Carlotta and the Daffodils

In New York, on almost every corner there is a bodega. In the Korean ones especially, you’d find flowers lined outside on the sidewalk under the awning. For a few weeks each Spring, they would sell daffodils, and there would be great bunches of them stuffed into those big white plastic buckets. Five gallon paint buckets maybe, or perhaps the kind that joint compound comes in, I don’t know. The ones with the handles.

The sight of those daffodils each year always captivated me. I would get really excited, and buy giant armfuls of them to take home and stuff into every conceivable fancy thing I owned that could pass as a vase. Silver pitchers, porcelain teapots, those vintage glass coffee carafes that hostesses in the 50’s would serve from, the coffee warmed by a tea light when not in use (I used to collect those). Anything.

However, something just wasn’t the same with them when I brought them home. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was dissatisfied with how they looked, but I didn’t get the same kind of feeling looking at them festooned around my apartment as I did when I would see them on the sidewalk - haphazardly shoved into a filthy, scuffed up bucket.

When I would chance upon them on the street, their yellow eyes winking up at me through the dappled sunlight from the awning, I would be filled with such a longing. For what, I couldn’t tell you, but the feeling would be so intense that I sometimes felt like my heart would burst, just from looking at them. It wasn’t sadness though, oh no. Quite the opposite actually. Back in my apartment, they were still as beautiful, but something intangible was lost in the transition from bodega sidewalk to coffee table, piano top, and nightstand.

I think what it was is that on the street they had a sort of accidental beauty in the careless way they were displayed, which was disrupted when I would bring them home.

And that is why I don’t buy daffodils anymore. I just enjoy them when and wherever I chance upon them.

Evil Nettie!!

I’ve been pinged!! Ahhhhh!!

Okay, so I’m supposed to come up with a list of things I can’t live without. Well, I have to admit that I find the timing of such a task to be rather….interesting. See, as many of you know, I lost all my worldly goods when I moved to Canada. Everything. Even my cats :(. It’s a long story, but basically I left all my goods, as well as my apartment, in the hands of a friend of mine whom I had known for 15 years and thought I could trust. He was to take over my lease and in exchange for the absolute coup of getting an amazing rent controlled Manhattan apartment, he was to watch my things until I reached a point in immigration where I could move them without paying duty. However, he instead sold/threw out everything and hightailed it to Los Angeles. I never found out what he did with my cats, something tells me I don’t want to know. I also never found out WHY he did what he did. All he had to do was explain the situation, whatever it was, and I would have figured something out.

Obviously, this was a complete blow to me, especially since I didn’t find out about it until way after the fact. He had kept his old cell number with the NYC area code so I thought he was still there, and there were times we spoke when he had already moved and pretended he was still living in my apartment.

This happened awhile ago now, but it’s been on my mind lately now that some of the anger and hurt over it has subsided somewhat. The whole experience has taught me a valuable lesson about the values placed (misplaced perhaps?) on material possessions. I don’t consider myself to be a superficial or materialistic person, but I realized that I do tend to get emotionally attached to my belongings. This probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t really have a tangible “personal history”. Therefore I think I had been trying to provide myself one, something I could actually touch, things I identify with and which could be passed on and shared with others. A sort of “defining my essence” by way of the things that I own that are displayed for all who know me. Things have sentimental meaning to me, maybe too much. They are physical reminders of memories, or even better, the energy of people and places that are gone or passed.

If I were asked to make this list five years ago it would probably be quite different than it is today. I will only include things that I currently own, either from acquiring them within the past five years or the few things that I managed to sneak across the border in various care packages or in my suitcase

1. My wee little musicbox. It’s maybe 3 cms square, a simple embossed metal box with a small wind up key. It plays the theme from Love Story. I think it was originally meant to be on a keychain, but the little ring is long gone. I found it in a junk shop for pennies. It makes me really happy even though I tend to burst into tears when I play it. Music boxes are so wistful sounding, it just breaks my heart! But in a good way, of course.

