A place for fellow ne'er do wells to converge in an orgy of laziness
and mindful mindlessness....oh, and watch cool videos
"If I'm working very hard, which is seldom, the last thing i want to do in order to relax is to be with people and babbling away and so forth. 
Well, now I know the destination of my next weekend get away: Edward Gorey's Elephant House in Yarmouth Port, MA. Odele loaned me an amazing book of photos of Gorey's home which were taken one week after his death. The book is called ELEPHANT HOUSE or, The Home of Edward Gorey. It is everything you would expect from Gorey's abode. Dark, vine covered, cluttered with found objects, full-o-books, cats all over the place and lived in.
There are cool inns to stay at when visiting Gorey's house and you can even go and eat at the restaurant where he had many of his meals. They have preserved his Elephant House as it was when he died. Proceeds from the visits go to animal charities (as did Gorey's estate).
Apart from his amazing, prolific artistic creations, I am fascinated with Gorey as a person. He was an effeminate man who wore jewelry before it was popular. He had, as far as we know, no lovers of either sex. He moved from New York, which he found cumbersome and loud after Balanchine died, to the quiet of his Elephant House where he created a fanciful and private story book world for himself.
Gorey's studio contained only one small window that overlooked his beloved magnolia tree. He complained that he dithered and dawdled but the fact that he produced 8,000-10,000 images proves him wrong. I find it entertaining that the most dedicated and hard working artists are often the best procrastinators.
He was a fan of both high and low art. He had tons of unread fan mail to which he replied with a postcard, "You've written to me to no avail because I never read my mail." He suffered a fatal heart attack in his TV room and was kept alive on life support for three days before he died on April 15, 2000.
I believe that spaces retain a bit of the people who once haunted them. There is definitely a feeling present in Anne Frank's hidden home in Amsterdam. It is almost as if their suffering, fear and happiness in the face of horror, imprinted itself into the walls and puffs out whiffs of feelings.
Gorey had the balls to be himself unabashedly. Without apologies or guilt or insecurity. He figured out who he was and he found a way to be that person and live his life to the best of his ability. And to boot, he left us with thousands of his creations as mementos of his pioneer spirit. What more can anyone ask for in this long, cumbersome life than a hovel of one's own in which to entertain our intimate fantasies?
Tune in tonight to wallow in the death, destruction and pain. Good times for all! Fun for the family, only beware the cussing and corpses!
THE INSECT GOD
O what has become of Millicent Frastley?
Is there any hope that she's still alive?
Why haven't they found her? It's rather ghastly
To think that the child was not yet five.
The dear little thing was last seen playing
Along by herself at the edge of the park;
There was no one with her to keep her from straying
Away in the shadows and oncoming dark.
Before she could do so, a silent and glittering
Black motor drew up where she sat nibbling grass;
From within came a nearly inaudible twittering,
A tiny green face peered out through the glass.
She was ready to flee, when the figure beckoned;
An arm with two elbows held out a tin
Full of cinnamon balls; she paused; a second
Reached out as she took one, and lifted her in.
The nurse was discovered collapsed in some shrubbery,
But her reappearance was not much use;
Her eyes were askew, he extremities rubbery,
Her clothing was stained with a brownish juice.
She was questioned in hopes of her answers revealing
What had happened; she merely repeatedly said
'I hear them walking about on the ceiling'.
She had gone irretrievably out of her head.
O feelings of horror, resentment, and pity
For things, which so seldom turn out for the best;
The car, unobserved, sped away from the city
As the last of the light died out in the west.
The Frastleys grew sick with apprehension,
Which a heavy tea only served to increase;
Though they felt it was scarcely genteel to mention
The loss of their child, they called in the police.
Through unvisited hamlets the car went creeping,
With its head lamps unlit and its curtains drawn;
Those natives who happened not to be sleeping
Heard it pass, and lay awake until dawn.
The police with their torches and notebooks descended
On the haunts of the underworld, looking for clues;
In spite of their praiseworthy efforts, they ended
With nothing at all in the way of news.
The car, after hours and hours of travel,
Arrived at a gate in an endless wall;
It rolled up a drive and stopped on the gravel
At the foot of a vast and crumbling hall. 
As the night wore away, hope started to languish
And soon was replaced by all manner of fears;
The family twisted their fingers in anguish,
Or got them all damp from the flow of their tears.
They removed the child to the ball-room, whose hangings
And mirrors were streaked with a luminous slime;
They leapt through the air with buzzings and twangings
To work themselves up to a ritual crime.
They stunned her, and stripped off her garments, and lastly
They stuffed her inside a kind of a pod;
And then it was that Millicent Frastley
Was sacrificed to The Insect God
It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
'Aha, my little dear,' I say,
'Your clan will pay me back one day.'
Dorothy Parker
It starts me wondering. Is all this pain and random violence new? We've been killing each other for time memorial, right? Or has society hit a new low? Are we so cold and disconnected from life and death and sex that we try to break down these barriers with rape and murder because at least it makes us feel?
As far back as I can remember my mother has scared the beejeesus out of me when it comes to the evil that men do. She filled my sister and I with fear and paranoia which was bolstered by over-active salacious news programs and our own hyperactive imaginations. You try to hold hope in your heart that people are good but then there is another senseless crime and you begin to have your doubts.
What right does anyone have to take another person's life? It seems ridiculous to me. But still, we peer through the dirty window, hoping for the juicy details. Getting as close as we can to the tragedy to achieve our own titillation, but at the same time, careful not to let the bad luck rub off on us.
Where ever Laura Winterbottom and Michelle Gardner Quinn are, I hope they are at peace. And maybe someday we can figure out a way to stop killing and hurting each other, or at least figure out how to be human without destroying everything and everyone in our path.
