Lessons in The Mansion of my Heart-3

Preface: I have been trying to revisit this for the last week, but it did not return until last night. I stopped thinking about the dream and just slept, doing a little breathing exercise to relax and fall deeply asleep.

However, Marcie did pop into a dream I was having about a hike in Humboldt County.

I was wandering around the forest above Humboldt State with some long-lost Zendik pals and my old dog Spot, which was weird but comforting, and I essentially knew I was dreaming.

Nom said, "Fen, redhead alert!" and I followed his finger, seeing a flash of red hair and some blue disappearing over a hill in a clearing.

We hiked out of the redwoods and over the little rise and Marcie was there, picking a little white gardenia from what looked like a hedge of them.

"Hi, hon," she said. "Try to come home. I am going to put some of these gardenias in bowls of water and put them around the house, then I want to work on the fence."

I nodded and she hugged me, a cool, almost cold kiss on my neck no less nice for the fell of her against me, and she was gone."

"Dude, that was your wife?" Dawna asked.

"Yep, that was her," I said, beaming with pride.

"Well, we're heading up the mountain, maybe you should head home?" she said, and she winked and wiggled a bit.

I blushed in the ears. "Yes, maybe I should."

Spot barked and ran down the hill ahead of me. I chased him then jumped, and soon was floating down towards Arcata.

And I awoke.

Venus

Tonight, I looked in vain for Venus. Of course, the star charts would have told me why, but my heart had a ready explanation, too. I miss you, my Venus. I look forward to having you rise on my horizon again, when the heavens deem it the right time.

Luxury Living for The Dead

Check this out. I floated past this graveyard every time we ferried onto the main island in Hong Kong. Having a view of the sea is not just for the rich living, you know... it is also for the rich dead.

Temple of the Sea God

Here is the little temple that sits at the entrance to Pak Kok village. Pak Tai is the Taoist sea god, and one of his power symbols is the turtle. Appropriate, no? There are many little temples to him like this on the island, likely because of all the fishing that is done here. Enjoy!

What a bummer, but also an opportunity

So, today Marcie received her renewal for a driver's license in the mail. I have come to expect the endless entreaties for aid from the animal charities, the cancer materials from Kaiser, the Komen information and the book clubs, magazine renewal appeals and requests from NetFlix.

How is it that the state cannot figure out she is gone?

It hit me very hard today to read their little reminder for her to send them money and renew her license. But then it struck me. I could have a nice, new copy of her license, renewed past her death, with a clear picture of her from a healthier time.

I just may do it and then write a report about it. It would help the state deficit, too, I imagine.

MumbletyPeggy

I went and visited Marcie at CVS several times, all but two of them completely against her will. Nevertheless, her coworkers were nice and she admitted years later that she enjoyed my visits.

One of those visits was more than a little entertaining. It happened to be one I was invited to conduct. Marcie and I were going to head to the cafe by May Company and enjoy a lunch, then after her work day ended see a movie.

We needed no movie that night.

I was engaging Marcie in very light banter, whiling away time in the near-vacant store as she tended the front counter. Her eyes locked and then narrowed and she looked past me as a hunched, black-garbed figure tottered in.

"Smsh mup rummum mubbum mum," a distinctly female but whispery voice said, the sounds wafting out from under multiple veils of black lace under a wide-brimmed hat. I saw no face.

Marcie watched and made eye contact with a coworker named Maia, who came to the front and took over the counter. Marcie slipped out from behind it, eyes locked on the slow, unsteady figure as it lurched and hobbled into the aisles.

The words became clearer but no more sensible as we got closer.

"So she so she so she so she does, does, does, goes there, she does, yes, yes, yes," the woman said under her masking veils. "I know. I know. I know."

I looked at Marcie, who stood with one arm under her breasts and the other propped on its hand, playing with the curls by her ear as she watched intently.

"Who is..." I started to ask, but her hand stopped me cold.

She leaned in close. "That's Peggy," she said, quietly. "She's a regular but you have to watch her or she leaves without paying. She hates me because I watch her the whole time and I make her show me ID when she writes her checks."

Peggy had offended Marcie by screaming bloody murder when she was caught leaving the store with unpaid-for goods. She made good, but a security guard had yelled at Marcie for stopping Peggy and bringing her back in by the arm.

