Oddities of me, you say? Some may read this and think, well that's nothing new! But folks let me tell you what an obsessive passion for old houses coupled with boredom over Christmas break can do to a person...mainly me. And maybe only me, unless you happen to suffer from the same things currently. In that case you may want to read on solely to find a way to both feed your obsession and stave away your boredom or forewarn yourself of a potential hazard awaiting you on your very own computer. At any rate, read it!
Well folks, I'm sure the features of Google are no secret to anyone. After all, it's where students of all ages and grades turn to when facing down that 'three sources guideline' for papers. And although I've found good, ol' solid books to be a much more reliable source - after all I'd rather sift through the solid waves of faded words and yellowed corners than the technical, white noise jargon of that never-ending, always wind-tossed currents of the Internet, but anyway, my writer's mind digresses yet again - I've found that Google does have one no-fail feature that always manages to give me what I am looking for: Google Maps!
I often wonder what my fellow Facebook friends think of my occasional status updates when I rave about Google Maps. Do they think I'm crazy? Do they never check my pages and therefore don't see my status' - as I do with many of them, regrettably. Or do they understand in a small way because my love of old houses is so widely known to all? Whatever it is they think of it, I know I've found a solution to my boredom. Now sure I'm sitting down for a half hour or more, and the key is to move around, but look at it from this angle instead people.
Already I've found two old houses I can use in stories, which is always a good thing right? Anytime I can find an old house and use it so, the endless searchings of narrow streets was worth it. What exactly am I searching for anyway? What would make me want to sit down for a half hour or more perusing the dilapidated, crowded streets of my parent's home state of Upper Michigan? After all, most of the houses in the neighborhood's I peruse on Google Maps are shrouded in sagging, moldy and outdated siding, tiny budget windows or original wooden ones with foggy cataract panes and frames stripped of wood. The roofs sag like the ground above all those filled-in underground mines, and their facades similar to the droopy faces of a comically sad Bloodhound hug the narrow, weed broken sidewalk, or the crumbling edge of the road itself, as if constantly nudging its shoulder, or a tender spot, reminding the road that it was here first, and they're both deteriorating together, everything will die at once.
But as you've also probably known, these are the types of houses and neighborhood's which attract me. There is something about a dilapidated house that captures my eyes, my creative mind, wisps of stories and characters floating through my mind just yearning for that special house to settle down in. Before I have time to stop them at the threshold between my mind and my imagination they have sprung from the door, already running within the rooms of a house I have paused only a few seconds to see, already carving their names into its plaster, its peeling wallpaper. A stroll in Google Maps through an intact neighborhood with plenty of space between the house's facades and the street would be boring to me. Granted, many a story lies within such neighborhood's as well, but not mine. So perhaps I am searching for inspiration within the twisting, rising, dipping and narrow streets of Ishpeming and Negaunee, Michigan. Perhaps the many characters and fragments of stories within my mind are searching for a home, and only need a single glimpse, enough time to press the negative against the shutter in my mind and imprint it there, like a painting against a sun-bleached wall removed to expose the wallpaper's original beauty beneath.
Whether or not you knew Google Maps could in fact be so benefactory towards one writer's inspiration, I hope you found something useful in tonight's blog post. Also, I hope you - whether you are an old house fanatic or not - take a moment to peruse Google Maps. Where, you ask? Well, it could be your hometown, your parent's hometown, a friend's house, a former home of yours or your parent's. Or just type in a random address and see where it takes you. Why not? If you're like me, you'll have days stretching ahead of you in an endless, unbroken line like empty clothing lines in winter bending with the wind, aching for that first weight of an airy, floral blouse, aching for a purpose again rather than just a thin reminder of summer shivering in the chilled air. Or even just open up Google Maps and peruse the myriad endless streets of a small town or sprawling city and listen to your mind to see which street strikes your fancy. After all, that's how I found both the modest, white farmhouse and the large, three-story Victorian that I am currently forming stories around. It's like a virtual road trip on the Internet! And if you're like me and don't have a car, it's the next best thing. Perfect with a cup of hot chocolate and a friend to discuss the old houses you'll spot along the way, I might add. ;)
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Oh the indignities you'll suffer!
Warning to all readers: this week's blog post will confirm once and for all my all-encompassing, all-consuming obsession and passion with old houses. Maybe you already knew that, but this time I think I've outdone myself. Just to let you know ahead of time, you've been warned!
With that out of the way, let me fill you all in on the way I spend my evenings here on campus at UW Green-Bay as the semester winds down and I find myself with an empty afternoon filled with the promise of only...studying. What do I do you ask? Well, realizing I had an 'old houses itch' I decided to scope out different real estate websites in my hometown of Sheboygan and look up some old houses for sale in the area. (Now you understand why I put the disclaimer in the beginning, don't you?) I don't know if I've mentioned this before but most of Sheboygan's old houses are clustered on the northside, and I unfortunately - and fortunately, depending on which way you look at it - live on the southside, so the only time I get to really peruse these collections at the slow pace I desire, is to 1) Ride my bike over there, 2) Go on real estate websites or 3) Go on google maps. Yes, I have done number's two and three very frequently, and when I'm home I also enjoy watching the real estate channel. Like the billions of people in the world, there's also myriad varieties of houses out there, both young and old, and it never ceases to amaze me how completely different they all are.
What does amaze me however is how old houses can change over the centuries they've been planted in the same spot. Now I know I've talked about how owners can completely defile the age of their homes by 'remodeling' them when what their really doing is applying a facade of vinyl siding, vinyl window casings, carpet and paint. But this blog post will be a little different. And it involves my reactions to most of the old houses I eagerly clicked on, on various real estate websites only to be plummeted back to earth with a mocking laugh and pointing finger, and a voice in my head that said "did you really expect those houses to portray their original character? You know what happens to most old houses these days right? Why do you keep believing the best of people??"
