My dad's best friend died this week. He's important to me as an incomparable character from my childhood, a huge personality full of kindness, quirkiness and charm.
He looked a lot like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies. 6'7, 400 lbs, unique personality all day. He had a long black ZZ Top beard and a heavily balding head, and dressed in the James Dean inspired 90s biker dude uniform: black shirt, hard-living Levi's and big biker boots. Rode bikes, collected classic vehicles, along with a lot of other stuff, anthropological specimens, antiques, guns, anything historic, you name it.
I always loved that he looked scary as hell to normies, despite being one of the nicest people anyone could ever hope to meet. I used to laugh at how shocked neighbor kids and friends were when they met my dad for the first time - they really would have lost it seeing Don.
My dad would take me to the house Don shared with his wife and kids on Saturday nights. I was the oldest child at the house on those nights, so I'd sit at the big picnic style table in their dining room with the guys even though I was still only single-digit age and probably very not wanted there. No one told me to get, though. They'd talk and drink and share bawdy jokes I didn't understand while I stacked rifle bullets on the table and tried to make them stand together like houses of cards. Eventually I would be sent off.
Don would always shake my hand every time I was leaving and say, "Miss B---, it was nice knowin' ya." The first time I remember him doing it, I looked at my dad, like, why are we never going to see him again? They both just laughed.
They would take me dove hunting with them, from a super young age. Don's favorite story was the time I thought I had gone...dumb? because I couldn't hear myself talk. After a minute, I started screaming, "I can't talk!!!" My dad walked over and pulled the huge ear protection off my head and it was fixed. The first time I heard that story, it was Don who told it and my dad seemed to be triggered like, "Oh yeah, that did happen!" Now he tells the story every few times I see him, but only when other people are around. I also have a vague memory of finding a broken glass bottle, shattered into tiny pieces. The glass was clear and had been washed clean by many rains, and glittered dazzlingly in the sunlight. I crouched to run my hands over the glitter, and was slapped away just in time by someone.
All the guys had nicknames. Big Don, Slow (Slowie), The Doctor, Chaz, Mr. Danger. When Don's young daughter would look out the tall window by the door when we knocked early on a Saturday night, we'd hear her scream, "It's The Doctor!! And Britt." And Don would be there behind her when the door opened, "Hello Doctor B---! Hello Miss B!" His daughter is now a grown woman I barely recognize, other than she's tall as hell too.
They would give me one Dr. Pepper (in a frosty mug always) and my night was set. When he came to our house, which was significantly less gracious under the administration of my stepmom, he always bore gifts. Around Easter, he'd show up with a tiny basket of chocolate eggs that also contained a plastic egg full of quarters - big treasure for a small kid then.
He was a big guy, often overweight due to his appetites which required lots of Guinness and big 4" porterhouse steaks. His wife had a lot of family in Britain and he went back to visit them with her, which resulted in lots of pics of him stooping into tiny old British pubs where the doorway came to his chest. He was like the myth of ancient European giants come to life.
He was from the south, very religious and very superstitious, was terrified of ghosts, which he called "haints" without irony. One time, I started exploring a big intact turtle shell he had brought home from some day out shooting in the desert. Once I picked it up, I realized it still stank terribly from the bits of flesh that he had missed deep inside the shell. Weird core memory.
This is the Don that I knew. I love the grease on his fingers in this photo. He looks so happy here. I think he genuinely was. I used to sit in that garage and plink on a hundred year old piano he rescued from St. Francis in the 90s, playing Dixie because it was easy by ear and I had heard it in movies, and was personally obsessed with the 19th century. I played it one night when he was in earshot and he said, "Yer playin' my favorite song!" I can hear his voice in my mind still. And no, he wasn't a confederate at all. Just a fan of pop music from the 19th century. I think I could still play that now given some historic set of keys.
He was full of grace and mercy and loved my dad's mom, visiting her on his own steam in the few hospital stays that happened before her death. He would bring her McDonald's filets o' fish on Fridays, in honor of her Catholicness. He never told us he was visiting her, we always learned it from her after the fact. Brought his wife and daughter to sit with her for hours and talk about tv, and her memories. Now that I have another old grandmother that no one visits but my mom and I, I appreciate it even more. People are forgetful about the still living elder generations. Not me, but lesser people.
My parents and aunt and uncle went to his funeral the other day, a big family showing. I'm sorry I couldn't be there, even though it would only have been to hear them testify and quibble about their dad, dead since the 60s. They can never keep their shit together in company or public, always have to grind their axes in the wrong places.
I know that's my fate when I meet them this Thanksgiving weekend. Listening to that shit. I still eat it up because I need first person accounts of everything. I'll try to redirect them to stories of Don, which is all I want to hear right now.
Thinking about regionalisms and local beliefs. For me, it's the way Arizonans live compared to everyone else. But when I say that, what are the markers, and who am I talking about? Not the hundreds of thousands of new people who live there, in denial of where they are. Am I still qualified to say that? Outsiders, grrr.
I realized recently that my childhood memories don't include the heat. It was too commonplace to remember. My first real memory that includes the heat is from the day Phoenix hit 122 degrees in 1990. But the memory is just not being allowed to play outside on a really hot day like many others.
There's surprisingly little place-based identity in Arizona, despite its history and how hard it is to live there, how unique the circumstances. The transitory nature of Phoenix, the fact that it's experienced constant immigration from other places for decades seems to have washed it out, made a distinctive local culture impossible. I'd love to know what it felt like to live there in the 50s, 60s, 70s. A unique small city culture long since lost, with nothing but old timers and photos to remember it. Even my parents are a little young for it, and don't exhibit the level of identity you'd think, because it was never really cultivated by locals, and I guess because they just don't realize life is different anywhere else. And their parents didn't act that way either, even though they saw it during the last of the time that created the mythos that draws people there still.
Phoenix in the 40s and 50s, the orchards and dirt roads, the old windbreaking eucalyptus trees lining the farms and the ancient Hohokam water ditches that became the SRP canals because the indigenous designs translated well to modern needs. Just like the 19th century wide street planning downtown translated well to contemporary times. Nobody talks about that even though it uniquely defines the place and the daily experience of locals, at least those who participate in the central city. Now some of our old family homes have become unimaginable multi-million dollar properties in the most desirable parts of central Phoenix. Anyone with a little ambition could get there back then. A Central Ave bridle path palace was still on the menu for a small business owner with a bit of luck and some hard work in the 50s. Now we can only drive by and look.
Despite the lack of articulated identity, I had something like it for Arizona and loved it there as a kid; I felt like we were next gen romantic pioneers and adventurers, because we were forever driving up to Prescott, Flagstaff, Jerome and Clarkdale to see our family and friends, people all over that we knew. Back in the 60s and 70s, my dad's family and friends were always on road trips, going shooting, dove hunting, drinking in small towns that still felt wild. They were driving before that, too; my dad was almost born in Bagdad, Arizona on a road trip but my grandma somehow held it off til they got back to a Phoenix hospital. I have candid round cornered snaps of my dad driving his truck on lonely country roads in the 70s, elbow on the door and fingers lazily grasping the top of the open window frame. Looking at the mountains and dreaming of the old west. It's not hard to do when you're on those roads.
