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Apr. 27th, 2022
took the day off for cleaning
Apr. 27th, 2022 09:47 pmIt's Living Room Week. Looks worse than when I started today, unless you go in the closet. Much progress in the closet, and with much of its contents.
I just opened a box that had baseball gloves in it, last few moves. Turned out it had a few old childhood things, which had probably been underneath the gloves. Last unvieled: a penant, in garish gold-orange, celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs' championship of 1969. Might see if anybody on eBay wants that, little tears & all. Will keep the K-State pennant and give the Air Force Academy and Kansas ones to the PTO Thrift. Also in that box: an easter bunny made out of a Leggs' egg--- could they just tell us to bring one of those eggs to school, the way they used to say it was going to be painting day, so bring in one of your dad's old shirts (which you'd wear backwards)? Or bring in old lightbulbs and we'll use paper mache to make maracas? We did things with milk cartons, too.
So also in the box were some rubbery ribbon things (red and pink and sort of translucent with inbedded glitter) that seemed instantly very familiar but took me a minute to place. Were they part of a pom-pom, or what? No, I realized, they were the streamers that used to adorn the ends of the handlebars of my bike, or maybe even trike.
Turned out, though, that the box also had a tchotchke that is responsible, I realize many years later, for my early theology---the part in which I thought God looked like an infant child, but with the bald head of a wise old man. So if he and Jesus were at the throne, it'd be this baby in the chair, and his tall bearded son standing next to it. Why do I think God looks this way? I used to ask myself. Then I realized it was the figurine of an angel on a cotton cloud that hung from a thread or piece of fishing lure from my grandmother's hall ceiling.
Well I guess my mom kept it when she went through Merl's stuff, cuz it came down to me. And ended up in that box. Later maybe I'll fluff out the cotton cloud and take a pic of it, at least, if not hoist its holiness up toward my own ceiling.
Earlier I pulled some art out of the closet. I think two paintings of my old salonmate Andreas's will go to the PTO, along with a print of an English cathedral that my folks had, and a framed "Aloha" surfer thing that may've been Holly's. Two detail-of-Botticelli paintings on wood that she had, though, are headed to Craigslist first, as is my dad's wood-mounted rubbing of Shakespeare's gravestone. Sure looks like he did the rubbing himself, but I'm not sure about that.
To my chagrin, it seems some tar-like schmutz has sullied my once-gf's self-portrait (done with her glasses off while looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, I wanna say in the middle of the night). She's topless in the view, but it's the one prominent hollow/bottomless black staring eyeball that always jumped out to me. My friend Lee Ann found it "creeepy". You can see, with the schmutz, and a detail of the schmutz (and brushstrokes), ( back here. )
I think I'm going to be able to get the tar off. Wonder what the hell it's from. A little early effort with an exacto knife, taking great care, seems to be paying off.
Sara's asked about her painting a few times, over the years. I'd sure like to restore it, and then maybe offer to return it to her. It was a gift, and it's not that I'm not grateful for it, despite allowing its sullying, somehow. But I'm de-acquisitioning, and doubt I'd put it up here. But don't want just to send it to a new home via the thrift.
I also pumped up my basketballs. Both the balls and the pump were in the closet. Have more I could go through that's in there, but I've cleaned the floor and can start putting stuff back in there. Guitar cases, the trombone, the box of rainbow flags (if I don't get the chorus to take them).
Those flags were for a 4th of July parade we marched in, with the local queer activist Jim Toy was the grand marshall. He just died this year. Read his obit today in the monthly local, on the way from the mailbox to the recycling bin. Our chorus is going to be part of a memorial for him, on the same evening as our first of two shows this spring. I liked him. He couldn't have told you my name, but we talked a few times as if he could. He was like that.
Before the pandemic we had a whole little Queer Central place in this burg, in a little strip between old houses that had, among them, the gay bookstore (relocated there when bought by the guys who owned) the gay bar & restaurant and the gay community center, renamed for Jim Toy. The little plaza, with its colorful flags and trees, was where everybody went after the Pulse shooting, and it was where everybody went after the gay marriage decision. Cuz even if you were one of us who thought marriage was lousy choice of political goal, along with the right to be in the military, it was a time of elation nonetheless.
Alas, all those queer entities are gone now, and I don't even want to go find out what's in their place.