Like the nut I am, I answered my own question, and replied "well, there's got to be some hope left, isn't there? I mean, I'm sure there are still old houses out there, dilapidated or not, that look more or less the same today as when they were first built. There must be people out there that don't drag their old houses kicking and screaming into the 21st century from head to foot, but actually stand there on the threshold and ask themselves "why am I adding this white paint to this luxurious cherry woodwork? Why am I carpeting the stairs? Why am I doing this, why am I doing that?"
Now I could be cynical and say that the only reason old house owners are doing such atrocities is because the owners next to them are doing it, or it brings a better resale value. So what? People want old houses nowadays that look like new houses but yet still have that age and old house feel? I can't wrap my head around that, if it is indeed true. Are people ashamed of the dark woodwork, the antique wallpaper, the scarred wooden floors that they feel so compelled to cover them up with layers of the 21st century? Now again, maybe I take such a stance against such layering, if you will, because I'm the type of person that wants an old house that's falling apart so just a breath pent up from its early days and a cracking fieldstone foundation are all that's holding it up. I want the leaking, wooden windows, the creaking and sagging floorboards. I don't care if my house is dysfunctional or the paint has been stripped from the siding until the wooden planks are gray and brown like the once thick and tousled coat of a trusted family dog who's now slowing down and graying around the edges, though he tries to hide it. Is that what all these owners are trying to do? Blend in their old houses with all the new copy-and-paste facades of new houses until its this uninterrupted glossy sea of perfection without a ripple to be found?
I hope I'm not getting cynical again, but perhaps you can see the bone such an issue has been chiseling at ever since I fell in love with old houses in middle school. But, I digress. Let us move on the real topic of today's blog post, which involves the story behind the title: "Oh the indignities you'll suffer!"
You see, while I was disappointed with old house after old house that looked promising on the outside but whose facade was really just a thin eggshell disguising the sometimes meticulous but more often sloppy and unsightly remodel job that shredded its historic heart and buried the pieces in discrete corners, where they would forever pump feebly, searching for that single vein that served them well but for reasons unknown has been severed. Oh dear, here come the metaphors. Well, perhaps I could have put up another warning: "Talking about old houses will cause me to inadvertently revert to complicated and rambling metaphors and pinnings. I realize the sentences can get long, and I'd like to think that I'm working on that, but the truth is I'm not." I'll just stop there, otherwise this blog post will be a series of warnings, instead of what I intended to talk about! Then again, do I really ever talk about what I really intended to? That would mean that I was in control of what goes on paper, and we all know that's not true. My fingers are merely mediums that are guided by my thought process. It's like sitting down at a type writer, poising your fingers over the keys when all of a sudden a rogue gust of wind billows through the open windows and beings typing frantically, leaving you just sitting there, watching the keys form on the paper at a rapid pace. Then all at once its gone, and you're left reading the words before you, wondering where to pick up, wondering where they came from.
The metaphor train has taken me away once again, but I'm back at the station, ready to board the train I intended to. I promise! While I was looking at all of those old houses on the real estate sites in Sheboygan, I couldn't help but think that just as parents sit down with their children before significant transitions in their lives and explain to them what it coming and prepare them for it, perhaps old house elders should sit down with younger old houses and explain to them the horrors they'll endure throughout the centuries.
You might be thinking, well, that's not odd at all. I mean, it's not like old houses are living people or anything. They're just a combination of wood, insulation, glass and nails. And you'd be right of course, but in my mind each and every old house is as alive as you and me. So the metaphor works. Imagine a sprawling Victorian perched atop a hill in a smallish town on a quiet street. It's one of the oldest in the neighborhood, built in 1860. Next to it is a smaller Victorian with only a two-story turret, versus the elder's three-story turret. The smaller Victorian was built in 1906, fairly new by my standards, but still intriguing nonetheless. Together they are surrounded by what is considered their town's historical neighborhood, with houses ranging in years from 1860 to the 1920's, whom all of the houses consider the youth around them and constantly snicker at their inexperience, but yet provide timeless wisdom nonetheless. After all, some of them were built by the same families and consider themselves as closely a knit family as the people who dwell within them. But anyway, more on the family history later.
Say the small Victorian and the big Victorian have been watching a new family move into a circa 1928 Bungalow, one of the youngest houses on the block. Despite its compact size everyone has always admired the traditional craftsman details like the broad, deep porch, inviting porch swing, the leaded mullions in the windows and the decorative details surrounding the original windows. Although personally the younger Victorian dislikes - like myself in a way - the sharpened corners and block designs of the bungalow, whereas it bears the sinuous curves and arches of the Victorian period. Within a few weeks of the bungalow being occupied again, the two Victorians begin to notice subtle changes within it.
Whereas once the pale morning sunlight would fall through those leaded diamond mullions and onto the richly hued staircase, highlighting the meticulously dusted craftsman-style staircase and the high wainscoting along the walls with its deep chair rail and dentil moulding...now the sun seems to shrink back at the white paint adorning the balusters and banister, as well as the wainscoting. Soon even the window frame itself is shrouded in white paint, leaving the sun no deeply textured wood grain to accentuate. The sun can no longer have any fun in that part of the house, the elder Victorian thinks with a scoff. The younger Victorian just shakes its head.
