Forgive me for the rapid succession of posts this past week. I have something I have been kicking over in my mind today while working alone all day, (and in between the RPW audio book I have mentioned) and wish to try and set down before I lose too much focus on the matter.
These posts do serve as my notes for later use, so the effort won't be gratuitous.
Anyway, to preface what is to follow I would like to repeat that what I do now for a living, though a poor living thus far, is paint the inside and outside of people's homes.
During my pursuit of this calling, I have had countless conversations with the owners and/or occupants of the aforementioned homes, and almost always they have been very pleasant chats.
Especially the light and leisurely chats I have had with many, many older Women or Ladies, if you will, typically, though not always, widowed, and who are not quite so old as to be referred to as "Little Old Ladies" , but not quite so young as to be referred to as a Dame, as is popularly understood. (If that makes sense) In other words, in their late 60's and 70's and sometimes early to mid 80's.
Anyway, the topics for discussion almost always involve family, and family interactions and perspectives upon a lifetime of such interactions.
I get the benefit of a very wise older woman's brutally frank and uninhibited wisdom, and I like to think that they get the benefit of hearing my dry jokes and tales.
Oftentimes we break for tea, and when we do--look out--because no family member is spared our diagnoses and laughter.
As I say, on my end I try to tell humorous anecdotal accounts of how I am a hapless poor relation, and how the family, or rather my family, at large, has a settled perspective towards me by now as such; and how they will always maintain that view since I was the one to help that view to earn its sea legs as I wallowed and persist in wallowing in an ocean of doubt and despair, for reasons which I think anyone familiar with my blog can readily surmise.
Such is the human experience upon terra infirma, or rather the existence of, to borrow an oft used phrase from All Education Matters: "The Indentured Educated Class."
In fact, the Wife of Bath ain't got nuttin' on some of these older gals, and one might be inclined to cross oneself if one had heard the language during our conversations!
Well, maybe that's a bit exaggerated......but maybe not.
In fact, the Wife of Bath ain't got nuttin' on some of these older gals, and one might be inclined to cross oneself if one had heard the language during our conversations!
Well, maybe that's a bit exaggerated......but maybe not.
Gotta go out for a walk with Shane and will be back. Almost fell asleep at the wheel today on the long drive home.
Anyway, I'm back now. I had a long pause because there is dissension among the ranks of the local dog walking community, and I was trying to explain how I had tried to oil the waters, so to speak.
In other words, I tried to get two women that are not speaking to start speaking again, and sweetalked both with what I confidently predict will result in success. I say all that because old Johnny knows women all too well by now, and knows exactly the right things to say.
But I'll fill y'all in on that little drama later.
And so, to return: There is nothing wiser, or funnier, under the sun, than an older woman of the influence I mention, during a chit-chat. And if tea, or coffee is involved, and if the recipient of the older woman's narrative happens to be the hapless and bemused JD Painterguy, the event, and the contents of all that is spoken during said event will invariably prove to be priceless.
Now this older woman might well be your Mother or Sister, or Aunt, or still living Wife, or Grandmother, among other things, be they animal. vegetable, or mineral.
She might be your best friend, or your worst nightmare.
*To Be continued. Maybe tomorrow. I gotta eat, and it is bachelor food for me. Mickey D's and some pasta maybe.
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5:39AM June 3---I don't have time this morning but want to add these notes.
*Potentially problematic realtionships by their very nature when married and even dating: Prior children and/or Stepchild to steparent and sumultaneously the bio parent. Or the reverse-the step parent to stepchild. Jealousy, and the old premise for a type of Sherlock Holmes and Detective Columbo murder mystery tale re estate distibution. (Motive for the crime as in bump off the kid and inherit the money--that woman in the red shawl from double indemnity--or the kid bumping off the step parent-sherlock holmes if I recall.
Freud and Oedipal complex re stepchildren? As in: look who's fucking my mother now. And all that being a side effect of divorce. And it all applies to girls too--you know--jealousy of the step mom--cinderella and the way Natalie Wood kissed her father on the mouth in the move: rebel without a cause.
Divorce and Alan Blooms dismay over it and the developing post adolescent intellect.
The bitter older woman who shocked me when she said: "Life doesn't begin until your parents are both dead!"
Conclude with the passage from the book I am reading now (AKM) about the nature of Love a parent feels for a child. Is that what it is all aobut?
How some lonely old widows cross the line and go from Motherly to Womanly.
The story about the horrible car crash and the brains in the upper boughs of the nearby trees.
The very racist old woman--should I use that? Maybe too much for people to handle?
So that is all until later. I'll mull it over in my head some more.
Oh, and of course, how all of the above is a backdrop or stage for when the Student Loan burdened or indebted college kid has to move back home and into the basement of his or her parents house.
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I will be in Manhasset, Long Island today. Manhasset is largely an expensive commuting community of Manhattan financial types, with expensive leather bound literary classics on the bookshelves which never get read, and artwork on the walls that cannot be comprehended by thems that hung it up.
I sometimes say, and in a cynical and sneering way, that if Virginia is for Lovers, Manhasset is for fair weather friends and lovers.
But still, I have many a laugh with the housewives there, whom I sometimes feel sorry for in that they have to always maintain the correct "persona" if you will, given the nature of the community, or the pack they are running with or school they swim with or something like that.
Another joke of mine is that one must never show or express, be it overt or implicit, (kind of like the way it is legally defined as an Evidentiary statement) anything that shows human feeling or emotion.
Financial types don't like that, although their wives are all for it.
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June 3, 6:25 PM ----Too beat tonight to add anything. Maybe Sunday. And I promise to finish the Allstate Interview story. And the giant Leprechaun who has been on my mind, and my story for Kimber about the seagulls.
just one last bit @ my own 7:34PM
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
June 3, 6:25 PM ----Too beat tonight to add anything. Maybe Sunday. And I promise to finish the Allstate Interview story. And the giant Leprechaun who has been on my mind, and my story for Kimber about the seagulls.
just one last bit @ my own 7:34PM
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
