Memories

The Cemetery Situation, circa 1975.

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Good evening, friends. I’m back with another post from the pictorial archives of my childhood. This one is special. Some of my more cherished childhood memories include those from our various family outings at the local cemetery, where we fed large exotic birds and knew absolutely no one who was buried there.

Mind you, we went to feed and admire the wild peafowl who happened to live at the cemetery. A blue peacock in full bloom amongst the headstones was a resplendent sight to behold, and I have dark, grainy old photos to illustrate it.

Me on the occasion of my 7th birthday, which we celebrated with a family outing at the local cemetery.

Hence, I learned at an early age that beauty and death go together. My fond memories of the peafowl in the cemetery hearken to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous opinion that “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”

I was born with my love for mystical darkness; always, for as long as I can remember, fascinated by the paranormal and the supernatural, the ghostly and the macabre, and curious about the veil between worlds.

With such proclivities woven into my DNA, my natural aesthetic needs no further explanation… but that I was a darkling child taken to a cemetery to feed beautiful birds in nature adds to it. Unsurprisingly, I immediately gravitated toward a black top when given my first opportunity to make my own selections during back-to-school clothes shopping. Yes, I love gothic music and the horror genre and all things witchy, and I love that there are (still?) wild peafowl living in the cemetery, displaying their brilliant and glorious feathers on the graves of loved ones lost.

The Snowman Situation, circa 1972.

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Going through a pile of childhood photos to scan, I came across a few of my brother and I sitting in the snow in Long Barn and I noticed that the snowman we made was either surrendering to authorities or absolutely giving up on life with contempt for all who’ve fallen for the lies, in either case beyond fed up, and I can’t remember whether we knew it and didn’t care, or knew it and continued on in total denial. I was afraid for us in retrospect because we knew from certain fairy tales that things children create can sometimes come to life, and in this case our creation coming to life would mean inevitable doom for us all. The snowman we made was very angry.

I’m in red, my brother’s in blue, and the snowman’s in complete disgust.

We are artists.

Of the four of us, I’m the only one who looks pleased.

FUCK THIS SHIT.

We didn’t give him a cheerful scarf like other snowmen get. He is not a magical fairy tale, because the magic is in the top hat that we didn’t give him, either. Neither did we give him a pipe. Maybe that’s why he’s angry. He wants a pipe. He cannot be a jolly happy soul without a pipe. He has no intention of dancing around. When he melts away, he’s not going to wave good-bye singing, “Don’t you cry, I’ll be back again someday.” He’s going to give us the finger and say, “You’d better hope I don’t come back or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

So I’m not sure what my apparent joy over the situation indicates other than a lack of empathy for the snowman, but that might mean that I was a budding psychopath, so let’s just say that it’s my love of the horror genre being a case of nature rather than nurture and leave it at that.