Just as the elder Victorian feared, carpet soon sprouts up on top of the polished wooden floorboards like some exotic form of fungi that is both beautiful and repelling to different eyes who gaze upon it. Any wallpaper bearing a hint of color is stripped from the plastered walls, and neutral paint colors are applied. Now the sun won't even have all those colors to fade some more, it won't have all those textures and filigree to caress. It will be met instead with a blank facade of insipid color. That house will become a stranger to the sun, soon enough, the elder Victorian thinks. I barely recognize it myself anymore. Once again it shakes its head.
"If those are the colors, textures and fabrics of this century," the younger Victorian tells the elder Victorian with a hint of a tremor as well as distaste in its voice, "then I don't ever want to feel such fungi on my floorboards, or watch my original wallpaper be stripped in favor of that bland paint slapped on my walls. Its like painting the ocean a dull white so you can't see any further than the surface, and that carpet is like blocking anyone from going deeper than the surface, never able to discover the history and inimitable beauty within it. They're erasing its character that was meticulously built into it, as well as built up by time, and the sun. The sun doesn't want anything to do with that house anymore, but yet it still lingers on the porch swing, and outside the windows, for there the house is still itself. But it's only a shell, and the sun knows that. Just like the painted ocean, if you keep that layer on long enough what time has lovingly caressed will fall away and all that will be left is the false wall erected by those who thought they were performing a favor. When really it only made the house the pity of the neighborhood, another brought to its knees at the bloodied hands of the 21st century, made to look like a thousand houses cut from the same mold. Some body should have warned it what it would go through."
"I've suffered many indignities in my day," answers the elder Victorian. Looking up, the young Victorian shields its eyes against the sun which has momentarily turned its back on the bungalow and focused upon the two of them. "I've lived through the roaring twenties, the ugly patterns and colors of the sixties, the impersonal modernity of the eighties and now here I stand, more or less intact. On all three floors I might add. I've been divided into apartments in the fifties, when a suitable owner couldn't be found that would accept my sprawling labyrinth of rooms and floors with open arms. I've had my woodwork painted more than once, my bathrooms tiled and tiled again with a horror of different colors. My kitchen, oh my kitchen has taken the brunt of it. First it was the budget cabinets with their smooth white fronts and plastic handles, then it was the pathetic attempt at modernity in the seventies, as well as the influx of flamboyantly colored furniture. Most of these people had complete disregard for my history, let me tell you. They saw me as a blank slate that they could paint anything they wanted onto, both meticulously and carelessly, rather than see it as a chance for me to make an impression upon them."
"Does every old house learn of such incidents before them?" The young Victorian asks. The elder Victorian chuckles, its sagging floorboards creaking and its wavy windowpanes in original windows distorting the world in glorious ripples. Like ripples of wrinkled skin, the younger Victorian thinks, catching a glimpse of its freshly painted siding in the reflections of the windowpanes. "No," the elder Victorian answers, "some of them don't. But they all should. Just look at the bungalow over there. It had no idea it would be the next on the block to fall into the mold so many owners are forcing their old houses into these days. They shove, they hack, they cut, they paint, they layer, they do anything they can to shove them into that mold. It seems they'll stop at nothing and yet they still insist the history, the character of the house is there. Well I say if you tear out the beginning and end of a story without reading the entire thing, and then attempt to rewrite both and expect them to comply with the story in its entirety, there's no way the story will be anything remotely similar to the original. Yet that's what these owners expect, and the sad part is, most people believe it."
"There's one thing I don't understand though," the young Victorian says. "I've had an outdated kitchen since the 1940's, and my linoleum is an unsightly burnt orange and yellow that's bubbling in some places. My baseboards, treads and banisters are all worn in spots from centuries of dirty shoes and hands upon them. My windows barely contain winter's chill, my past owners are always grumbling about the drafts coming through and the high heating bills. Every one of my floorboards creak and none of my walls are plumb...yet none of these has been corrected, and all of my owners have celebrated these imperfections. Why are houses like the bungalow, who are much younger than me, stripped so abruptly of their history and coated with a thick layer of perfection while I...remain as I was?"
"You're one of the lucky ones kid," the elder Victorian answers, chuckling again. "There are a precious few people who embrace such imperfections as yours...and mine." It have been the sun still hovering above them, but the younger Victorian thought it saw the elder wink from its third-story Palladian windows. "They love the creaky floorboards, the scarred woodwork that's a darker shade than the preferred lighter shade of most houses. They delight at the blatant lack of cabinet space and the bubbly linoleum that's a kaleidoscope of colors that if you look hard enough will take you straight back to the 1940's, when it was all the rage. Both you and I, kid, have been lucky to have such people living within us, and preserving our history, rather than hack away at it like the poor bungalow across the street. Let us hope that for the rest of the centuries we're permitted to sit quietly on this lovely street and enjoy small town life, that we continue to attract such owners. Because I'm telling you, when I see more and more houses along this street get turned, it cuts me deep, deeper than my sinking field stone foundation below me. I don't remember the day I was built, but I do know from talk in the 1920's that I was at one time the most elegant and large Victorian in this town, you were built in my image, did you know that?"
The young Victorian looks up at the elder Victorian soaring a story above it, and smiles. "I do know, yes. And I am honored, for I too bear the testament of my years proudly, and like a limping ship coming into the harbor have a hard-won battle, I am celebrated for my tenacity against time and my embracing of at the same time. That's the true balance at the heart of every old isn't it? Finding that balance between warding off the damages of time, yet embracing it the same, for to stop fighting it would spell disaster like the abandoned Federal home five houses down, but to embrace it too much would mean a lethal crossing over of the threshold...and I'd end up like the bungalow."
"You are wise for your young age," The elder Victorian praises. "I have taught you well. And yes, you are correct. That is the balance all old houses must face when they reach a certain age. You and I, we've been blessed with owners who have made that balance easier for us. Let's hope we'll find such people once again."