Those distant Arizona places were still a bit crusty and authentic when I was taken there as a kid, thank god. Unselfconscious places with kooks everywhere in the rural areas. The experience of picking through decaying abandoned 19th century buildings and graveyards is a major cornerstone to my childhood and identity. Roadside antique shops that felt more like museums. Back then, the Citizens Cemetery in Prescott was overgrown, weedy and ignored, and we had to climb a short fence to get in from a neighboring lot. It's since been cleaned up. Among my dad's bros, all old west fanatics, I heard stories of murder and vigilante justice like they were aspirational, and we visited cowboy graves and iconic locations hours off the main road, on private property that one of our party had received permission to visit. I sometimes despaired of ever getting home on those trips, ever getting to a bathroom with plumbing or finding a glass of cold water, or any water. Different time. I was surrounded by middle aged guys obsessed with gunfighting pioneer days, and thought that was usual for summer vacation and weekends. Other kids were at Disneyland.
I don't know what I would do if I saw it all again now, all those places. I know so much of it is changed, over. I don't want to know. Are the random secret places still there? I have to guess so. We spent so many hours driving and I remember staring out at mountains and tall plateaus and canyons during all seasons and times of day and thinking, there can't be anything like this anywhere else. I didn't really know the difference then, but it's true.
And now, it's getting crazy hot like Phoenix in unexpected places, cities all over the country, and definitely Austin. When I moved here, locals loved to tell me, "You picked wrong if you were trying to get away from heat!" and I was like, oh ok, I see that you think that. When it tipped to about 102, the same locals would panic, talking about droughts and low lake levels. It was on the news. I wanted to laugh, not realizing how unusual it was here. Not to say 102 wasn't hot, because that's also at 70% humidity some days. It's miserable and that kind of heat and humidity makes you want to crawl on your knees if you have to walk down the street when you're not used to it. But it was fleeting before. A couple of weeks each summer, if that.
Now we've got 110 in less than 10 years, and similar temps for months instead of weeks. The heat last summer was an all time record. My home temperature readings hit 111 the day they said 109 would break records, and I didn't check every day. An old Arizona friend lives here now too and she said, "Didn't I move away from this?" It's been hot before, hot every year, but this is not usual. Then a random spate of unseasonably low humidity and weeks of high winds drove wildfire risks up to emergency levels so that we were afraid all the time, and told to be ready to evacuate with no notice. The city is a tinderbox and unadapted for fire with all the dry grasses and cedars.
But I feel unmotivated to consider leaving, even though it's clear that the climate will become more dangerous and unenjoyable with each passing year, at a pace that is detectable to humans in short durations of time, which it is not supposed to be.
Because I like it here, and I'm already here. Shrug emoji. It's my place now, a place I feel protective of, sometimes or often. I underwent a rapid familiarization with the region because of my job. As soon as I got here, I was embedded within a group of native Texans and longtime residents who were biologists, environmentalists, scientists, historians and just old timers. There is a very strong love and sense of place, a feeling of history and belonging among long time people, and while I found it confusing at first, it rubs off. I didn't see the romance of the place myself, but I had to admit that lots of smart people clearly did. To me it looked like scrub desert in some places, scraggly southern green in others, and the western vibe was nothing new to me. A lot of it is just family tradition, or indoctrination, but it was also a different place not that long ago, and you can still get pieces of that in certain places and people. I regret not moving here sooner.
A song that means something different in the place.
I hate that plane ride between Dallas and Austin, as Waylon describes. "Auw-stin" he says. I've taken it more than you'd think. Bumpy as hell every damn time, something about the air between here and there, and I get scared no matter how many times I make the trip. I'm not a good flyer anymore. If it gets real bad, I have to stop talking, just flatten my hand on the seat ahead of me and put my head down.
But the generation between meeting, mocking and becoming Texas is short because it's so enveloping if you want to know about the place where you live. Y'all sounds like an affectation from far away, but when you're here, especially among those people I mentioned, it catches fast. It's just normal. Once I cringed, and then it just was. And now I don't hear it or care how it sounds when I say it. I only think about it when we have someone in town from away, and then I self-consciously wonder if it all sounds so typical, and wonder if I should run interference as a fellow outsider. I never do it, just think about it. But I love the regionalisms. I love the way people from West Texas say "Texz" and the way native Houstonians say "You-ston" and learning that Houston is its own country. You start to learn the accents, though they are so numerous. The original central Texas/Austin accent is rare, but very cute to me. Kind of country/kind of drawly. Dudn't and wudn't would sound like lowbrow country talk anywhere else, but here, it's a bit iconic and kind of a fancy badge. Can't fake that, yall.
As I mentioned, the intro to the context of this place would have taken many years to make, if I ever would have otherwise. As soon as I got here, I was taken on travels to special places, most private and secret, with all their little historic backstories. Big flat grazing lands mere miles from hidden cliffside pools serviced by pristine creeks and underground springs where certain aquatic life live that aren't found anywhere else in the world. The last of the unplowed, intact prairies are here to the north and south, and coastal prairies out east that don't look like anything I've ever seen, like a franken-landscape by the ocean, with cacti, succulents, lichens and other species all living together in the most unlikely way. Galveston is unlike any place anywhere, so strange and southern coastal gothic. Or stories about an 1870s West Texas housewife unknowingly saving the last wild bison in the American Southwest following the widespread slaughter of that animal, because she couldn't stand to hear orphaned calves crying in the distance when she went out on her porch one morning. She took it upon herself to find and lead those surviving calves to safety on her property, away from the slaughter, tall tales that are real. Legacy ranches you first heard about on old tv shows that actually exist and are still working. And bad stories too, naturally, too many to stand in one lifetime, the reasons why bison had to be saved at all when they had been so numerous before the vulgar endless slaughter committed by all those intrepid manifest destiny scumbag mother fuckers, etc. Don't start me.
Modern places, unchanged places, encroachment, mountain lions and black bears, critically endangered ocelot kittens who will break your heart on sight. Fortunately or unfortunately, you'll never see the ocelots personally. No one does, because they can only survive by living in the loneliest far quadrants of rarely traversed private property, their fates guided by the fortunes of south Texas rancheros and conservation landowners like the org I work for. I wonder what people think when they move here blind and all they see is the surface stuff and learn the problems, and wonder what the hell they have done. They think everything outside of Austin is Texas Chainsaw Massacre klan country. I would too, if I were them. It's not true. Except for the times when it is. Cringe emoji!
