In fact most of the town pretends she doesn’t exist anymore, they would prefer her face on a tombstone, at least then they could afford her some pity. This is the way with towns.
She Holds a Periodical
When The Van Heuss Story spread all the way to London windows were locked and doors remained shut for months. No one would utter a word. If an unfamiliar car approached there was not a room to rent within 50 miles, nor a sip of water to find; people went deaf and dumb, it was an unstated agreement.
“The dead deserve their time in the grave before we go turning them. Everyone should have a chance to rest and in time, in perfect time, they should be woken; as the dead have so many things to say.”
Sophia Trousseau does not exist–
There were wildly exaggerative books written about the Singer Sophia Trousseau. Her image captivated the darker side of generations for decades; Sophia leaning in a green evening gown against a dumpster smoking from a 6 inch Bakelite cigarette holder; Sophia kissing the Hungarian woman’s fencing champion, Rovas Bazsik in Buenos Aires after she stole the world championship from Russia. Or her famous ride on the caboose car of the northeasterner, feet dangling, chin on the railing, martini glass half empty with a bit of a wave and her signature stare. Sophia, daring and adored! The adulterer’s conspirator. Sophia loved to interview, as it leant to her lust for mystery.
Born in Borneo on a ship she lived her first decade as a deck hand in boys clothing. When she could no longer hide her femininity she stowed away with a cargo of teas and silks bound for Rio de Janeiro where she mopped floors at a brothel and learned to sing from the boys in the oriental choir. When she had enough money saved she took the first steamer to NY and fell in with an art crowd, had a wild love affair with a handsome writer who she left for his sister. Her stories were so grand and entertaining that once when on an interview in Chicago she was asked whether they were true or not she grinned and said, “I had a snowman as a child, he melted and I cried for a very long time because I thought he had lied to me, truth was he just melted, it’s what snowmen do”
She Holds a Periodical Still
Sophia, in fact, was not even mentioned when the papers ran the story of the Van Heuss misfortune. Somehow she was a distant relative; a fictional figure. The similarities were dismissed by the flip of a wrist and left unaddressed by the indelible secrecy which was kept about the mansion.
I listen to her voice scratch through my memories as we bump along on the newly paved road to the hospital. Meredith will initially be very pleased that she has a visitor.
I have been referred to as calloused a lot lately because I do not believe that the bail out of anyone is appropriate, including your own child.
I do believe disaster relief to companies which have operating arms that have not been vicariously and greedily plunged into the vat of hydrochloric acid should be given an injection right in the good vein, but they should not be taught that this is common practice, as Lehman humped the proverbial leg of his uncle sam until he was appropriately flicked into the street, sorry. No nut here.
And the endless twitter of the hypersensitive newscasters, who should have been hugged more as babies, continues to tell us about the Martian invasion. We simply can’t let the system crash and burn. Nor should we allow for hurricanes, cyclones or Tsunamis. Well gosh darnit folks (I hear this is the best way to address the American public) systems crash and burn when extremely bad decisions are made and greedy hands get green lights. The system has not failed; the system did exactly what it should have done. If we do not like the results, then we need to rephrase our blame or else it’s socialism kiddies (oh my mistake, it’s socialism already, sans the common folks benefit). I don’t like the results of the bad judgments made by the over privileged and greedy in the financial system” is a fair statement. We don’t want to live in a world with 30% unemployment.
DO NOT misunderstand my statement about the over privileged and greedy in the financial system, that means you and I as well as the bankers, and the brokers and the starter house for the newlyweds in Southern Cali on an edge neighborhood, who just really wanted the house, even though it cost $700,000 and they were pulling a combined $89K. Dumb ass. Do the basic math. You do not deserve a $700K house in that really cool neighborhood because you CAN’T AFFORD IT!
Let’s start calling a pig a pig. We are not a capitalist society, at least mentally we’re not. I deserve to have a car, a cell phone, a house, a computer, jewelry, a nice watch, 6 pairs of shoes, 70 pair of underwear, pre wrapped slices of cheese and my favorite Donny Osmond box set. I do deserve happiness and love and to be free of disease and never to be lonely and to have great fortune and that is the American way AND if you do not give it to me I am going to sue you senseless. And when my mom is old and sick I deserve to have someone else deal with that because I am busy buying furniture at IKEA. And if you run a company and it fails, that was the risk you took. And if you run an interdependent system with the type of alerts that went out a year ago about the impending volcanic eruption and you wait for the public to put an umbrella over your head you should expect the lava will more than likely burn through the fabric, because it’s lava and well, an umbrella is an umbrella.
It’s not that I want there to be a gross reduction in jobs, shit I’ll be one of the first to go and then I’ll be writing poor me blogs and where will that get me, a good finger work out?