Okay, time to put my feet up and watch dumb TV. Doesn't feel like a Wednesday. I took the day totally off. Feels like a Sunday on a long weekend, maybe. But back to work (from home) tomorrow.
I just opened a box that had baseball gloves in it, last few moves. Turned out it had a few old childhood things, which had probably been underneath the gloves. Last unvieled: a penant, in garish gold-orange, celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs' championship of 1969. Might see if anybody on eBay wants that, little tears & all. Will keep the K-State pennant and give the Air Force Academy and Kansas ones to the PTO Thrift. Also in that box: an easter bunny made out of a Leggs' egg--- could they just tell us to bring one of those eggs to school, the way they used to say it was going to be painting day, so bring in one of your dad's old shirts (which you'd wear backwards)? Or bring in old lightbulbs and we'll use paper mache to make maracas? We did things with milk cartons, too.
So also in the box were some rubbery ribbon things (red and pink and sort of translucent with inbedded glitter) that seemed instantly very familiar but took me a minute to place. Were they part of a pom-pom, or what? No, I realized, they were the streamers that used to adorn the ends of the handlebars of my bike, or maybe even trike.
Turned out, though, that the box also had a tchotchke that is responsible, I realize many years later, for my early theology---the part in which I thought God looked like an infant child, but with the bald head of a wise old man. So if he and Jesus were at the throne, it'd be this baby in the chair, and his tall bearded son standing next to it. Why do I think God looks this way? I used to ask myself. Then I realized it was the figurine of an angel on a cotton cloud that hung from a thread or piece of fishing lure from my grandmother's hall ceiling.
Well I guess my mom kept it when she went through Merl's stuff, cuz it came down to me. And ended up in that box. Later maybe I'll fluff out the cotton cloud and take a pic of it, at least, if not hoist its holiness up toward my own ceiling.
Earlier I pulled some art out of the closet. I think two paintings of my old salonmate Andreas's will go to the PTO, along with a print of an English cathedral that my folks had, and a framed "Aloha" surfer thing that may've been Holly's. Two detail-of-Botticelli paintings on wood that she had, though, are headed to Craigslist first, as is my dad's wood-mounted rubbing of Shakespeare's gravestone. Sure looks like he did the rubbing himself, but I'm not sure about that.
To my chagrin, it seems some tar-like schmutz has sullied my once-gf's self-portrait (done with her glasses off while looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, I wanna say in the middle of the night). She's topless in the view, but it's the one prominent hollow/bottomless black staring eyeball that always jumped out to me. My friend Lee Ann found it "creeepy". You can see, with the schmutz, and a detail of the schmutz (and brushstrokes), ( back here. )
I think I'm going to be able to get the tar off. Wonder what the hell it's from. A little early effort with an exacto knife, taking great care, seems to be paying off.
Sara's asked about her painting a few times, over the years. I'd sure like to restore it, and then maybe offer to return it to her. It was a gift, and it's not that I'm not grateful for it, despite allowing its sullying, somehow. But I'm de-acquisitioning, and doubt I'd put it up here. But don't want just to send it to a new home via the thrift.
I also pumped up my basketballs. Both the balls and the pump were in the closet. Have more I could go through that's in there, but I've cleaned the floor and can start putting stuff back in there. Guitar cases, the trombone, the box of rainbow flags (if I don't get the chorus to take them).
Those flags were for a 4th of July parade we marched in, with the local queer activist Jim Toy was the grand marshall. He just died this year. Read his obit today in the monthly local, on the way from the mailbox to the recycling bin. Our chorus is going to be part of a memorial for him, on the same evening as our first of two shows this spring. I liked him. He couldn't have told you my name, but we talked a few times as if he could. He was like that.
Before the pandemic we had a whole little Queer Central place in this burg, in a little strip between old houses that had, among them, the gay bookstore (relocated there when bought by the guys who owned) the gay bar & restaurant and the gay community center, renamed for Jim Toy. The little plaza, with its colorful flags and trees, was where everybody went after the Pulse shooting, and it was where everybody went after the gay marriage decision. Cuz even if you were one of us who thought marriage was lousy choice of political goal, along with the right to be in the military, it was a time of elation nonetheless.
Alas, all those queer entities are gone now, and I don't even want to go find out what's in their place.
Okay, time to put my feet up and watch dumb TV. Doesn't feel like a Wednesday. I took the day totally off. Feels like a Sunday on a long weekend, maybe. But back to work (from home) tomorrow.