Something I also think about is the inevitable fact that I have changed since moving, if not the world (but definitely the world too). Not just because of the place but because of the experience and age. I'm tired of hearing casual, ignorant shit talk about Texas, a place the size of 4 states with almost 30 million people and innumerable cultures, many still intact for some reason. You think you know what that is? I barely do, and I study it in good faith. It's impossible to understand or take on as a whole; it's too big in multiple ways. People think they can cheaply dismiss a gigantic swath of people based on its present politics, never knowing what it was like before, how different and unspoiled it once was ecologically, and how many people still care about that. My feeling is that a place is never marked permanently by the views of the people on it, until they damage it, which unfortunately happens all the time, is happening here and everywhere. The state as it is politically organized now means little to me and pisses me off in ways that are indescribable, requiring a different post, but you can only dismiss it if you have no idea and like to be dumb.
But I'm sure there is a little fish that only lives in Arizona creeks too. I have imagined going back and caring about it on this same level, with the attention and knowledge of the person I am now. A much more manageable set of cares, geographically. It would be so easy, and I would love to know as much about the wild lands of my home state as I know about Texas. It would be more gratifying to work on that smaller scale, I think, but is there a bit of passivity in a state comparably full of public land? Arizona isn't taking ANY care to steward its fragile resources. Is there an element of endless ambition in Texas conservation, where the land is all private and threatened constantly? Where the wins matter so much more, earn so much more toward ecological goals? Just wondering out loud, all states have too many assholes in charge.
You can only pay attention to so much at one time. And one of the biggest takeaways of my adulthood is realizing that wild lands look pretty similar across the world. Parts of Texas look like Arizona. Parts of Montana look like Texas. Parts of Africa, South America, Europe look like here. Does it matter where you are? It's all the same.
Witnessing the necessary business of end of life for people I love has been changing.
At one time, my nightmare was getting a call notifying me that someone had died. Especially after moving away. Something about leaving the vicinity made me feel like they were more in danger.
Once we all aged another decade, it became apparent to me for the first time that death isn't the worst thing that can happen to people. After a certain unspoken mile post, it's better to go. I still fear the phone call, though.
It's hard to organize thoughts around the decline and eventual death of someone close. Feels like a familiar subject, but each occasion is new no matter how prepared you may feel by prior experiences.
The same universal questions always come. However childish they may feel, no matter how unanswered they've gone in the past. When it's someone you know, someone you're intimately tied to, all you can ask is where they're going when they die. It's impossible to imagine that their lives just end like a shut door. How can this personality, this set of experiences and opinions just stop?
My grandma is just hanging around, waiting. She's not in pain, and she's in her right mind, but I know from experience that the longer she spends in the bed, the more lucidity we'll lose. But she still remembers, still participates in conversations and still has an edge, still has her humor.
It took me a minute to get there, about her. We moved her to a home and I thought it was over. But my mom brings me there and gives me a chair and tells Gram about something new and Gram responds like the same person she always was, and I suddenly become more comfortable. Oh, she's still here, I re-remember each time. I don't have to yell when I talk, I don't have to explain who people are. I'm the one who's being weird. I'm the one who's scared, not her.
I had all of her furniture shipped to me when we had to move her out of her house and close it down, and later she said, amused, "Send me a picture of your house with all my old shit in it." It made me cringe a little, but she's very irreverent now. Gave up her role of authority and control of her life, her home of 40 years, with so much grace. She trusts my mother with her care in a way that I think is the real lesson in all of this. She is able to release without fear, and that is a freedom, concession, right, privilege? that not everyone has. Would anyone take care of you like that? It's a fair question.
My grandma on my dad's side of the family peaced out the minute she couldn't have her life the way she wanted, and that was exactly what she would have wanted. The last few years included some medical troubles, too many doctors and at the end an oxygen tank, but that was so brief. She was gone so fast, not everyone had time to get to the hospital. I was there, it was the only time I've ever seen someone die in real time and while it left a permanent dent on me, I'm glad I was there.
My grandfather died this summer. Aged 96, another wild one who died the moment he couldn't take care of himself alone. When I took that call, I was out battling my sprinkler box at 7:30 AM on a Monday morning. I could only drop my head and sigh, it still felt a little surprising. One month prior, he had been sitting on his 80s exercise bike watching westerns on TV, and then he was gone. It's sad to lose someone so intriguing and mysterious, we hardly knew him compared to my grandmas, but I'm happy that it happened in the way that it did, because I still know it's what he wanted. Minimal discomfort, no dehumanization.
Going through all my grandma's saved stuff has me thinking about her whole life. Her as a girl in the 50s, all Frankie Avalon and long wool skirts. I have a funny poem she wrote back then, and a sweet pin spelling "Marilyn" in gold wire meant to be attached to the ubiquitous sweater, a special gift from mom and dad in 1952. She doesn't seem to remember those days fondly, which is hard for me to understand even though I know that life lived in person is different. She was never one to paint the past with sentimentality just because it was past. It doesn't seem like it was that bad either though - she just doesn't sentimentalize anything that isn't about us, kids and grandkids, or funny things that happened over time, friends.
Gram moved to Phoenix as a young mother, and her parents soon followed. It's still shocking to me that anyone would willingly live in a place that hot and unforgiving, dry, scorched, relentless. I guess I'm the only one who doesn't get it, doesn't have the fortitude. My dad says I'm a fool not to come back and I look around and think, moi?
And when I do go, I drive the streets and see dozens of memories in the same ten mile area, like a small town. That's where Grammy shopped, where I went to pre-school, that's where my boyfriend worked, that's where my parents met, that's where my whole life happened. Do I have to be there personally to endorse it now? It'll always be there, probably. If it gets bulldozed, nothing I can do. How's that for accepting change? A new tack for me.
Gram must have had a scare or dream at some point in recent years, because she suddenly started telling me stories from her childhood during Covid. Normally, she rarely tells stories unless they're anecdotes that include one of us, to make a point. I don't usually ask for tales because she's so austere and testy and could shut it down. "Oh I don't remember!" Like it was something dumb. The recent stories aren't developed, often lack a point, because they seem to be things she's only just recently thought about.
"They used to say I was going to marry my cousin Dickie. He lived across the street. We were the same age. They always said, 'Marilyn can marry Dickie.' I guess it was cute then, but doesn't it sound bad now?" Yes, Gram. They didn't think you could do better than Dickie across the street? She was a babe, and smart. Smart babes don't have to marry cousins.
She looked like Shirley MacLaine back then, a real cutie pie type. Slender, well dressed, good hair, beestung lips, big wide eyes. Sorry Dickie, but no need to keep it in the family, RIP Dickie btw. All of her stories from life are these incomplete sentences: about getting married at 18: "I didn't want to be an old maid!" About her dad: "He was the guy down the hall." But she took good care of her mother until she died at 89. Little freaky how long these people live.
Grandparents are so weird. Some are strangers and some are your other parents. My grandmothers on both sides were just more mothers, to the point that I'm surprised when I learn that other people never knew their grandmothers. I never thought about that. I find myself vaguely judging those who had no relationships with their old generations, like how did you have personal context for the world that was before you? I know I can't really understand how much they contributed to my development as a person, but I know I'd be so much more deficient without it. Intangibles.