2. A brass plaque with the word “Chapel” on it in raised letters. Wow, I wish I had a camera. One is coming relatively soon, so maybe I’ll go back in and put some pictures of these things back into this post. This is a plaque given to me by an old dear friend of mine, Bruce. There is a good chance Bruce may be dead, although I don’t know for certain. He was a terrible alcoholic and dropped out of my life around 1994. We used to be roommates though, before he got really bad, and in some ways, although we were just only and ever friends, he was kind of my first love. I know that doesn’t make sense, so just take my word for it, okay? He brought it home for me one day, I think he pried it off of a church somewhere. I found it in the basement a few months ago, which surprised me because I don’t remember bringing it here. In fact, this was one of the specific things I was sick over losing, so finding it buried in a box felt like winning the lottery that day.

3. Five pressed four leaf clovers. I found these in a cloth bound Victorian version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that I bought from Gryphon Bookshop within days of arriving in NYC. There was a love note written in the front of the book dated 1887 and various snips of romantic things written in the columns. It captured my imagination, so when I found the clovers inside as well, I arranged them in a frame in honor of these two long gone lovers. I like to think they had picked them together, maybe while picnicking somewhere beautiful in England, or maybe somewhere misty in Scotland.

4. A picture of my father from the late 40’s/early 50’s when he was a fireman in NYC. He’s standing outside the station in front of the truck with the rest of his ladder company. It’s just an amazing picture and I am so proud of him that he was so brave. His career as a fireman was a short lived one due to health problems, but I know it was the job he held most dear and nothing he did afterwards was ever his “career”. He was and will always be a fireman at heart.

5. My X-Men watch. The battery is dead, and my husband fux0rd the wristband, but I still treasure it. Back in the early 90’s there was a company that offered a (pricey!) subscription where you signed up and you would get a new X-Men watch every couple months. I think there were six in total, I don’t remember. Unfortunately, that big earthquake out in San Francisco put them out of business so I only ended up with the first one. It’s a replica of the the cover of X-Men #1, and it came in a little diecast model of the original Blackbird, which ironically was…purple.

Okay, I think five is enough, don’t you? Now this is the part where I get to ping people to do this too, eh? Okay…

I ping….

Neo!

and Tah!

I don’t know anyone else with a blog who hasn’t already been pinged, sorry.

Nettie Is Evil!

You Can Checkout Any Time You Like…

Dear Classic Rock Radio Stations,

Surely with 50+ years of rock n’ roll history you can find some other songs to play by these esteemed legends, instead of assaulting my ears with hourly repetitions of Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, and Light My Fire, no?

Also, I love Pink Floyd’s The Wall as much as anyone, but I’m quite sure my ears will bleed if I have to hear Another Brick in the Wall one more time.

In addition, you should take note that I can quite happily spend the rest of my life without having to hear Sweet Home Alabama…Ever. Again.

I’d even hazard a guess that the artists who created these songs are quite sick to death of them too. I’m starting to think that the fundies had the right idea with their record burnings and all that, but for different reasons.

Sincerely Yours,
MadCarlotta

Not Fade Away

I know that it has been ages since I’ve posted. My profuse apologies for that. It’s just that things have been unbelievably stressful around here, and I really don’t want a negative blog. So I’ve just kept quiet.

Anyhow, this is my friend Shane (and me):

And this, as I’m sure you know, is Buddy Holly:

How are these two related? Well, just bear with me, dear readers, I will tell you a long convoluted story about it all.

I met Shane maybe somewhere in the mid-nineties. I had seen him around, he was friends with most of my friends, but I didn’t know him personally. Quite frankly I thought he was a prick. I suppose there was something about me that he didn’t like either because whenever I would run into him, he would always act like he had never met me. It drove me crazy! Finally one evening I was at a club, he was sitting at the bar next to me. I said, “Hello Shane”, he turned, gave me this smug look and said “do I know you?”. I then told him he was an asshole and turned around and ignored him the rest of the night, which he seemed to find incredibly amusing. I mention this because I believe it was at that point that Shane decided he liked me after all. Not me though, I still thought he was a prick.