"And soon," the younger Victorian adds with a smile, glancing at the 'for sale' sign planted deep into its sprawling yard, the sign swinging back and forth in the slight summer breeze. It couldn't help but notice how the sign swung in tandem with the porch swing hanging from the bungalow's porch. Its smile broadened when it noticed a tentative ray of sun stretched out on the swing, casting finger-like shadows upon the paint-peeling floorboards of the porch. You'll go back inside one day, it thinks, watching the sun a moment longer before closing its eyes contentedly against its warmth. The bungalow will find that balance. We all will.
With that out of the way, let me fill you all in on the way I spend my evenings here on campus at UW Green-Bay as the semester winds down and I find myself with an empty afternoon filled with the promise of only...studying. What do I do you ask? Well, realizing I had an 'old houses itch' I decided to scope out different real estate websites in my hometown of Sheboygan and look up some old houses for sale in the area. (Now you understand why I put the disclaimer in the beginning, don't you?) I don't know if I've mentioned this before but most of Sheboygan's old houses are clustered on the northside, and I unfortunately - and fortunately, depending on which way you look at it - live on the southside, so the only time I get to really peruse these collections at the slow pace I desire, is to 1) Ride my bike over there, 2) Go on real estate websites or 3) Go on google maps. Yes, I have done number's two and three very frequently, and when I'm home I also enjoy watching the real estate channel. Like the billions of people in the world, there's also myriad varieties of houses out there, both young and old, and it never ceases to amaze me how completely different they all are.
What does amaze me however is how old houses can change over the centuries they've been planted in the same spot. Now I know I've talked about how owners can completely defile the age of their homes by 'remodeling' them when what their really doing is applying a facade of vinyl siding, vinyl window casings, carpet and paint. But this blog post will be a little different. And it involves my reactions to most of the old houses I eagerly clicked on, on various real estate websites only to be plummeted back to earth with a mocking laugh and pointing finger, and a voice in my head that said "did you really expect those houses to portray their original character? You know what happens to most old houses these days right? Why do you keep believing the best of people??"
Like the nut I am, I answered my own question, and replied "well, there's got to be some hope left, isn't there? I mean, I'm sure there are still old houses out there, dilapidated or not, that look more or less the same today as when they were first built. There must be people out there that don't drag their old houses kicking and screaming into the 21st century from head to foot, but actually stand there on the threshold and ask themselves "why am I adding this white paint to this luxurious cherry woodwork? Why am I carpeting the stairs? Why am I doing this, why am I doing that?"
Now I could be cynical and say that the only reason old house owners are doing such atrocities is because the owners next to them are doing it, or it brings a better resale value. So what? People want old houses nowadays that look like new houses but yet still have that age and old house feel? I can't wrap my head around that, if it is indeed true. Are people ashamed of the dark woodwork, the antique wallpaper, the scarred wooden floors that they feel so compelled to cover them up with layers of the 21st century? Now again, maybe I take such a stance against such layering, if you will, because I'm the type of person that wants an old house that's falling apart so just a breath pent up from its early days and a cracking fieldstone foundation are all that's holding it up. I want the leaking, wooden windows, the creaking and sagging floorboards. I don't care if my house is dysfunctional or the paint has been stripped from the siding until the wooden planks are gray and brown like the once thick and tousled coat of a trusted family dog who's now slowing down and graying around the edges, though he tries to hide it. Is that what all these owners are trying to do? Blend in their old houses with all the new copy-and-paste facades of new houses until its this uninterrupted glossy sea of perfection without a ripple to be found?
I hope I'm not getting cynical again, but perhaps you can see the bone such an issue has been chiseling at ever since I fell in love with old houses in middle school. But, I digress. Let us move on the real topic of today's blog post, which involves the story behind the title: "Oh the indignities you'll suffer!"
You see, while I was disappointed with old house after old house that looked promising on the outside but whose facade was really just a thin eggshell disguising the sometimes meticulous but more often sloppy and unsightly remodel job that shredded its historic heart and buried the pieces in discrete corners, where they would forever pump feebly, searching for that single vein that served them well but for reasons unknown has been severed. Oh dear, here come the metaphors. Well, perhaps I could have put up another warning: "Talking about old houses will cause me to inadvertently revert to complicated and rambling metaphors and pinnings. I realize the sentences can get long, and I'd like to think that I'm working on that, but the truth is I'm not." I'll just stop there, otherwise this blog post will be a series of warnings, instead of what I intended to talk about! Then again, do I really ever talk about what I really intended to? That would mean that I was in control of what goes on paper, and we all know that's not true. My fingers are merely mediums that are guided by my thought process. It's like sitting down at a type writer, poising your fingers over the keys when all of a sudden a rogue gust of wind billows through the open windows and beings typing frantically, leaving you just sitting there, watching the keys form on the paper at a rapid pace. Then all at once its gone, and you're left reading the words before you, wondering where to pick up, wondering where they came from.
The metaphor train has taken me away once again, but I'm back at the station, ready to board the train I intended to. I promise! While I was looking at all of those old houses on the real estate sites in Sheboygan, I couldn't help but think that just as parents sit down with their children before significant transitions in their lives and explain to them what it coming and prepare them for it, perhaps old house elders should sit down with younger old houses and explain to them the horrors they'll endure throughout the centuries.
