Feeling Nostalgic

Photo by me
Song by Sia (click picture)

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He Who Avoids The Light

Song from The Prestige (click picture)

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A Letter

A Letter

I have tried a dozen ways
to say those things
and have failed; how the moon
with its bruises
climbs branch over branch
through the empty tree;
how the cool November dusk,
like a wind, has blown
these old grey houses up
against the darkness;
and what these things
have come to mean to me
without you. I raked the yard
this morning, and it rained
this afternoon. Tonight,
along the shiny street,
the bags of leaves--
wet-shouldered
but warm in their skins--
are huddled together, close
so close to life.


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Poem by Ted Kooser

Dark & Starry

Song by Lulu Rouge (click picture)

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Coal For Your Stocking

Rat Jelly

See the rat in the jelly
steaming dirty hair
frozen, bring it out on a glass tray
split the pie four ways and eat
I took great care cooking this treat for you
and tho it looks good
and tho it smells of Westinghouse still
and tastes of exotic fish or
maybe the expensive arse of a cow
I want you to know it's a rat
steaming dirty hair and still alive

(caught him last Sunday
thinking of the fridge, thinking of you.)

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Photo by Junker Jane
Poem by Michael Ondaatje

Play. Repeat.

Love this song and video.

Song by Röyksopp (click picture)

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Traveling In The Night Car

Photo by marcandrelariviere
Song by Kavinsky (click picture)

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Tiny Poem

Somewhere a pumpkin fell
breaking itself
into the shape of a face.

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Photo by do not bend
Poem by me

It's Not Christmas Without You

I have a mixed cd I put together some years ago titled A Strange Little Christmas. None of the songs on it are Christmas songs (save one), but they have become very much a part of the holiday tradition in our house. It just isn't Christmas til this cd starts playing.

This is one of the songs (click picture).

Photographer unknown
Song by Stina Nordenstam

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Oh, yea...and here's another one.

Prose Poem

Vengeance

The sheer sensuousness of returning an offense. The release. Then no place to go but back into ourselves where suddenly we're cool and numb. That node of anger, that galvanizer, gone. No excuse left to delay living our lives. Maybe only love is as personal. The singularity, the intense focus. Once, though, in existentialism's first grasp, I was content to believe that in time the wicked would hang themselves. Nothing we need do to them. I'd forgotten how hurt won't let philosophy be king, that hurt wears its own crown, wants to rid itself of itself. But so much vengeance is a quiet affair. Just vengeance and me, the cause elsewhere, perhaps in another city, enjoying himself, untroubled by my trouble with him. I've taken him to sleep with me where he's met his proper death. No mercy in that dark realm. And no satisfaction when I woke.

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Art by Alfred Kubin
Poem by Stephen Dunn

Dark Ambient Christmas

I find this song comforting yet strangely disturbing.


Photo by Splotchy
Song by Ksine (click photo)

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A Little Halloween With Your Christmas

Made a batch of these little guys for our tree a few years ago.

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O Lovelies

Pumpkinrot continues to feed my addiction. Got my birthday presents one day early.

Thanks, love.

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The Walk Of A Dead Man

That's some sexy shit.


Song by Massive Attack (click picture)

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What You Can Lose And Will Lose

“Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. The nerves and the brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away, the curve of the back and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable.” 


-Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping 
(One of my favorite novels)
Photographer Raphael Fagundes
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Where Are We Going?

Photographer unknown
Song by Explosions in the Sky (click picture)
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We Traveled So Very Far

Photographer unknown
Song by Stars of the Lid (click picture)

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We Have Always Lived In This Castle

We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.


Shirley Jackson
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Photographer shellygrrl

October Is All I Want

The original Ballantine cover art, and the illustrations inside:

Homecoming

Skeleton

The Cistern

The Dwarf

The Man Upstairs

The Scythe

The Wind

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He Has A Way With Me

Song by Blossom Dearie - Remix (click picture)

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Watchers

The art of Francesco Balsamo

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Mercury

I'm a big Kathleen Edwards fan, and her album Failer is near and dear to my heart.

My favorite song (click picture)

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Photo by me (Polaroid Spectra with Impossible Project film)

Notice

Notice

The monster's through 
taking orders.
He means it,
by god.
Act II, scene III and
he won't be there.
The girl will just 
have to scream without him,
break her own neck,
tear off and eat
her own arm, for a change.

Maybe he'll get a job
at a convenience store,
work nights,
sleep late.
He can be the one to say, 
"Have a nice day,"
smile and wave at kids,
face bills.

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So Sad 'n Pretty

Photographer unknown
Song by Gillian Welch (click picture)

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Drifting In Space

Cover of Form Magazine 1969
Song by Trentemoller (click picture)

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Only Lovers Left Alive

I admit, I'm really not keen on vampires...

...but I could totally get into this movie.



Only Lovers Left Alive trailer (click picture)
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Miss Havisham's Table

Playing with our new camera.

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Before Dawn

Photographer unknown
Song by Martin Nonstatic (click picture)

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The Wrong House

The Wrong House

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house,
It has big steps and a great big hall;
But it hasn't got a garden,
A garden,
A garden,
It isn't like a house at all.