Not long after that, I was in a bit of a dilemma. I was going away for a few weeks to Florida over Christmas and I needed someone to watch my cats. Normally this was never a problem, but this particular year my list of regulars were all going away themselves. A friend of mine suggested Shane, because he had just broken up with The Puppet and was sleeping on my friend’s sofa. I really didn’t like this idea, not only did I not think much of him, but I didn’t really know if he could be trusted. Finally, out of desperation I agreed. I figured that since M. considered him a friend, then I could trust him, because quite frankly, M. hated and distrusted everyone.

So Shane moved in a couple days before I left for Florida, we made nice nice, and we ended up becoming really good friends. I even let him stay at my place for another several weeks while he looked for an apartment.

Now, I don’t know if you know this about me or not, but I am a huge Buddy Holly fan. Huge. I love him on so many levels. When I first met Shane, I was probably at the height of my “Buddymania” to the point where I’d do really asinine things like put a CD on random and play “Ask Buddy Holly” if I had a major decision to make. Yes, Really.

Now Shane used to be in some hair band in the late 80s/early 90s that had some degree of commercial success. Might even have had a lot more if Nirvana hadn’t come along and wiped Heavy Metal as it existed off of the planet, but I digress. The point is, that because of his musical past, Shane is friends with many professional musicians.

Here’s a picture of Shane from some metal magazine when he was a loser rockstar:

One of his friends, D, played guitar for a folk singer who was touring with Buddy Holly’s old band, The Crickets. D had just called Shane because he was in town with the tour and wanted to hook up. Shane just about died when he found out who D was touring with, and long story short, dragged me to their hotel where I got to meet The Crickets! There I was, acting like some deranged Duranie over these three old men, but omg I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited in my life!

Now, let’s fast forward, um…I don’t want to even say how many years now. I haven’t seen Shane for five years, but he is one of the few people back in NYC that has kept in touch with me. The irony of that is not lost on me, trust me! Lately things have been less than stellar around here, as I alluded to in the first paragraph. There isn’t one area of my life right now that things are going well in, not my marriage, finances, socially (hah! like I have a social life!), mentally, psychologically…the list goes on and on. Everything just kind of generally sucks.

Then I got this email this morning:

i made a garden in philly and i realised the thing that was missing was a sound, so i went to the pet store and bought 100 crickets! Thought of you so now its the buddy holly memorial garden lol. I am sitting here now listening to them sing…

That someone who I haven’t seen in years and who lives far away from me now would make a Buddy Holly memorial garden in honor of me just touches me in ways that I really can’t describe. This isn’t the first nice thing Shane has done for me, he saved Christmas last year and he tried to get my Monkey King painting back from the gallery where that asshole who got rid of my things sold it to, but this gesture probably has had the most impact due to it’s timing. Him calling me and playing Peggy Sue on his guitar for me later was the icing on the cake.

So thank you Shane. Because of you, I feel like me again today.

Sorry, I Just Had To…

This whole poppy spy coin “scandal” was just tooooo funny!

Garden Update

Still planting.
Back sore.
Blister on thumb.
Pinky toe bit by some kind of bug.
Most of my seedlings are half dead.

Must

get

rose

bushes

in

today!

The Beyonds of Mirrors

So today saw me up and at ‘em at the crack of dawn. I mean that literally - I have been up since 5am. You ask me why? Well dear Reader, I have a sick two year old who had gone to bed 2 hours earlier than usual last night. Subsequently, she woke up two hours earlier than she normally would have. Naturally, this would suck under any normal circumstance but it especially sucked today because I had to drive to Brampton to take Mr. MadCarlotta to visit his son. Now that whole situation is a blog post in and of itself, but I’ll save that for another day. It’ll be a good one Reader—I promise—something worthy of night time television. Dynasty maybe, or perhaps Dallas.