My grandma was always into metaphysics and eastern religious philosophy. We didn't know what it was at the time, just that it wasn't usual in our world. I was in the middle of grade school when my mom gave up on a united front and agreed with me, laughingly, "Gram's kind of weird, right?" I was so relieved, thinking only I noticed. Nevertheless, my Gram casually tried to retrain my obstinately western views as a child and I osmosed some of her beliefs at a young age, young enough that you accept anything you hear from an authority. She says I've lived many lives before; did she? Do I imagine this is more credible because it's the view of someone I know, who raised me? If anyone else said it, I'd roll my eyes.
She simplified her life in her political phase, which came after she retired. Every time I went to the house, Air America blasted from multiple radios scattered throughout the rooms while she puttered around. She closely followed and supported Cindy Sheehan's camp at the Bush ranch in Texas. It was the time of Katrina and we had so many concerns to share together. My political awareness had grown around the same time, due to my confusion at the Bush win in 2000 and my rage at his second election in 2004.
When Bush won the second time, I was done with apolitical living. It felt wrong and I was angry, really politically angry for the first time. I was even more angry to see people I knew, people my age, buying in to the pro-war narrative. It was the first time I appreciated my grandma's strong convictions for what they were. She was furious, intense, and talked politics often. It was always on her mind, and she was volunteering and engaging in many ways. Suddenly, we related on a whole other level. She was so engaged that I got my news from her half the time because she was so plugged into the daily developments.
She and I started sitting with heads together at family parties and dinners, more than usual. We had always been close, but this connection was different from anything we had ever had before. We engaged as two equals conversationally for the first time in my nascent adult life, but that context was limited to politics. She still ribbed and jived me over my 20-something activities. My mom said we were rude to talk about about it so much. Any time she complained about my grandma, I was with her until she got to the overt politics, when I'd say, one flagging finger raised, "Gotta disagree with you there, because she's right about..." Which would trigger a fight between us at which point she would fall back in her chair, palms raised, so tired of us.
Gram's political phase stuck and she's been like that ever since. Up to the last couple of months, every time I called her, she'd ask me "Did you see..." (XYZ political outrage). Hell yes, I'd say, or hell no tell me. My mom would wander off, perpetually at Gram's house, saying, "Ok you two talk while I clean up, cause I don't want to hear it." She's the same way in her retirement home, not up to date on anything but still holding strong. It's too bad to tell her now. And after Trump was elected, my mom suddenly felt unable to stay out of it herself. Now she's telling me about the news, since I have checked into a need to know state only.
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On election night in 2012, I was sitting crosslegged in Gram's living room, eating pizza on her black marble 1960s coffee table, just us two like so many prior nights together in that space. She served us Trader Joe's red in those tiny Italian wine glasses, and we watched the returns with braced confidence. When it was called for Obama early in the night, we looked at each other and nodded with pleasure, This is a message to the right, and they will never win again...
In Austin in November 2016, I went for drinks after work on election night with some visiting global execs, cool longtime environmental types who made good into the c-suite, and we tentatively shared our mutual confidence. It was a rare occasion for their visit and it felt auspicious: "Just a matter of time," we all agreed, before high-fiving and dispersing to our respective watch parties. My boyfriend came over with dinner and champagne. It was a work night, but we were celebrating the end of a tense and ugly campaign. Hours later, when he eventually slunk away to bed after a shocking loss, I went outside, sat on the ground and called my grandma in tears.
She answered her landline at that late hour because she was still up, too. It heartened me to hear her dejected voice at that first moment, a bit of authenticity, but she quickly gathered herself and told me that we would get through this, and would be ok. She always felt obliged to be an official adult, like a boss at a corporation, sharing the company line. I guess she was right, technically. I was glad to have her at that moment, was conscious of it at the time. My mother has always been my first call during dramatic or uncertain times, but this was a night when only Gram would do. It's hard for me to think of a future where that's not an option, but we're already there. I know this should tie up nicely with my saying I'm glad for all we had, and I am, but I'm still pissed off that it's ending.
I recently tried to get her to talk about her early life and her parents again. I always want more because she's always been so god damn reticent. She doesn't want to talk about it now and I let it go, quietly disappointed when she says she just doesn't think about the past, which must be true. She just won't let us have them, those typical grandma moments, and never would. I remember in childhood laughing with my mom about how my grandma on my dad's side was Mrs. Baking Cookies while my Gram had an empty refrigerator because she was often out with her hip friends at Phoenix Magazine parties at night, or checking out new restaurants.
She was raised in small town Montana, where it seemed like it was snowy all the time. Unlike other people I know from that area, she never talked about the cold. Never complained about it, never told tall tales about it, even to us desert people. Her parents ran a local restaurant and she often had to get herself up for school as a child in that freezing relentless place because her mother was doing first shift while her father slept after closing the restaurant, which was open late. She always went to school and she always tried even when none of her adults were watching. I know she resented that, and once mentioned the criticism of a lifelong girlhood friend, who said my grandma's parents were never around when they should have been, because they were at work. That was my first insight into the fact that my Gram's young life wasn't as charming as we always assumed. But I also think it was a class thing, her family didn't have the financial freedom to do cute stuff that required parent participation during the work day. Her parents were both 1 gen from immigrants and were doing so much better than their parents ever had. So they thought they were doing good despite their struggles.
Nevertheless, it was hard for me to understand that her hyper-maternal mother wasn't there for her all the time when she was growing up, because her mother was always there for me as a kid, as a scaffolding to life itself, more than 50 years later. My Grammy; my mother's grandmother, always there for us both.
But my Gram always treated herself well and prioritized herself in a way that was bold and thoughtful, but not selfish. She made her home beautiful and peaceful and interesting for herself, but in a way that benefited us, too. Her own company was reason enough, but it was safe and pretty and a little spiritual for me too. Back then it was bright airy clean spaces, a smell of lavender, esoteric books stacked on side tables with quiet indoor wind chimes in an air conditioner breeze, and a cat snoozing in a sunny window. And she always took careful care of me, talking to me about my dad and whether he was being good to me (she loved him and called him pet names but wanted to know for sure), buying me school clothes when my frazzled mom might have forgotten to get me new stuff to wear if I hadn't grown out of my old stuff yet.
My mom took a girlhood friend to see her recently. Someone who was always around in grade school. This friend took the opportunity to tell Gram all of the things you say when someone you care for is at the end of life, like it was her last day. That she always admired her, wished she had been her own mother in those critical childhood days when the friend had an absentee mother and a cruel stepmother. My mom was quietly aghast, unaware of her friend's feelings. She sat in silence watching an outsider effortlessly pour affection on the person whose mortality she's barely faced herself. She's processing it in real time, and realizing that all of her criticisms and pains look so different to someone outside of the family, who had a lot less.