You might be thinking, well, that's not odd at all. I mean, it's not like old houses are living people or anything. They're just a combination of wood, insulation, glass and nails. And you'd be right of course, but in my mind each and every old house is as alive as you and me. So the metaphor works. Imagine a sprawling Victorian perched atop a hill in a smallish town on a quiet street. It's one of the oldest in the neighborhood, built in 1860. Next to it is a smaller Victorian with only a two-story turret, versus the elder's three-story turret. The smaller Victorian was built in 1906, fairly new by my standards, but still intriguing nonetheless. Together they are surrounded by what is considered their town's historical neighborhood, with houses ranging in years from 1860 to the 1920's, whom all of the houses consider the youth around them and constantly snicker at their inexperience, but yet provide timeless wisdom nonetheless. After all, some of them were built by the same families and consider themselves as closely a knit family as the people who dwell within them. But anyway, more on the family history later.
Say the small Victorian and the big Victorian have been watching a new family move into a circa 1928 Bungalow, one of the youngest houses on the block. Despite its compact size everyone has always admired the traditional craftsman details like the broad, deep porch, inviting porch swing, the leaded mullions in the windows and the decorative details surrounding the original windows. Although personally the younger Victorian dislikes - like myself in a way - the sharpened corners and block designs of the bungalow, whereas it bears the sinuous curves and arches of the Victorian period. Within a few weeks of the bungalow being occupied again, the two Victorians begin to notice subtle changes within it.
Whereas once the pale morning sunlight would fall through those leaded diamond mullions and onto the richly hued staircase, highlighting the meticulously dusted craftsman-style staircase and the high wainscoting along the walls with its deep chair rail and dentil moulding...now the sun seems to shrink back at the white paint adorning the balusters and banister, as well as the wainscoting. Soon even the window frame itself is shrouded in white paint, leaving the sun no deeply textured wood grain to accentuate. The sun can no longer have any fun in that part of the house, the elder Victorian thinks with a scoff. The younger Victorian just shakes its head.
Just as the elder Victorian feared, carpet soon sprouts up on top of the polished wooden floorboards like some exotic form of fungi that is both beautiful and repelling to different eyes who gaze upon it. Any wallpaper bearing a hint of color is stripped from the plastered walls, and neutral paint colors are applied. Now the sun won't even have all those colors to fade some more, it won't have all those textures and filigree to caress. It will be met instead with a blank facade of insipid color. That house will become a stranger to the sun, soon enough, the elder Victorian thinks. I barely recognize it myself anymore. Once again it shakes its head.
"If those are the colors, textures and fabrics of this century," the younger Victorian tells the elder Victorian with a hint of a tremor as well as distaste in its voice, "then I don't ever want to feel such fungi on my floorboards, or watch my original wallpaper be stripped in favor of that bland paint slapped on my walls. Its like painting the ocean a dull white so you can't see any further than the surface, and that carpet is like blocking anyone from going deeper than the surface, never able to discover the history and inimitable beauty within it. They're erasing its character that was meticulously built into it, as well as built up by time, and the sun. The sun doesn't want anything to do with that house anymore, but yet it still lingers on the porch swing, and outside the windows, for there the house is still itself. But it's only a shell, and the sun knows that. Just like the painted ocean, if you keep that layer on long enough what time has lovingly caressed will fall away and all that will be left is the false wall erected by those who thought they were performing a favor. When really it only made the house the pity of the neighborhood, another brought to its knees at the bloodied hands of the 21st century, made to look like a thousand houses cut from the same mold. Some body should have warned it what it would go through."
"I've suffered many indignities in my day," answers the elder Victorian. Looking up, the young Victorian shields its eyes against the sun which has momentarily turned its back on the bungalow and focused upon the two of them. "I've lived through the roaring twenties, the ugly patterns and colors of the sixties, the impersonal modernity of the eighties and now here I stand, more or less intact. On all three floors I might add. I've been divided into apartments in the fifties, when a suitable owner couldn't be found that would accept my sprawling labyrinth of rooms and floors with open arms. I've had my woodwork painted more than once, my bathrooms tiled and tiled again with a horror of different colors. My kitchen, oh my kitchen has taken the brunt of it. First it was the budget cabinets with their smooth white fronts and plastic handles, then it was the pathetic attempt at modernity in the seventies, as well as the influx of flamboyantly colored furniture. Most of these people had complete disregard for my history, let me tell you. They saw me as a blank slate that they could paint anything they wanted onto, both meticulously and carelessly, rather than see it as a chance for me to make an impression upon them."
"Does every old house learn of such incidents before them?" The young Victorian asks. The elder Victorian chuckles, its sagging floorboards creaking and its wavy windowpanes in original windows distorting the world in glorious ripples. Like ripples of wrinkled skin, the younger Victorian thinks, catching a glimpse of its freshly painted siding in the reflections of the windowpanes. "No," the elder Victorian answers, "some of them don't. But they all should. Just look at the bungalow over there. It had no idea it would be the next on the block to fall into the mold so many owners are forcing their old houses into these days. They shove, they hack, they cut, they paint, they layer, they do anything they can to shove them into that mold. It seems they'll stop at nothing and yet they still insist the history, the character of the house is there. Well I say if you tear out the beginning and end of a story without reading the entire thing, and then attempt to rewrite both and expect them to comply with the story in its entirety, there's no way the story will be anything remotely similar to the original. Yet that's what these owners expect, and the sad part is, most people believe it."
"There's one thing I don't understand though," the young Victorian says. "I've had an outdated kitchen since the 1940's, and my linoleum is an unsightly burnt orange and yellow that's bubbling in some places. My baseboards, treads and banisters are all worn in spots from centuries of dirty shoes and hands upon them. My windows barely contain winter's chill, my past owners are always grumbling about the drafts coming through and the high heating bills. Every one of my floorboards creak and none of my walls are plumb...yet none of these has been corrected, and all of my owners have celebrated these imperfections. Why are houses like the bungalow, who are much younger than me, stripped so abruptly of their history and coated with a thick layer of perfection while I...remain as I was?"
