Life in the Empire
Bo's Request (an Art Thread)
Where is home?
Moved twelve times in the last 16 years. The transient in transit. Pierce Transit runs through it. Before I came here I was in Rush Limbaugh’s home town before I was surrounded by corn fed Norwegian bred Lutherans singing praise in perfect four part harmony to that Home on the Plain before I’m taken Home – Praise Jesus. I grew up in Iowa, Little Town on the Prairie an island afloat in the ocean of corn. Lived in SoCal, in the Desert where golf and plastic surgery reigns, might have the grit to stay in rainy Tacoma, but, I always say I’m from San Francisco - though I rarely visit anymore.
Home, where is home?
Home is where you are. Correction, home is where you and the two cats are.
What is home? That safe place. That place with love. I love that old car, it always brought me home. The ’75 Westphalia could be home. Or rather, the place that used to be home. Too old, too unreliable to be trusted anymore. Baling wire and duct tape. Just like the U-Haul I drive to the next place, hoping for home.
Searching for home. Migrants with heavy furniture. U-haul. Our orange travois with wheels keeps getting bigger. Full of stuff. Heavy Stuff. Stuff that anchors us. To a home of nostalgia. Anchors to a home that never really existed. That place. This is the place! Well bully for you Brigham Young. Bring ‘em young. Not young anymore, with more stuff each move to stuff in the moving van and every move leaves behind anchors that are mourned in passing.
A house burns down and the anchors are cremated and the past has passed on.
The bubble is burst. The house is on the market. The anchor is weighed. The trees we planted are left behind. Do the new owners love that Japanese Maple we planted as our 10th anniversary gift to our dream of home? Have they maintained the landscaping? Have any of the plants, the dreams, the love we planted been cared for in our absence? Or have they been torn up by the roots to make room for the next owners’ dream of home?
Where are the anchors? Is there a home port? Adrift. Without a home. Drift wood is picked up for beach fires to warm the beach rats without a home. Their shacks have been bulldozed like West Bank ancestral olive groves to make room for more condos and home-loving dreamers blowing a bubble. Pop!
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by waldopaper on
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Yeah- been listening the Skepticon videos... especially PZ Meyers. Skepticon is sorta like a Burning Man for Nerds. I'm going to one soon... just to get drunk and hang out with these assholes.
Yeah... one of the markers i used as a "consultant" was to note the number of Dilbert cartoons in the cubes. I can get a yuk out of Dilbert now... but for a while. it stopped being funny. Well... now it's time when the right thing now is to offer the fundies in Krakkerland a nice hot cup of STFU. They're going batshit crazy.
The skeptics today reminds me of the Abolitionists then... and the secular folk coming out of the closet.
What really got Dilbert for me was the raw incompetence of some people on top of the food chain. But they had "Leadership!" Nobody could doubt Howard's courage. Crawling into Lincoln's head... I think Howard's XI Corps command was to put a hard-core English in charge was an attempt to paper over the Know-Nothing attitude against the Germans.
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Got a new buzzword... and it's a dilly: "expressive signalling." That's right... with two "L"s. Maybe the Brits have done more research on this, so we spell it their way. I don't know. But the concept is interesting... a very good term for "sportsball politics." Check it out
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Permalink Reply by Cal on
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Been studying so hard I missed this post in April - but "expressive signalling" (that's right, of course it's got two l's, why would anyone want to leave one of them out) is just what I needed to read about today. Thanks Waldo.
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"Party Hearty" seems to be the airhead creed. I can dig it. Eat, drink and be merry. Right. I'm down with that. But as a condescending asshole, I can't help thinking: what if i survive this thing. How can I loot the melted gold watches off airhead blackened corpses? Because, unless I am just as abysmally stupid as they are, I probably won't be incinerated in the burning house. Shit. That's just a metaphor.
what good is "gold" going to do you in times like these?
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Permalink Reply by Mouse on
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gold is boring. pretty colours like the attached are clearly the crucial key to survival.
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image.jpg, 1.7 MB
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Now I got the internet back... it was out for two days... another story.
There was a car crash behind the house last night. Home alone as usual. Except for Sid: my eyes and ears. Heard stones popping on the driveway. Then lights. Then barks. The cops were inspecting my car. Is this your car? Yep. Bark bark bark. The cops didn't like the dog and the feeling was mutual. This car hasn't moved for days. Somebody ran off the freeway. The Reagan Expressway... also another story. Had to put Sid inside. Deputy came from the highway.
New Chevy Impala went through the wire, hit the ditch, became airborne and landed upside in one of our trees. Quite a night. They cut him out, and looked conscious on the stretcher and the EMS took him away... no lights or sirens. Extracting the vehicle took much more time. It was unbelievable he survived. Nothing but the passenger crush zone left intact. That tree caught him in the air and saved his life. Haven't gone back to check the damage much. It was uprooted.
Like me. Got the walking-paper proposal. and a sketchy timeline of about 60 days.
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Permalink Reply by BO on
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Jesus, Waldo. "Is this your car?" WTF did your car have to do with the event? Strange days. Witnessed something similar the other day. Some guy managed to end up overturned and wedged in a fence surrounding a local apartment complex. And this was on a side street where the speed limit is 35. The guy was laying on the ground, outside his car, screaming in agony. Cops standing around waiting for the EMT truck. I see weird shit everytime I leave the house.
Pan, glad you checked in with us. I think the answer to your question is yes. Especially, if you don't like your neighbors.
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Been considering a move ourselves. But being middle class folks, our choices are limited because middle-class neighborhoods are disapearing. On the Reagan expressway, we've all become either 'poors' or 'mores'. On my own street, two houses previously owned by wealthy people are now owned by east coast investment companies and rented out. One owner went bankrupt and the other owner was busted for selling stolen goods.
Bottom line: if you aren't rich, might as well buy a trailer because if you buy into a middle-class neighborhood, it's guaranteed to become squalor.
That said, here's an interesting article I found about Seattle's changing demographics. Beginning to resemble medieval England.
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Permalink Reply by pan on
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(deleted the rough draft)
Home is Where You Are (2015 version)
Where is home?
I once wrote:
"Home is where you are. Correction, home is where you and the two cats are."Moved fifteen times in the last 25 years.We left Miss Becky's ashes in Tacoma and buried Fatty in Pocatello. You are in Tallahassee and I'm in the "little apple" in Kansas.
The house in Tallahassee hasn't been made our home yet and I'm not allowed to make the apartment in Manhattan a home if I want my security deposit back. If home is where you are then I am living in an apartment 1100 miles from home in a house that isn't home yet.
"there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home".
Just woke up in Kansas and you weren't there.
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Internet meme from a few years ago about the woman who decided to "restore" an ancient church fresco becomes an opera
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Eye askew:
Which one looks more like what will be
stepping through time on Disclosure Day?
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