A lot of things like that are happening right now and we all act like it's normal and like we have all the time in the world to process it, because we don't know how to act. Don't know how to be, without her active guidance. Having to learn it on our own, a group of only two instead of three, used to be four. Our coven of women.
Every time I see my grandma now, I tell her I love her and she says the same. I can tell that I'm in some amorphous grandchild space where everything I say is amusing or needs work (per her corrections) but is generally neutral and positive. Meanwhile, she and my mom spar over almost everything. They still go at it in the same old way and I keep telling my mom to fall back, but she can't, she cannot, and I have to respect it even though I disagree with it.
Gram always sought me out as a kid, even or especially when I tried to push her off. Calling my mom and making her make me talk to her before bed when I was a child and fuming about something, or when she knew I was home alone as a teen, calling just to talk on endless summer afternoons, making me pause my discman. We would talk on the phone and look at the same Magic Eye pages together at the same time, at her mandate, one of us hollering when we finally saw it.
But none of that matters now, the flailing and all of it. It'll all be long gone soon and I'll even miss this time when she's so alone and weak even with our care. All I want to know is where is she going? Where is she now, really? What was it all for? The answers never come, and they never will.
Talking about places between destinations. Customs, ways of talk and instruments that your early ancestors gave up in their lifetimes are alive here. Songs and dances and foods long dead exist here without much context or explanation. Mixed memories and cultures exist among sentimental old people, annoyed children and interested outsiders. Things our great-great grandparents did a hundred years ago out of necessity are forcibly pantomimed by mutinous fourteen year-olds today, without their knowing why.
You can brew coffee in an early 19th century German cabin with a grinder that still works the best. You can try to make sense of a cemetery hidden in the woods, low stones like stumbling blocks with bits of fading cursive script in the shattered pieces. Chimes hanging in the trees. You can learn to play a violin and call it a fiddle when you get good. You can cut wood and winnow things down. You can splash in clear fresh water and identify a cardinal's call in the winter. Men in cowboy hats and women in formal attire, with napkins and propriety, custom, identity, age and tenure, with no irony. Museums full of stuffed animals long since culled from the field, who never should have been observed. Long tracts of generational green growth and lonely medians filled with wildflowers, indian blankets and sunflowers in late summer. Lazy rivers winding beside railroad tracks. Empty roads buzzing with insects in the sunshine. Paved but covered with dirt.
Deep suntans and craggy faces, people wiping sweat from hat bands, and accents. Dropped t's and g's, ways of talk more endangered than the warblers. People swimming topless in nameless creeks right next to the road, barns and cattle and sometimes horses. Columns and regalia across the street from roadhouses, no signs, no comments. Differing lifestyles blending together, ancient homes with satellite dishes, electric fences and chunks of stolen limestone marking every drive. Leaning heritage oaks with crackling branches and Spanish moss, nailed bits of iron rotting away, noting something. Try to import modernity. It'll probably work. They always say it won't, but it does. You can make homage to the parts that you cherish, and hate the things you want to.
Maybe it's time we got back. You'll never understand it until you're in it, invited or not.
People I know are starting to die. I sense this is going to become a trend. Based on what I've seen among my family, I'm approaching "that age".
My dad's been claiming for years that all of his friends are dying. They aren't all dying, but a lot have. Seems to be a mixture of old age, motorcycles and cancer. And some of the oldtime friends who aren't dead yet seem like they already kinda are. My favorites among his old contacts seem gone before their days. Hard for me to accept.
But now it's my friends who are dying!
I found out someone I used to know died during the first flush of Covid in another fucked up, tragic situation. Another bike accident, though he 1000% should never have been on one or frankly ever driven any vehicle in his life, he was so chaotic. He was forever distracted and so much more confident than reason would indicate. I remember him roaring around Phoenix with an 8-track on the floor of what had to be an early 70s blue Cutlass but I can't quite remember. We picked a friend up in his car one night and she shrieked, "IS THIS A MOVIE?" He just grinned into the dark like a vampire had a baby with Johnny Depp, snarling, "Get in!" Everything was hilarious back then. Even to him. The tape in his 8-track was Blue Oyster Cult and he wasn't even playacting at the dream of 70s America like so many kids do, because he wasn't a kid. It was just the only track he had on hand that he liked. He was 20 years older than us.
I hadn't realized how much older he was until one night when his wallet fell open on the bar at Bikini. I glanced down and boggled, decided to say nothing. I remember joking with friends later, making fun of the situation. He was so old, I said, that JFK was still alive when he was born. The Beatles were still together. History burns from a 20-something: unimaginable, but everything was a larf then. I felt like he should have more in common with my parents, but he didn't, besides being mad at me. He had lived multiple lives already, different existences in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Vegas. But remember - the 80s and 90s versions of those cities. Touring bands, heroin, women and jobs in bars - that had been his life. I couldn't believe the photos he showed me from those times, because he looked about 35 for most of his late life. What a bizarre, strange person; why the hell would he have ended up in Phoenix, of all places? And how the hell did I meet him?
Surprised it took me so long to find out that he died, but that happens when you move or grow up, you just never talk to certain people again. And I hadn't talked to him in so long, on purpose. We had dated for a few moments once, after which he harassed me regularly for around two years, which embittered me, made me angry and dismissive. Calling, texting all the time, once or twice even showing up at my house in the middle of the night. I didn't appreciate the theatrical gestures and never let him in, wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn't a bad person, just wild and unpredictable in ways that I didn't find amusing, even at that age. Originally, he behaved in a retreating and quiet way, and the limited time we spent together was because I could never figure out which person was the real one. Damn it, Jack.
With the distance I have now, I think the quieter version was the real person, but I felt too harassed by his other side to care. He didn't have boundaries with women, and as an attractive man, he wasn't accustomed to rebuffs. It spooked me and I had no idea how to handle it then other than avoidance and ghosting, the execution of which would get ruined when I'd show up somewhere and he'd be there. For such a big city, Phoenix is an annoyingly small town in many ways. Still feels that way. I still manage to run into people I don't want to see almost ten years later.
I used to remember him with a resentful shiver, but now that he's dead, I feel reflective and a little sad. Maybe even more than sad, I feel shocked. His personality, his ego, the way that he carried himself seemed eternal. It's hard for me to understand that someone like that could actually die. I began to wonder if I was harder on him than I needed to be. Did I understand enough to judge? I just had no patience for his insult-flirtations and low-level negging, even at that inexperienced age. There was a different person in there that he couldn't, or wouldn't be all the time, but I couldn't care about that at the time. I'm sorry that he had to be alone in a hospital when he died because he got into a grievous accident during a pandemic. Only he would die at a time like that, needless and solitary, but I think he might be one of few well-equipped to handle such a thing given the life he lived, and the person he was.