Anyway, by 8am we were all in the car and on our merry way. Now, I have to occupy myself whilst Mr. MC visits his son. His mother feels it would be traumatic for him to know of my existence (or that of his sisters). You don’t have to say it, I know. It’s all part of the big promised Dynasty blog post that I’ll write one day about the whole thing. I will just say this so no one gets any negative assumptions regarding visitation orders or anything: no, this is not some court ordered thing, the court ordered him to spend weekends with us starting in, um… November 2002 and gave my husband normal visitation rights that have been completely ignored. This is the neurotic vindictive machinations of a woman scorned, but whatever, I’m not writing THAT blog post now.

Believe it or not, this bon mot is meant to be about water lilies. Yes, water lilies.

I bought some today.

Since I had time to kill and since the kid was not 100% I just went to a nearby Walmart that was next to a Chapters. I figured I could look at gardening stuff, toys and then go to the book store and have a nice Starbucks something-or-other while I perused.

While in Walmart, I ended up purchasing two water lilies, some Louisiana irises and what they called a “water canna” (but it’s not a truly aquatic canna I don’t think). As is usually the case in stores such as Walmart, nothing is labeled with a proper scientific name. That’s fine by me, I love a surprise.

The only problem with my purchase is that I don’t really have a pond. I have a whiskey barrel that I’m setting up as a small water garden. Water lilies get quite big, so I anticipate having to give them away before summer ends, but oh well. I have been told that if I pot them in small pots, they won’t get as big, but I’m not sure I believe that. It sounds suspiciously like the old “goldfish only grow as big as their bowls will allow” myth. I ain’t buying it.

So tomorrow morning bright and early, The Mister and I shall head out into our backyard where he shall do much Cleaning of Dog Poo and the annual Fixing of the BBQ Apparatus, while I till and plant my beds finally.

Wouldn’t pictures be nice? Yes, I think they would be too! However, you all are shit out of luck because we don’t have a digitial camera. Actually we have three, but none of them work. So instead of pictures, I’ll leave you with a poem.

Rilke is better than pictures anyhow.

Water Lily
by Rainer Maria Rilke

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors…

On Blogging…

Many people who have known me for a long time have expressed surprise that I haven’t jumped on the blogging bandwagon sooner, or at least had my own website. I am a designer after all, so I suppose that it is kind of….weird.

I imagine that it has something to do with my childhood (doesn’t it always?). I used to be a voracious writer. I had a myriad of journals filled with random thoughts, (bad) poetry - you name it. However, I lived in a very oppressive household. My parents were control freaks who weren’t content to sit back and give me the independent privacy that really is essential to the healthy psychological development of a pre-teen/teenager. Add to that the fact that my ideals and thoughts were tantamount to heresy for my very right-wing conservative parents and I’m sure you can fill in the blanks. Ugh. I was scared to have anything written down because it would inevitably be found by my paranoid snooping mother and held against me.

I was punished for being creative and for having my own thoughts and feelings.

Subsequently, it has become very hard for me to write about anything truly personal. I’m hoping to overcome this now, because quite frankly, it’s stupid. It angers me that events that transpired decades ago are still impeding me. Hence this blog.

I don’t really know where I’m going to go with this, but regardless of what the end result may be, at least it will get me writing again. There’s too much in my head to keep it all filed away forever up there.

I’m running out of disk space, lol.

Interview With Boo

On April Fools weekend, Flora Streater (aka The Legendary Boo, aka Sporkster Extraordinaire) was contacted by the BBC for an interview. I wanted to put it here, partly because I’m flexing my code muscles and partly because I feel it should be in a public place. Of course, if I had my act together I’d have done this, um…April Fools Day, because by now everyone interested has probably heard it. Ah well.

Enjoy!