For. a. reason.

Week, made.

Demons despise the sound of shaking paper.

Was aiming for bohemian, but can't help feeling I just drew a bunch of dirty hippies on the road to either a remote Fourth of July celebration or their next Boss concert. I'm guessing it's the red stripes. Next time less fire(works) and more brimstone.

Folklore is rife with this one. Devil agrees to build a bridge for some dude but demands possession of the first soul to cross. The dude plays along, but at the last minute frustrates all plans by sending across an animal--usually a dog or a rooster. The devil is left with a canine soul and the dog is left (presumably) howling eternal rage at doublecrossing masters from a frosty nest in the ninth circle. No one comes out of this smelling sweet.

My own small golden scepter.

I love my Hyatt's Saturdays for many reasons. For the high holy ceilings and churchmouse atmosphere. For the dirty curbs and completely urban experience. And, above all, for the terrifying store manager. Grizzled and sharpeyed in the manner of English wolfhounds and high school physics teachers, he passes judgement on customers and offers help but rarely. The Little Sniffing Tyrant, I call him. We enjoy a relationship consisting of the barest acknowlegdgement that I find to be utterly satisfying.

This all ended a few weekends ago when, immediately after I'd entered, he leapt from his perch and dragged me to face another customer--demanding didn't we look exactly alike? She and I glowered mutual disagreement before I fled and took refuge in Graphites. But it wasn't enough. He followed me. Wasn't it uncanny, he asked, to have two such similar looking girls enter at once? I muttered a quick "Doppelgangers abound", hoping he'd catch the offended tone, but it served only to goad. He exclaimed that he'd just read a piece on doppelgangers and launched us into a (largely one-sided) discussion of turn of the century literature. He jabbed his fingers up at me and twittered of magic and religion and secret societies. He sang of Williams, and MacDonald, and Tolkien which of course made me love him once more. And then he was off, disappearing between the watercolors. And back again with, of all things, a reading list, and then pushing me out the door.

Don't think that I didn't love every moment. That I didn't imagine this to be my initiation into some cult of wild-eyed romantics. The beginning of gatherings in dark corners with tea stained tablecloths and inky hands and quiet mutterings about mythopoesis. The start of my tenure as Jess, High Preistess of the Theurgists.

But, christ. My erasers are all nubs and my brushes are shedding more horsehair than paint at this point, and I'm only five pages into Williams' The Place of the Lion. And there's clearly no way I can go back for supplies before I've finished what was assigned.

Goes to eleven.

this is the most recent heartbreaker. Silly. But I've been careless lately and am a sucker for a good cross-country drive.

All the rage in Prague.

"What do you think of the lipstick? It's called Peaches and Dream."
"Disturbingly lifelike."
"And the bats? Too much?"
"Not at all. Artful and plump."

Onwards.

Glad to find the troops fresh and ready and waggling their tongues at little things like weather.

It's you and me, moth.

We're a pair without a land. Power-less. We've been keeping pace with those dispossesed crows that've been making the rounds, post-storm. Poking among the broken branches and moving on to the next ill-fitting treetop.

I'm a sad creature of habit. I like my Baking Soda Mentadent and my mugs. My mindless but meaningful ticks. We came home briefly this afternoon and my first act was to sit in front of the cold screen. It took more than a few minutes for me to realize that I'd been clicking on an unresponsive mouse, and a few guilty seconds to admit that it was oddly, reflexively blissful.

Maybe a little shake-up was in order.

Good eats.

Oh, yes.

This is me. This is crow.

Worst. Brat.

Oktoberfest. Munich 1983, I think.

Also today's the anniversary of Ludwig I's (not The Mad's) wedding which kicked off the original. I'll be baking pumpkin bread for no definable reason.

Fee Fie Fo Fum.

The dog's being stalked.
I'd left the main door open and locked the glass to let him look out. He likes looking out and I like him diverted and neither of us likes the other. So he cozied up with his sunshine and I went about making tea.

Mid-steep, I heard it. The scree of nails on glass. Then the smack of flesh on wood and a voice like a broken drum lowered in a chant: "Dooo-leeee. Doooooo-leee." I crept out of the kitchen and into the hiding spot reserved for surveillance and saw her. Big-Boned Blond Neighbor. She'd taken this opportunity to cross over the street and into the realm of insanity.

She stood in the doorway with her calves bulging and her nostrils flaring and her titan braid sticking out like spear, and the sunlight shot through the spaces between her cigar sized fingers and made patterns on the all-purpose carpeting. She swayed and the dog swayed back. She pounded and implored and he whined and threw himself against the panes. I pressed myself against the wall and breathed hard. She rang the bell. Pounded again. Tried the handle and cooed and the dog went crazy from the whistles and her barbeque stench. I sweat coldly and whispered a desperate fuck. And the world creaked.

But the trusty door held! Big-Boned gave a short snarl and leapt over the mums and into the brush. And I crawled out and gathered in the puppy and fed him cheese and in time will work myself up to getting the mail.

Pokey.

R.I.P.

William "Clyde" Llywelyn

1828-1872

Unknown

Speedy.

R.I.P.

Amelia "Pinky" Lott

1848-1872

Laudanum Overdose

Bashful.

R.I.P.

Arthur "Inky" Penderson

1850-1872

Consumption

Shadow.

R.I.P.
Seamus "Blinky" McCallister

1811-1872

Dropsy

Look so pretty...

October was dutifully (w)rung in with lots of red wine, two loaves of irish soda bread, and a trek home in a downpour set to a warbled version of "It's a long, long way to Ba Sing Se."

If you're not walking in the door at three a.m. with shoes full of rainwater you're doing something wrong.