I'm fortunate that none of my close friends have died. Yet. It's a strange thing. I don't know how I'll react, but I would guess "badly". There are certain people I know whose deaths will impact me heavily and I just hope we have another couple of decades before that becomes anything I need to think about. And I suspect the world as we know it may end before many of us have to deal with it.
And there are the others who just fall away somehow or get lost to the churn of life. Usually it's right, eventually, when you think about it. I tend to be rejecting when a relationship has gone off; once in a while I'm wrong about it, but that's increasingly rare these days. And it's something that's difficult to even think about until one of them eventually dies too. Mortality makes people change, but it hasn't changed my feelings about this yet. I guess I'll revisit it in another decade.
I always loved this song by The Searchers until I found a version by throwaway Rod Stewart ripoff Smokie, which was oddly satisfying.
I love it enough that I hate to share it for fear that others won't appreciate the awkward hairspray 70s pop, because I was once someone who wouldn't either.
This song would have enraged me once. Not only because the version by the Searchers is better, but because everything about Smokie would have pissed me off. His face, his hair, he's like a caricature of a 70s pop star. But now I love it! And why? Who knows, but he gives it his everything, and succeeds. He knows how to sing it, and so does his band.
The barrier is that I was historically disgusted by men my mom would have been attracted to in the 70s. It's a form of rebellion, an onslaught I'm still taking against. In the 90s, she was buying ELO tapes for funsies to listen to on our home stereo, while I lurked in the dark corners of the house like GOD, MOM. Knowing I'd love them later was too much for my childish soul to bear at the time.
We could fast-forward past the part where my mom bought Black Sabbath - Paranoid on cassette in the mid-90s, because it reminded her of her old friends and teen moments, but I won't. I took that tape. I also took her Bowie: The Singles double album on tape for myself and I'm low-level mad today realizing that that's how I found both bands. Through my mom: the least cool person alive!
But the Sabbath and Bowie tapes both changed my life. I went crazy for both of them, walking to school listening to War Pigs and Boys Keep Swinging. That was when I stopped actively seeking contemporary music. I didn't need it anymore. Yanno, "because of all my pride!"
After actually looking into the song, I see it was written by Sonny Bono in the early 60s. Cher's version was fine. It was covered by a diverse group of greats, from Jackie DeShannon, decent but unremarkable, to Petula Clark in French to my favorite guy, Gene Clark! All of their versions were just ok. I look forward to finding the random French ye-ye versions as I have time. Those covers are a whole other post because there are so many greats.
A later cover that did actually deserve mention was the Ramones, 1977. I'll put that here because you can tell they actually loved the song. Among the above, it best captures the sound and the vibe of the song.
But this is the best version (1964) of all time, by far:
And then Tom Petty covered it with Stevie Nicks in '81. It's cool that they did it, and I would have died to have seen it in person, but it ain't gonna change your life.
I don't understand why the internet shows me so much of the wooniverse, even though I know I'm only getting the tip of the iceberg here. I mean, I do know why: because people I know actively engage in this, and their algorithms influence mine, or however the dastardly social media works.
I have my theories about why this preoccupation is growing so quickly among the Gen Z set, or even among people my own age, but whatever the reason, it's gone too far. I'm so tired of people creating their own set of bugaboos and then grappling with them publicly using fake solutions, as though they're doing something.
It's called conspirituality, the seeming unlikely convergence of spiritual/woo/yoga/holistic culture with antivax beliefs that belong more in Q-territory than anywhere else. On one hand, it seems interesting that that yogini crowd proved so susceptible to toxic, idiotic beliefs, but...isthat interesting? It was cute when they were were sageing their houses and drinking tea made from dandelions found in their yards, but of course it couldn't stop there. Now they're refusing to vaccinate their children against anything and using essential oils to deter diseases. People I know are doing this. Just hearing about it is detrimental to my life.
I've always been semi-familiar with this stuff because of my grandmothers' search for meaning in the 70s and 80s. They would attend lectures about everything from Buddhism to Feng Shui and ESP. They followed various gurus, passively, and their bookshelves were packed with yellowing, dusty guides to harnessing your inner spirit, telling the future, embracing the divine within. And, of course, there was some woo Christian-lite in there too, because that's how they got in. Most of their interests were on the deeper side, though - they were more into "exploring the meaning of being" than telling the future or gaining the upper hand on other people through supernatural means.
I'd probably accuse them of toxic positivity today, one buzz phrase that I do embrace. I could never complain or tantrum without being asked to investigate myself, or without being challenged to find something sympathetic about the person who had made me mad. I would be admonished to not say "hate," to imagine "love," and to send good thoughts to anyone who upset me. Obviously this made me totally crazy, because my instincts have always tended towards vengeance or at least unfettered expression of my natural (hateful) feelings. Send love to my mean 5th grade teacher? I don't think so, Grammy.
My grandma still has a room full of kooky books, and my mom is always harping on her to get rid of them. "Not so fast," I say, from 1,000 miles away. "Don't get rid of anything old before I see it first (including Gram haha)." Those dusty old books called things like "Edgar Cayce Speaks," and tomes about past lives are valuable now! As much as I hate the inheritors of this shit, the vintage books are, yanno, cool, and certainly fun to peruse. This whack shit is my heritage and those books are mine. They still got rid of them, though. :(
Growing up adjacent to that environment had made me pretty complacent with it all. I didn't believe, but it didn't bother me. I remember watching some documentary with a friend that mentioned this bullshit guru named Braco who supposedly heals people by standing in front of rooms full of people and gazing spiritually at them. I remembered with a start: "I've seen him. LIVE!" I had forgotten all about it. "WHAAT?" Yeah, I've been healed by Braco (pronounced Brrrat-so), it's no big deal. My Gram asked me to go with her, so I did. I went in totally blind, had not bothered to check into this "phenomenon" beforehand. So he came out, stood on a stage and stared at the room in a knowing and sympathetic way for 5 minutes (long time in this context), then quietly existed stage left. People cried! $40 a head. Gram knew enough to elbow me at lunch afterwards and ask slyly, "So, are you healed or...?" Yep, all set. She's not a full crazy, just interested in it on the side. By the way, people think Braco murdered his mentor to take his following. Probably not the people who go see him, though.
This new generation of woo is too much to take, though. The antivax Earth mother raising filthy longhaired forest children on diets of bone broth and bitter wild strawberries or whatever. Get out of here with that self-aggrandizing navel-gazing I-apparently-have-nothing-better-to-do bullshit. Please leave the grid! The arrogance of some fool with a trust fund who thinks her own body can heal cancer by itself is just, the way it pisses me off is almost indescribable, even though I will try. This person thinks sage can cure disease, and that positive thinking and a root tea is all you need. Positive thinking along with some crystals probably mined by slaves from the darkest corners of South America. There's something so out of touch and oddly snide and mindless about it all, to reject western medicine after benefiting from it for your entire life, including the crucial years in which you were vaccinated against the diseases that brought prior versions of the world to its knees. And then to be evangelical about shitting on it. I've been exposed to a lot of people like this, and summarizing them is like trying to pull individual pieces of broken furniture out of a tornado, it's all just so wildly bad that you barely know where to start.