"You're one of the lucky ones kid," the elder Victorian answers, chuckling again. "There are a precious few people who embrace such imperfections as yours...and mine." It have been the sun still hovering above them, but the younger Victorian thought it saw the elder wink from its third-story Palladian windows. "They love the creaky floorboards, the scarred woodwork that's a darker shade than the preferred lighter shade of most houses. They delight at the blatant lack of cabinet space and the bubbly linoleum that's a kaleidoscope of colors that if you look hard enough will take you straight back to the 1940's, when it was all the rage. Both you and I, kid, have been lucky to have such people living within us, and preserving our history, rather than hack away at it like the poor bungalow across the street. Let us hope that for the rest of the centuries we're permitted to sit quietly on this lovely street and enjoy small town life, that we continue to attract such owners. Because I'm telling you, when I see more and more houses along this street get turned, it cuts me deep, deeper than my sinking field stone foundation below me. I don't remember the day I was built, but I do know from talk in the 1920's that I was at one time the most elegant and large Victorian in this town, you were built in my image, did you know that?"
The young Victorian looks up at the elder Victorian soaring a story above it, and smiles. "I do know, yes. And I am honored, for I too bear the testament of my years proudly, and like a limping ship coming into the harbor have a hard-won battle, I am celebrated for my tenacity against time and my embracing of at the same time. That's the true balance at the heart of every old isn't it? Finding that balance between warding off the damages of time, yet embracing it the same, for to stop fighting it would spell disaster like the abandoned Federal home five houses down, but to embrace it too much would mean a lethal crossing over of the threshold...and I'd end up like the bungalow."
"You are wise for your young age," The elder Victorian praises. "I have taught you well. And yes, you are correct. That is the balance all old houses must face when they reach a certain age. You and I, we've been blessed with owners who have made that balance easier for us. Let's hope we'll find such people once again."
"And soon," the younger Victorian adds with a smile, glancing at the 'for sale' sign planted deep into its sprawling yard, the sign swinging back and forth in the slight summer breeze. It couldn't help but notice how the sign swung in tandem with the porch swing hanging from the bungalow's porch. Its smile broadened when it noticed a tentative ray of sun stretched out on the swing, casting finger-like shadows upon the paint-peeling floorboards of the porch. You'll go back inside one day, it thinks, watching the sun a moment longer before closing its eyes contentedly against its warmth. The bungalow will find that balance. We all will.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The moon, the sun and other things.
Ahh yes, a couple of weeks ago - well, considering how long it's been since my last blog post, obviously more than that but...I'm splitting hairs - I posed the rhetorical question that perhaps I write, about writing too much. But then shoved aside the question with a resounding 'no', because after all, it is the central part of me, defining so much of who I am that to deny it it's unique voice upon the white screen of this box would be like denying more than ninety-percent of myself. The writer within me, just like my obsession and fascination with old houses, always find a way to leak into whatever I'm writing about every Wednesday. Such, I concluded then in that one-way argument with myself that I needn't worry about writing too much about...writing! For there is always something new and refreshing to say, like waking up every morning and seeing a different bird perched on the branch directly outside your window, greeting you with a new trilling song that makes the pale morning fingers of light even more bouyant, until it seems you could blow them away like the deepening rays of afternoon brush away nighttime's fog and dew.
Someday perhaps I should delve into exactly why it is I fall again and again onto the brittle and breathless morning atmosphere by way of metaphor's and similies. God knows I've never woken up early enough to see a sunrise - at least not any that I can remember as clearly as those my imagination paints gleefully in my head - and I consider myself a part-time morning and night person, so it's not like I wake up embracing the morning like a lawyer facing snarled traffic in a few hours hugs their first cup of coffee to their chest, willing it to give them patience, and every thing else they couldn't possibly acquire until much cups of coffee later. But yet in many of my novellas, 'story-thoughts' and poems alike, my voice wanders to that broad room slumbering behind one of the myriad closed, six-panel wooden doors along the corridor of my imagination, flings it open and delights at the images and words abounding, picking and choosing or sometimes reaching up with a fistful into those haphazardly dancing blizzards within the delicate forks of light.
Sunlight is also a fascination of mine, I've noticed. Like the metaphor's above are testimate, so is the fact that during my frigid walk back to my apartment on campus after my last class I admired the very tops of the barren trees where the sun was hitting them, bleaching them in that particular golden hue of late evening, while the rest of the tree was shrouded in the indifferent, snickering shadow of winter. I've also figured out that the earliest reachings of morning's light, as well as its dying rays of late evening are what captivate me most. All of these rays are from the same sun, yet some barley carry enough heat to wittle away at the laden fog like deft fingers weaving a new and beautiful color over a pitfully faded shade, while others burn in that intensity that can only come as death creeps closer. The sun casts its fingers outward, perhaps gripping the barren tree tops or the elegant slope of hills for a final grasp on the land it has bathed again and again, even as the one-eyed moon regards it from its steadily rising perch, those golden hues hang on, deepening, deeping, flooding color into the same dark shade, extracting color from the earth to fuel itself, until that hollow stare tumbles down, ebbing away the heat of the evening.
I also, as you've probably noticed, have a magnetic literary pull towards the moon, and nighttime in general. I actually wrote a poem a few years back about the peculiarity I have of coming up with some of my most vivid and captivating poetry at night, when the world is in slumber, but my mind is running, racing, skipping and skating across the sloping, wide-plank floorboards of my imagination, keeping me awake and restless with the ever-increasing creaks and groans it emits. And one again, old house metaphors have snuck their way in through the back door, twining themselves so seamlessly with my words and every day writing and thoughts that I don't notice they are there until I step back and examine such metaphors.