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house,
It has a big garden and great high wall;
But it hasn't got a may-tree,
A may-tree,
A may-tree,
It isn't like a house at all.

I went into a house, and it wasn't a house -
Slow white petals from the may-tree fall;
But it hasn't got a blackbird,
A blackbird,
A blackbird,
It isn't like a house at all.

I went into a house, and I thought it was a house,
I could hear from the may-tree the blackbird call…
But nobody listened to it,
Nobody
Liked it,
Nobody wanted it at all.


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Photo by me
Poem by A. A. Milne

Girly Things Make Me Happy

I have a bit of an obsession (addiction) with the vintage full slip + sweater + long socks combo. I own a ridiculous amount of all three and would buy more in a heartbeat. I have loads of my Mama's slips from the 70s - by far my favorite era for clothing - and if I go into a thrift store I always make a beeline for those strange lovelies. If I had my druthers, it'd pretty much be all I'd wear.

Fuck real clothes.

A great Etsy shop for vintage slips
and
The best sock site EVER


Song by Koop (click picture)
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Stash

Expired Polaroid 600 film from the 2010 Pumpkinrot Tinies: B is for Bretchen photoshoot.

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Excerpt : The Last Scarecrow

It started in the year of the crow infestation, the black beasts picking the crops clean of every budding dime and nickel. Three scarecrows made of sacrificed shirts, work-worn jeans and mildewed hay were erected across the fields - hopeful figures against the great dark growing tide. The sun was lost behind the feathered wingspans, and the crops began to wither and drop, long rows of corn staggering to earth like old men.

The creatures did not eat the poison grain set out for them, and a shotgun blast became ammo wasted as they seemed to turn deaf ears toward the sky. The farmer looked out at the black ocean from his upstairs bedroom window and then to the three still figures on the horizon. He lowered his head and there it lingered for quite some time.

He took to making scarecrows night and day, and in a month he had a dozen spread out across the acreage.

The crows continued to eat but at about that time a certain madness set in, and the rows became littered with blind, dying birds. They had taken to pecking out the eyes of their brothers, and their screeches of anger and cries for mercy rolled across the fields. Black feathers fell as they tangled  midair in a murderous rage, tumbling to earth scratching and clawing and dying. In two weeks' time they were either dead or had flown off, singing a strange and mysterious song as they went.

That had been 40 years ago.


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Photo by me (Polaroid Spectra)
Excerpt from my short story The Last Scarecrow

Let's Just Go, Shall We?

Photographer kelly_rae
Song by Tango With Lions

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You're Dreaming It

Photo by me
Song by Jeff Grace (click picture)

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Wouldn't You Love To Love Her?

I watch American Horror Story. Of course I do; it's twisted, mesmerizing, delicious and full of hidden psychological razors - I admire that. So having an old friend emerge from an episode was a warm and pleasant surprise - Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon.

I was  3 years old when the song came out. I don't know when I became aware of it, but it was a song that played often in our house during my childhood. I remember my Mama, with her long brown hair that went all the way down to the tops of her thighs, singing the song as it played on the turn table. Strange faux gray wood paneling in our dining room, a wall of plants and the hum of the plant light behind her as she swung her hips from side to side with her eyes closed. She was beautiful.

Later the song always showed up at the oddest of times, times when being reminded of home, and centeredness and self were in tall order....Rhiannon would roll in from a passing car, from the jukebox in the corner (yes, I grew up around those), over head in a critical care waiting room, from the "classic" block on VH1 playing in the background.

So when it poured from my TV into my livingroom the other night I couldn't help but smile. It was as if a lifelong girlfriend had come bounding through the door to throw her arms around me and kiss my face all over.

And how right and wonderful it was the other day as Rot and I drove in the early hours with our coffees that she was on my iPod, had been there for years. He was sweet and let me hit repeat as the world began to wake and the fog slowly burned off around us.


Photo by me (Polaroid 600)
Song by Fleetwood Mac (click picture)

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Tired Places

In The Corners of Fields

Something is calling to me
from the corners of fields,
where the leftover fence wire
suns its loose coils, and stones
thrown out of the furrow
sleep in warm litters;
where the gray faces
of old No Hunting signs
mutter into the wind,
and dry horse tanks
spout fountains of sunflowers;
where a moth
flutters in from the pasture,
harried by sparrows, 
and alights on a post,
so sure of its life
that it peacefully opens its wings.

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Poem by Ted Kooser
Photo by me ( Polaroid Joycam)

Why Are You Not At Rest?

Song by Drop Goblin (click picture)

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Oblivion

Untitled 

Maybe one morning,  walking in air
of dry glass, I'll turn and see the miracle occur--
nothingness at my shoulder, the void
behind me--with a drunkard's terror.

Then, as on a screen, the usual illusion:
hills houses trees will suddenly reassemble,
but too late, and I'll quietly go my way,
with my secret, among men who don't look back.



Photographer unknown
Poem by Eugenio Montale

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She's Got Your Number

And it's almost up.


Artist Felicien Rops
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Nearly There

Photo by me (Polaroid Spectra)
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Tree Ghost At Dusk

A shot from several years ago.

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