And maybe it's the familiarity with the originating philosophies that makes me hate them so much. I expected them to stay in the lane where I first found them. I don't get as angry at the country dwelling, Jesus-loving, hunting, monster truck Trump-supporting element because I've rarely even known anyone like that, or not intimately. But the know-nothing arrogant earth witch/love priest who thinks there's an oil for every problem and who constantly tries to bestow their wisdom upon others despite rarely living by their own beliefs just burns me up.
MY problem is that I love wacky witchy stuff here and there, when it's done right. Obviously I accept that western medicine doesn't know everything and, less seriously, that straight white conservative American culture is lame as hell! I just wish we didn't have to jump every single shark. Especially as someone who formerly felt like they could be into weird shit without having to make a disclaimer that they're not patently insane.
In the less questioning bud of youth, I watched all those movies made in the 60s about witchcraft, which, according to some 1960s publications, was taking over America. After my Grammy died (I don't expect one to follow the baby names, but differentiating between Grammy and Gram, two different grandmas), I went through trunks in her storage room, and found an issue of LOOK with Anton LaVey on the cover, fingers splayed around a yellowed human skull. I couldn't believe she had kept it all those years, but it was in a lot of old stuff that I know she never looked at. There were papers from the day Kennedy was shot, from the moon landing, from other events. I wish I could have asked her about this issue of LOOK, because it is pretty fucking odd that she would have kept such a thing. But I must realistically assume there was probably something else in the magazine that she was actually interested in keeping. Or was there!
Look how young he is tho
She died when I was in my teens, at a time when I was most interested in the Church of Satan, because it flew in the face of everything I had ever been made to respect, and I wasn't aware of anything better that was as transgressing but maybe less old-mannish. I bought all of LaVey's books, which is why it didn't go much farther. They were the expected amount of shocking, but not exactly inspiring for a person like me. In reality, the books proved to be underwhelming and disappointing. I had already absorbed the whole Ragnar Redbeard thing already, and there was nothing else of substance to LaVey beyond that philosophy. If you don't know what RR said, then look it up yourself, and don't blame me if it's offensive now. I haven't revisited it since 1999.
But, I still liked the kicky dark vibes. Who wouldn't? Psychedelic swinging 60s Satanism, with knives and jeweled goblets and go go dancers in body paint. Pet lions, black walls, red carpet, big jeweled rings, snakes with glinting ruby eyes. I wanted it to be cool and it was, but passingly because it was all built on one person who was just good at cultivating a vibe and cast of characters. And I had beyond missed it all anyway. It's always influenced my home decor, long before this post but still.
And, of course, when you dig deeper into Anton's life, there's a lot of buzzkillery about abuse of romantic partners, children and animals. Yes, I'm aware that he was a complete asshole and yes, it did ruin it and completely killed any further interest, but did I visit the Black House when I visited San Francisco in the extra-early aughts? Of course I did! It's gone now, razed as late as possible after the family held out against condos for years. It was still there when we visited though, partially hidden behind razor wire. However crappy he was, it was history, and the house should have been preserved for the iconic and ironic American history that was in it. It was a shocking piece of pop culture once, and perhaps even a bit of a antisocial revolution.
Anyway, I'll take good old time mid 20th century witchcraft and stone amulets and smoky rituals long before I'll take wildflower tea and the belief that rarely bathing steels your body against disease. I'd rather imagine the blood of a baby born on Walpurgisnacht is more powerful than yoga and green juice, but maybe that's just a matter of taste. One's no more real than the other, but one is definitely cooler. Anyway, If you love Alan Alda, which you should, watch Mephisto Waltz. It's not perfect, but the imagery is on point, as is Alan's stupid villain character.
In conclusion, draw your own conclusions. But generally, just stop it.
I've finally decided to give in and engage in my interest in Buffalo China. Who says we don't have fun!
But imagine my surprise and irritation when I came to find out how generally undocumented this quintessential American brand is. Like what the fuck, I can't even find a reliable resource for all of the pattern names. Not even close!
If you wanted to collect pottery by other early-mid American brands (McCoy, Shawnee, Homer Laughlin), you'd be overwhelmed with exhaustive publications and message boards full of people fighting about real vs. repro or fake, and the various types of stamps used to identify the pieces over the years.
I'm starting to realize that Buffalo China's problem is it's too common to care about for most, with some exceptions. They started production around 1908, and all of those early century patterns through the 1920s are predictably rare, documented and expensive. They're also ugly. Back then, they were called Buffalo Pottery, and after WWI, they became one of the most prolific modern pottery distributors in the world. In addition to their retail output, they made dishes for the the armed forces before pivoting to creating custom china for hotels, restaurants and steamships in the 1920s. That's where I get interested.
My favorite Buffalo China is from the 1930s-1960s because it's heavy, thick utilitarian ware with unexpected, interesting patterns - sometimes. It's common enough that it's not expensive and I just want one piece of every pattern that I like.
Being an adult is everything I thought it would be.
The problem is, I don't know what my selection is due to the lack of documentation. I learn pattern names and histories from eBay or Etsy, from the sellers who bother to know what they're selling. I've learned enough to bitterly lament not purchasing the cheap set of multifleure that I saw on eBay a couple of years ago. There isn't a single piece of this weird midcentury psychedelic pastel pattern on the internet right now, which has made it all the more precious to me. I just want one piece. Actually, I'd take a few of that one. And a few of the masonic "Eastern Star" pieces while I'm at it, but those are around. Don't get me started on Rebekah Lodge flags. Ever wanted to blow a bunch of money on a rotten piece of silk? Me too.
I don't mind how common the Buffalo pieces are. I just want #basic things that regular people used as long as I find them attractive too. They're regular enough to find everywhere, and affordable if you're cool paying offensively varying prices for a single dinner plate, which I am.
I'm not a collector, never have been. It's not in me. After decades of acquiring various antiques and vintage pieces of varying quality and importance, I don't want to be burdened by any more miscellaneous stuff unless it's special and in small quantity. Pieces need to be interesting and usable. Items are meant to be used. What else is all this for? The animals eat off of broken expensive china and sometimes, so do I.
This hasn't prevented me from being burdened by inheriting the collections of others. And by "inheriting," I mean taking so they don't end up in the trash. That's how I ended up with my grandmother's collection of ugly 70s and 80s rocking horse figurines. They've lived in a box for 20 years, and although I think they're generally unsightly, they are mine now and I have to keep them until I die, so perhaps I'll put them on a shelf instead of asking my cousins every two years, "Would you like me to send you some horses?" Why is the answer always no?