Perhaps though, old houses and writing have always gone together. Or is it just my mind that melds them so indelibly? I can't help but think back to Robert Frost, who lived his life high in the New England countryside, buried within sparkling blankets of snow, writing his poetry so treasured today, treasured by me as well. Why I cling to Frost as my favorite poet, I do not know. Although I could give you guesses: because he writes so unfailingly about the countryside, because his poems aren't so ambiguous that I feel I can at least find a somewhat sturdy foothold along their sheer and smooth rock facades and also perhaps because I was too lazy or uninterested to delve into the many other American poets offered to me throughout my school days and chose to stick with Frost, because he was so widespread and appreciated.
I'll admit, I've never been one for reading poetry. There's something irksome to me about the ambiguous, seemingly lofty language poets speak in that offsets me. Granted, Frost himself isn't omitted from such a group, some of his poems fall into the category of a raised-eyebrow and titled head struggling to inch the ball of reason or meager understanding even a breadth closer along the sloping, constantly weighted floorboards of our knowledge both our own and others. But for me, perhaps the fact that he writes about the countryside and its many flapping and fluttering layers of lives and tales overrides that ambiguity. Or, as I've realized in the back of my mind somewhere, the fact that he is so associated with New England - a place that has captivated me since I have loved old houses - has earned him a sturdy string woven deep into the fabric of my heart.
I can guess, that for however much I balk at the mysterious language of both yesterday's and today's poets, that some of my own poetry falls directly in step with the poems I shake my head at. For instance, I think of the first poem I wrote about my hometown, Sheboygan, WI. I had intended it to be free-verse, like most of my other poems, but instead it morphed itself almost by will into a form I had made up, which is three lines of three words and three lines of one word, which would be six lines in each stanza. The super-condensed form forced me to condense what I wanted to say, and thus the end result was something completely shrouded by fragmented memories that rose to the surface about my hometown. I know what they all mean of course, but after having my parents and brother read my poem, I was met with the same expression I have doubtlessly given many poems I've had to read for school.
Which leads me to thinking, do the authors of such poems know how truly complex they are? Do they choose such privileged language for the same purpose I did? Because they knew that sometimes - in rare cases in my opinion! - forms actually say more efficiently what you couldn't say within the boundless confines of free-verse? Sometimes we need fences, I am beginning to understand, when it comes to our writing. For sometimes the Mustang captured amidst the sprawling, reddened facade of the Nevada plains is in more free struggling against the foreign sensation of a saddle and bridle because he has escaped the danger of the predator, both in the animal and in the government. Also, are such poets, when met with all these equally ambitious interpretations of their poems, find humor in them? Or endless inspiration to create more work than can, somewhat ironically, produce so many views in all of us as we as a society view each poem through a kaleidoscope, inevitably influenced by those around us, as well as what society has gingerly sprouted and nurtured within us.
Reflecting on all of this, it's all beginning to seem eerily similar to the lectures my English professor gives at my college, UW Green-Bay. After all, am I not talking about the many ways we can study literature, and interpret it? Only unlike sitting in my English classes, my mind isn't running away without looking back to the refuge of my imagination where it can frolic amidst words that don't make me stumble and knit my brow, amidst ideas and characters that aren't totally unrelatible or coax sleep to my side like luring a stray kitten out of the woods, slowly but with a barely contained eagerness. No, I haven't fallen asleep in class, but I do admit to some head bobbing and momentary closing of the eyes. But in my defense, when I don't find something interesting in the least, I supplement my time in English class by writing songs and poems, and have been satisfied with them all. Sure it's not a creative writing class, but it's better than sleeping right?
You may not believe me, after reading this, but I had indeed intended to talk about music when I sat down to write this blog an hour ago. Perhaps I will leave that for next week. Or, like all those times before my mind has dared to step over the threshold of the sun-faded, familiar room and crossed that narrow hallway into another, that dominant side of myself will jerk it back, or perhaps just lightly tap it on the shoulder as its fingers fly over the clicking typewriter keys, daring itself all along not to find those inevitable connections, don't find them, don't look...just write.
But that's what leads me to talking about writing and old houses, isn't it? The act of 'just writing'. But if these are the places that such an act takes me, then may I always have a pencil in my hand, or at least a droning English class to use as a convenient backdrop to filter out the tumult of the world and step over that threshold into places I myself have never been, but my imagination knows well, and beckons to me eagerly, sometimes pulling me inward, sometimes patiently waiting. But always waiting nonetheless, greeting me with a new faded mural upon the walls every time.
Someday perhaps I should delve into exactly why it is I fall again and again onto the brittle and breathless morning atmosphere by way of metaphor's and similies. God knows I've never woken up early enough to see a sunrise - at least not any that I can remember as clearly as those my imagination paints gleefully in my head - and I consider myself a part-time morning and night person, so it's not like I wake up embracing the morning like a lawyer facing snarled traffic in a few hours hugs their first cup of coffee to their chest, willing it to give them patience, and every thing else they couldn't possibly acquire until much cups of coffee later. But yet in many of my novellas, 'story-thoughts' and poems alike, my voice wanders to that broad room slumbering behind one of the myriad closed, six-panel wooden doors along the corridor of my imagination, flings it open and delights at the images and words abounding, picking and choosing or sometimes reaching up with a fistful into those haphazardly dancing blizzards within the delicate forks of light.
