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Fall
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2199
It's in the air already, up at 5:30, outside, cool, you can feel it as you sip your coffee and watch the sun rise.
The despairing change of season, Summer to Fall, and while I love Fall I mourn the passing of Summer.
Fall, an evocation, an invocation - a summoning of old spirits, but now it's too early, it feels like death, the air cold, a rabbit on the grass and I fancy I can see that it's fur is starting to change color.
And I unpack, slowly, box by box, this new place not entirely empty, the ghosts of the absent owner linger in cupboards and drawers and I try to sort what they will wish to keep, what they will need, from what I can give, throw away. I do the same with my own possessions, if in doubt I will keep them, dispose of them later, but at the moment many things are disappearing, but there are hundreds of boxes and it's slow.
Laundry, wash, dry, fold. Go through clothes, what to wear, what to keep. Appointments to make, in a few hours it will be back to work - work, the job, work. The job after the 3 weeks of stress, moving, non-vacation, the job that pays the rent and kills the soul, Wipe the patina of dust from furniture, polish brasses, wax furniture, open a box, move from room to room, picking up out of place objects, carry them onto the next room, remember to grab this and forget that.
Boxes for the recycle, boxes of garbage, boxes for the thrift store, boxes to sell because money will be tight, how tight? Very tight. And I'm tight about my plans, must sell this, sell that, reduce, diminish, rid myself of ridiculous attachments.
And I am slowly mudered by the thought of these ordinary days.
Neither Here nor There
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2068
The last few days have been spent in moving limbo, neither here nor there.
Coffee - Here. Coffeepot - There. Computer - Here. Cables - there. And there's a whole list of stuff that could be here or there or who knows where, but is mainly lost in limbo, buried under countless boxes of other stuff, and so I'll be searching the next month for things that I packed and misplaced, this is how it will be.
So much rubbish.
***
I sold the antique haunted table, finally, the buyer an older South American woman who had lost her husband in the Chilean coup of '73, he became one of the "disappeared", she fled to Canada afterwords with her children, lived here ever since, she loved Antiques and waxed so poetical about the lost values of craftsmanship that I almost didn't want to sell it.
***
3 non-working accordions. 2 non functional trumpets. 100 litres of wine corks. 2 broken antique typewriters. 100 antique candlesticks. I'm a hoarder. There are issues, I know, I'm working on overcoming them. 4 moves in 2 years has done a lot to help me.
***
And for all the downsizing - and there's been a lot - there's still an awful lot of rubbish. An Awful lot. Miles of it, and I have to sort through 100 boxes, items I haven't seen in years yet somehow imagined I'll need....1 by 1, find the gems, save them, sever the attachments, sell it or give it away, open another box, do it again. There's easily a month's full time work in this. But I've begun...
***
Today, finish up the old house, return drawers (out of boxes, just packed the entire kitchen drawers) order skip for rubbish in backyard, take internet signal booster because I might need it, add it to the box of 200 stereo, vcr, coaxial cables that I've saved, I might need it. And there's a garage sale, local, 9:00, and I know better but I'm going to go anyways...
SOLD! 1 Antique Humpbacked Trunk
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1849
Packed 2 loads to the new place, had 1 visit re: The Haunted Table - She brought her son, probably she was wary after reading about the Antique Humpbacked Trunk I had for sale (fits 1 body), hummed and hawed, not certain, the trunk sold later in the day, added to it a Medalta 3 Gallon Crock and the boys Brass bed, because at $25.00 if it hadn't sold it wasn't going to and better that it find a good home on it's own than have me move it.
Still there is loads to do.
Transcribed 8 pages of notes from the vacation, 6 to go ... (did I take a vacation? Why am I not relaxed..?), Ate (and at 7-11 because there is no food in the fridge, no inclination to buy any, tomorrow I'll be a little smarter and go for Indian Buffet...), have begun to work on diminishing the emails in my inbox, many can be simply deleted but painfully they have to be read first.
And it's painful. I'm on vacation. Still, slowly I'm getting there...
For Sale: 1 Antique Mineral Water Bottle
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: For Sale
- Hits: 2310
Price: $10.00Provenance: I acquired this fine empty bottle whilst kayaking the northwest passage. I was searching for Polar Bears to wrestle, this being a hobby of mine (and far more manly than just slaying them), when after 1 particularly long session with a Giant Polar bear and her 3 cubs I retired to my kayak for a drink.
Now before you get all liberal and indignant let me remind you that it's volunteer rangers like me that keep the North safe from the gathering hordes of Polar Bears that lurk pretty much everywhere north of Edmonton. Safe so tourists like you can go on your little luxury cruises and junkets.
Now I was thirsty and so I went back to my Kayak for a drink
And as luck would have it my (formerly) trusty Inuit guide "Nanook" had already drunk all my water.
"Water, Water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink..."
You should never drink seawater, in case you didn't know.
Anyways, looking around forlornly for a drink or a vending machine (while Mama bear and her cubs are getting away across the pack ice), when what should I spot but this bottle poking out of a snowdrift.
There's crap like this everywhere up there, but I went to check it out just in case.
No water. But there was a note in the bottle, kind of all faded and brittle and all curled up.
It read something like this (if I can remember).
"We, the men of the Erebus and Terror on this day .... in the year of our lord 1847 have .... eaten the cabinboy .... being pursued by giant lizards .... entering into the hollow earth ..... look for signs near...."
There was more, lots more with maps and directions and excerpts from journals and strange drawings and things, but I thought the bottle was coolest and so took it and left the rest. It wasn't littering, because I had already found it there.
Anyways, if you like it you can have it for a mere $10.00. The bottle, that is, the rest of it is still up there. If you're curious I'll draw you a map, but that will cost you another $5.00.
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