I want a couple of pieces of shitty Corelle now. Collections (er I said I have none!) don't always have to be precious. I see my grandma's pattern, Butterfly Gold, every so often in thrifts. Seems like it came out in 1970 and was discontinued in 1981, so I don't know when she got it, but I think it was on the earlier side. The pattern looks like Spaghettios to me, served up to kids in the teacups. I snapped a pic of it and sent it to my cousin recently. Power punch to the childhood. Pic not available but:
No problem adding cheap china to the collection, that's the best part of it all.
I might even add one piece of Callaway to my hoard, just for funsies, because that was my mom's pattern in the 90s. Hardly rare and practically still in production, it came about in 1995 and ended in 2015. A nod to the old Irish heritage, Sean-o Parsons style. Kerry and Derry and Monaghan counties representing in a common piece of shitty American china.
Andrei Codrescu wrote a book called The Blood Countess in the 90s. Pretty sure I found it in a remainder pile at Barnes & Noble, attracted by the spooky cover. It was a piece of fiction that claimed to weave fact into its narrative, blurring the lines between reality and story. The whole point of the book was to make those borders confusing and permeable, and for him to try to deal with being Hungarian, but of course I chose to treat it as nonfiction because I loved it. I think I even cited it in a high school presentation I wrote about her, and never got busted because Arizona.
The book added juice to the story of Elizabeth Bathory, the evil 16th century Hungarian bitch countess who (allegedly!) tortured her maids for fun before she drained their bodies of blood for her bath. In the story, her equally perverse husband gifted her a witchy maid from foreign lands, Darvulia, who shared all of her strange cures, potions and beliefs with Elizabeth (er, Erzsebet as she was called then). One of those cures was that to bathe in virgin girl blood would reverse the aging process, something the vain Countess was obsessed with.
In the accepted history, the local townspeople started to protest that their daughters never returned from the castle, so Elizabeth was put on trial by the horrified magistrates and found guilty, then imprisoned for life. She wasn't put to death in the usual European public BDSM display because of her high status; the other titled people wouldn't want to create a precedent.
She lived another 40 years in incarceration before dying an ignominious death in a dank cell.
Except she apparently didn't do it. Or not like we think. As historians have combed through the law records of the time, there isn't a recorded incident of her crimes. Obviously there wouldn't be perfect documentation, but it's considered suspect that there's none when she allegedly killed hundreds of people, while there was plenty of documentation of other crimes by others from the day.
As we look back on the story with modern eyes, an emerging narrative is that this kind of treatment and conspiracy was typical when it came to women in power. Think of the shocking and unfounded rumors that still cling to Catherine the Great of Russia to present day. No horse! (By the way, the show "The Great" is a hilarious and delightfully ahistorical show about Catherine available on Hulu now. One of the Fanning children plays Catherine and she is as etherial and pretty as you'd expect a little 16th c Polish princess to be.) When Elizabeth's status as controller of her castle and desirable lands, as the sole inheriting child of her family, is considered in the context of the time, you realize how incentivized the local relatives and powers that be may have been to jailing her and taking her property.
But that's guessing! There's no way to prove her innocent today, but it is interesting to think about now. There's no reason to think she wouldn't have been as brutal toward her servants as any Countess of the time was, but stories like Codrescu's only help to perpetuate the myths of spinning iron-spiked cages, torture parties and a practice of using a pair of massive scissors to slap young girls in the face. What mind comes up with these punishments? I guess any mind that's read history and knows what people were doing to their enemies then. It was a troubled time. All times were troubled times.
I'd love to hear what Codrescu would think with this new information. I can't find any evidence that he's revisited the topic in the last 20 years. Not that I hold it against him. But what if she was innocent? A then middle-aged woman being saddled with the most hysterical and extreme accusations imaginable, branded as a sick and perverted sadist, and taken away to live in the dark for the rest of her life. Except they wouldn't have called her sadist, as de Sade wasn't even born for a hundred years. Did he read about her as a young man? Those French elites loved a nasty story. Speaking of historical pieces that play with fact, watch Quills! As much as I want to edit the bad writing in that 2010 post, I won't. Seems like cheating (myself, out of seeing what a badly-written wang I was).
We know now that she was put on trial and imprisoned in her early 30s, by the way. 30 was a much harder age in 1590 than it is now, but come on y'all. Labeled as a disgusting old witch thirsting after the flowing blood of pretty young things, hoping to turn herself into a sexy baby nymphet because she was a wretched 32? I'm offended for her.
For reasons totally unrelated to my own life, I've becoming increasingly aware of Woman's (capital W Woman the Legion) inability to accept aging. I know exactly why it happens and I am not surprised by the outcomes it creates, but I am forever shocked by the ease with which humans acquire dysmorphia. It's not just for trans kids and eating disorders!
I spent half a morning drinking coffee in bed and looking at pictures of Madonna the other weekend, shocked by how swollen and distorted her face has become. Is looking like a drag version of yourself and inciting uncanny valley really better than having a few lines on your face? Madonna is a naturally beautiful person and you know she would have aged gracefully had she allowed herself to.
I take no issue with her continued presentation of herself as a sex cat. Madge can keep wearing pleather bodysuits forever, but I wish she knew that her frozen Priscilla Presley face contrasts less than she thinks with her body, which is becoming taughtly old ladyish in subtle ways that wouldn't be an issue if she wasn't trying to hide it. See: Angelina Jolie. Something about working out too much and becoming ropey. It even affects younger women when they do too much.
I watched The Unforgivable with Sandra Bullock recently. I don't recommend it (there is an unseen twist, though), but all I could focus on were her Real Housewives slightly overfilled duck lips. I'm supposed to believe this woman just got out of a 20 year prison stint? They have that shit in the joint? Her case isn't even extreme, but it's still immediately recognizable and made her unbelievable as her character. It's all I could see.
And there are a million other examples, far more extreme than the two I mention. Even Tori Amos has greatly changed her face to the point that it instantly stands out to me, but I do enjoy that she has somehow become more elfin than ever before. Was that intentional, or just the result of inflating her cheeks, forehead and chin (filler, filler everywhere)? We'll never know. But she has pointy ears and crazy red hair still and I guess that's something. Last person I expected, though. Look at her in 1992. No one expected that person to stay forever, but come on. I also prefer when she let her hair be a wild frazzled mess. As long as we're "normalizing" everything, normalize banshee hair.
Speaking of Tori, check out videos of her recording songs from Boys for Pele in ancient Anglo churches in 1994 (you could start at 10:30 if you care about harpsichord). She was literally high AF and it shows, and it may help to explain why that album was so brain-melting and etherial. Tori talking about the ancient grounds that exist below churches, oh, fucking a. Get me a harpsichord at once. Also, google her Cielo Drive story with Trent Reznor.
I think the toxic trends will change eventually, especially with the great wokening happening in western culture. Talk of beauty standards is still localized and kind of quiet, but all sands are shifting and that'll come up eventually. Ok, last last thing I'll say about Tori is remember all of the edgy photoshoots she took for Pele, like suckling a pig on a lonely splintered cabin porch? Ugh, she was cool and weird.
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