Sunlight is also a fascination of mine, I've noticed. Like the metaphor's above are testimate, so is the fact that during my frigid walk back to my apartment on campus after my last class I admired the very tops of the barren trees where the sun was hitting them, bleaching them in that particular golden hue of late evening, while the rest of the tree was shrouded in the indifferent, snickering shadow of winter. I've also figured out that the earliest reachings of morning's light, as well as its dying rays of late evening are what captivate me most. All of these rays are from the same sun, yet some barley carry enough heat to wittle away at the laden fog like deft fingers weaving a new and beautiful color over a pitfully faded shade, while others burn in that intensity that can only come as death creeps closer. The sun casts its fingers outward, perhaps gripping the barren tree tops or the elegant slope of hills for a final grasp on the land it has bathed again and again, even as the one-eyed moon regards it from its steadily rising perch, those golden hues hang on, deepening, deeping, flooding color into the same dark shade, extracting color from the earth to fuel itself, until that hollow stare tumbles down, ebbing away the heat of the evening.
I also, as you've probably noticed, have a magnetic literary pull towards the moon, and nighttime in general. I actually wrote a poem a few years back about the peculiarity I have of coming up with some of my most vivid and captivating poetry at night, when the world is in slumber, but my mind is running, racing, skipping and skating across the sloping, wide-plank floorboards of my imagination, keeping me awake and restless with the ever-increasing creaks and groans it emits. And one again, old house metaphors have snuck their way in through the back door, twining themselves so seamlessly with my words and every day writing and thoughts that I don't notice they are there until I step back and examine such metaphors.
Perhaps though, old houses and writing have always gone together. Or is it just my mind that melds them so indelibly? I can't help but think back to Robert Frost, who lived his life high in the New England countryside, buried within sparkling blankets of snow, writing his poetry so treasured today, treasured by me as well. Why I cling to Frost as my favorite poet, I do not know. Although I could give you guesses: because he writes so unfailingly about the countryside, because his poems aren't so ambiguous that I feel I can at least find a somewhat sturdy foothold along their sheer and smooth rock facades and also perhaps because I was too lazy or uninterested to delve into the many other American poets offered to me throughout my school days and chose to stick with Frost, because he was so widespread and appreciated.
I'll admit, I've never been one for reading poetry. There's something irksome to me about the ambiguous, seemingly lofty language poets speak in that offsets me. Granted, Frost himself isn't omitted from such a group, some of his poems fall into the category of a raised-eyebrow and titled head struggling to inch the ball of reason or meager understanding even a breadth closer along the sloping, constantly weighted floorboards of our knowledge both our own and others. But for me, perhaps the fact that he writes about the countryside and its many flapping and fluttering layers of lives and tales overrides that ambiguity. Or, as I've realized in the back of my mind somewhere, the fact that he is so associated with New England - a place that has captivated me since I have loved old houses - has earned him a sturdy string woven deep into the fabric of my heart.
I can guess, that for however much I balk at the mysterious language of both yesterday's and today's poets, that some of my own poetry falls directly in step with the poems I shake my head at. For instance, I think of the first poem I wrote about my hometown, Sheboygan, WI. I had intended it to be free-verse, like most of my other poems, but instead it morphed itself almost by will into a form I had made up, which is three lines of three words and three lines of one word, which would be six lines in each stanza. The super-condensed form forced me to condense what I wanted to say, and thus the end result was something completely shrouded by fragmented memories that rose to the surface about my hometown. I know what they all mean of course, but after having my parents and brother read my poem, I was met with the same expression I have doubtlessly given many poems I've had to read for school.
Which leads me to thinking, do the authors of such poems know how truly complex they are? Do they choose such privileged language for the same purpose I did? Because they knew that sometimes - in rare cases in my opinion! - forms actually say more efficiently what you couldn't say within the boundless confines of free-verse? Sometimes we need fences, I am beginning to understand, when it comes to our writing. For sometimes the Mustang captured amidst the sprawling, reddened facade of the Nevada plains is in more free struggling against the foreign sensation of a saddle and bridle because he has escaped the danger of the predator, both in the animal and in the government. Also, are such poets, when met with all these equally ambitious interpretations of their poems, find humor in them? Or endless inspiration to create more work than can, somewhat ironically, produce so many views in all of us as we as a society view each poem through a kaleidoscope, inevitably influenced by those around us, as well as what society has gingerly sprouted and nurtured within us.
Reflecting on all of this, it's all beginning to seem eerily similar to the lectures my English professor gives at my college, UW Green-Bay. After all, am I not talking about the many ways we can study literature, and interpret it? Only unlike sitting in my English classes, my mind isn't running away without looking back to the refuge of my imagination where it can frolic amidst words that don't make me stumble and knit my brow, amidst ideas and characters that aren't totally unrelatible or coax sleep to my side like luring a stray kitten out of the woods, slowly but with a barely contained eagerness. No, I haven't fallen asleep in class, but I do admit to some head bobbing and momentary closing of the eyes. But in my defense, when I don't find something interesting in the least, I supplement my time in English class by writing songs and poems, and have been satisfied with them all. Sure it's not a creative writing class, but it's better than sleeping right?
You may not believe me, after reading this, but I had indeed intended to talk about music when I sat down to write this blog an hour ago. Perhaps I will leave that for next week. Or, like all those times before my mind has dared to step over the threshold of the sun-faded, familiar room and crossed that narrow hallway into another, that dominant side of myself will jerk it back, or perhaps just lightly tap it on the shoulder as its fingers fly over the clicking typewriter keys, daring itself all along not to find those inevitable connections, don't find them, don't look...just write.
But that's what leads me to talking about writing and old houses, isn't it? The act of 'just writing'. But if these are the places that such an act takes me, then may I always have a pencil in my hand, or at least a droning English class to use as a convenient backdrop to filter out the tumult of the world and step over that threshold into places I myself have never been, but my imagination knows well, and beckons to me eagerly, sometimes pulling me inward, sometimes patiently waiting. But always waiting nonetheless, greeting me with a new faded mural upon the walls every time.
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