Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Including But Not Limited To



I once went to a dinner party of a man whose lover had been murdered in his house a couple of years before. The house is a beautiful arts and crafts mansion in Detroit proper, close to where Mayor Kwame used to live before his texts to his lover made The Daily Show. I almost never watch it, but by some weird chance, I caught it that night when John Stewart was making fun of Kwame for asking his mistress to meet him at Bert's Coney Island for a bowl of chili. A Detroit date if there ever was one, and I should know, having been on my share. My dinner party host collected art and bemoaned the days when you could easily employ "cheap immigrant labor." My host had a heavy German accent which made this sentiment more dramatic, as German accents tend to do. When asked about his lover's death, he said. "It was awful. You cannot imagine the clean up." Probably not.

My host collected tiny little spoons to eat dessert with until "I realized how stupid it was." This made me laugh and wonder when do we outgrow certain desires for accumulation? I have always been a throw away everything useless girl myself after suffering through a depressing period where I surrounded myself with an assortment of useless shit, including but not limited to, stuffed bridal bears, a bride troll doll, and about a hundred hideous frames. Dusting was a day's worth of labor in a tiny one bedroom apartment. And I was a compulsive duster. One day I looked at all my stuff and couldn't stand it. Now I watch Hoarders and clean some more, as if I could rid myself of sadness by way of austerity, all clean surfaces and hospital corners giving me that clean slate I can never get.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire." Whoopi Goldberg

Cocktail Hour
Drinking television suggestion: Hoarders -- if you can stomach it. Last night's episode was tres gruesome!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday! As for the True Blood question raised by Heff, I'm going to watch it as soon as it comes out on dvd so I can catch all of it. At any rate, I'm kind of living True Blood -- note graveyard full moon shot. A vampire took that one.

5 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I'm still telling myself I don't have a problem. In fact, I finally threw away an old word processing manual for the first WP I ever used, back in 1982.

chris said...

Clutter ! What is that ? Oh Lord the junk I have laying around would be a mess but I do know where I have put everything. That is until someone moves it for me.
If that happens it may be lost forever.

I can't speak for Detroit but True Blood has been on video here for quite a while.

If I could only find the time to watch the ones I have missed. It is not a bad show as far as Vampires are concerned but there is a lot more to it than that.

Have you visited or little city lately ?

Whitenoise said...

The mess and not the loss... a very vivid character description.

the walking man said...

The beauty of life with the old lady is all the clutter is hers. Of course when queried on the matter she always says it's mine. I wonder where, if neither of us is willing to claim ownership. all the shit came from?

Chili dates suck the sadness from people. It is the last true bastion of sanity left us now.

jodi said...

Hi Sweets, Love the zeb-ra (as pronounced on Discovery Channel) banquette! I usually go nuts in the fall and early spring purging all drawers and closets. I abhor clutter and get it honest--my Mom does too. I get grossed out with excess, unless we are talking SHOES!! quell horroreur! xo