I have yet to hear anyone in the corporate arena even mention the fact that we consume beyond our means and beyond our share. If you cannot afford to have a child, don’t. If you cannot afford a house, then don’t buy one. If you cannot afford a car, then borrow your roommates.
And one last thing; vote for the vice president, because both candidates are not going to last through their first term, that’s my take.
And Sarah Palin = poop stain.
“Someone must give birth” she watches the geese soil the pond beyond the rhododendron. She is, of course, referring to money, or the lack thereof and her husband, god bless his heart and his lovely secretary.
She spits on her own floor and takes a slow drag off a stale cigarette in hopes of cancer, while she flips her 2nd pill in the other hand waiting for just the right moment to dramatically enhance her mood and therefore her life as it were.
And she ashes upon her spit encouraging the damage to her husbands prize hand sewn Arabian yadayada rug, camel stink design crap he always brought home from his business trips.
“Birth is a delicate word” he watches her shift in what’s left of her clothes; even her slightest movements are crass.
“Clearly you’ve never seen one”
“True, I’m 22, I’ve never knocked anyone up”
“Are you planning on it?”
“Not while I’m with you”
“You aren’t with me. You’re fucking me, and I thank you for that, but don’t think that it makes us a pair, we’re symbiotic at best.”
“The nature of a symbiotic relationship is often long term”
“I’m thrilled”
And she ashes again on his carpet; “Birth is like opening up a can which, once opened one cannot close”
“Pandora’s box”
“Oh, so quick and sharp on your analogies, are you studying for your GRE’s?”
“no”
“you should”
“Why? You’ll support me”
“I may, I may not, you are going to grow up you know”
“So will you”
“No, I have enough money to remain this age right up until the grave” And she moves across the living room to open the drawer in the study desk and check the time. She closes the drawer slowly, slinking back to the window to watch the filthy geese. “He’ll be home soon”
“I know”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“No”
“Why not”
“He doesn’t need to know”
“Of course he needs to know”
“Why”
“He’s your father”
..... until next time.
- Mood:
pissed off
A howl is heard as a manufactured mommy laments above the lifeless body of her glandular riddled hyperactive, on medication for sensitivity and attention disorders 7 year old. His nikes untied and scuffed, 'he had kicked', someone mentions, 'he put up a good fight'.
And this is just the fire, 'someone must pay'!
And not someone, someones!
And another voice in anger agrees. And soon there is a swarm, and through their girth and velocity the small voice of the pigeon feeder is not hear. Her weathered hands shifting seeds over the ground in the same methodical way she's been doing for 50 years, before the seats were plastic, when the ground was gravel. She doesn't look up, she looks down knowing that nobody will listen, because nobody ever has. She says
"There is a sign, at the entrance to the playground. It says "play at your own risk" it was there long before I was here, and I suppose it'll be here long after I'm gone. People used to read it and then one day you just stopped, a pity actually. I quite liked the notion"
and she shuffles along humming and waiting for her favorite pigeon to come for dinner, but he doesn't show, and she wanders home, perhaps tomorrow, and if not, perhaps the next.
**************
New England Clam Chowder is Boston and if you are reading this from somewhere like Hilltown or Mobile and you don't know the difference between New England Clam Chowder and Manhatten, it's the color (some other things as well, like tomoatos and milk) but mostly it's the color.
***************
fashion tip: Cigars are a perfect accoutrement for a lady.
- I may have lost all relevance as a person, but I will keep moving along, lest I stop and let the mealy worms in.
(or)..I am for sale sir.
I simply had the inclination today
to stop.
And not move.
Blinking and banal.
I would then suddenly, in quick cuts
and subliminal hand motions,
fling my computer into his office.
Not caring if it were his office
or anothers.
Any office would do.
Or hallway.
Or Wall.
My lip is dried and cracked but because
I do not move it does not bleed.
And then no-one will see how rich I am,
in iron.
And I have opened my mouth on the other
side of my head and started screaming.
A dying bird of prey, trapped. Vicious.
And I have not moved.
I am barely breathing.
Hoping that if it slows down just so.
It will stop completely.
And if I pass out, I should wish to dream.
But if my wish, as most wishes do, does
not materialize then I will be completely
satisfied to merely have ended this.
Another flash of motion, there is a pencil
standing at attention, buried into my right hand,
another office supply gone unappreciated.
I do not bleed just yet.
And I wait for the poisoning.
It isn't every day you understand.
I don't always behave so unfavorably.
But today, as I've previously mentioned;
I had the inclination to stop.
And so I've tried.
And although I have failed.
I took great pride in having slowed to such a pace
as to blend into the wall behind me, a modern
work of corporate art.
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