"Everybody was looking at me and thought I was totally abusing her," she said. "And that's just too bad, because I don't care what age you are. Nobody shoplifts from me."

But her actions had ended with her boss allowing the woman to return. That did not mean Marcie let her get away with anything. In fact, Marcie was now even tougher with Peggy.

"I do not like her," she said. "So I just watch her and let her get pissed off at me. I don't care if she doesn't like it."

Marcie cut off the conversation and marched forward as Peggy pulled a large container of Advil off the shelf and into her many layers of clothes. She smiled and turned her head a bit, looking down at the woman.

"Can I help you with that Advil, Peggy? Do you want to know how much it cost?" she asked.

And that's how the MumbletyPeggy game began.

Pictures from the patio garden

I took a few shots of the patio garden and a few of the yard in front. Keep in mind that when Marcie and I moved in, the yard was all rocks with a layer of cloth underneath. It's now almost overgrown, cloth be damned. The larger plants on the porch are up for adoption, and I have good cilantro seeds to send out.

Tanya helped me repot most of these plants when Marcie was very ill. We arranged them to give her a nicer outside view from her hospital bed.



Just let me know what you want and such, and I will send it. Those are jalapeño plants, by the way. If they or the tomato plants bear fruit, some will be reserved for seed and I can send some out from that as well. Let's hope they make it.

The Skunk Cat Rides

Seamus is wild, even at 14 years of age. This often makes him a pain in the ass when he is given the opportunity to express his less tame side. How does he show this? Let's take an inventory:

• Setting boundaries on petting with the application of force? Yes.
• Treating every furred wanderer into his territory like prey? Yes.
• Knocking a screen so hard it bends enough to open against the lock? Yes.
• Continuously swatting and darting in on a little skunk after he has been thoroughly sprayed? Yes.
• Roaming from door to door after he has been deskunked to get some more? Yes.

The ridiculous late-night horror I went through is worthy of a whole story in and of itself. I also need to post a few makeup items this week. I'll get to it. In the mean time, I was up from 1:20 to 4 AM washing a stinky, skunked cat then trying to purge my house.

The saga continues even now. Seamus? Pleased with himself to no end and thoroughly happy.

That means I took good care of him. Mean or not, crazy or not, he's a good little buddy and I was worried. The skunk left in seemingly one piece, so that was good news. But what an encounter.

If only there was web smell-o-vision.

Otto Van Otterson (Conclusion)

We never found out Otto's real name. Marcie didn't need to, having sufficiently filled in the blanks herself.

When Marcie went with me to Humboldt County, she commented that she would miss a lot of people, but, jokingly, she asked, "Well, I wonder what will happen to Otto?"

He was still there when we came back, and now he was living in our new neighborhood, University Heights. We watched him one evening on Adams, pushing his cart to the fence along thew canyon by Trolley Barn Park.

"He's so slow now, honey," Marcie said. "He's too old to be out here."

And it was true. Every time I saw him afterward, there was a little less pep in his step. He was slowing down.

Soon he had no cart, just bore a plastic grocery bag and boarded the bus stooped and weary each time I saw him. There were no sweeping gestures or warbling treatises. He looked around furtively, not proudly and theatrically.

I told Marcie when I saw him and I always said that he looked okay, even though didn't usually. I did not tell her when I saw him being loaded onto an ambulance at Trolley Barn Park as I rode the 11 past.

The last time I laid eyes on Otto was during the summer Marcie received her diagnosis. He was sleeping, sitting, with his bag next to him on the bench by the fence at Trolley Barn Park.

He was snoring as I walked past, and his beard was combed, his flatware was in place, his suit was clean-looking and his pocket also sported a white folded napkin. His pin had changed, however and was now an RAF "bullseye" pin.

I couldn't help but notice his multiple hospital admission wristbands. I began to get close, to read them and know his name, but I stopped and walked away.

His name was Otto, and that's who he had to be.

Characters: "Otto Van Otterson" (pt.4)

Otto had been underground for a while when I finally spotted him again. He was nowhere near his native riverine environs. Otto had moved up in the world.

Otto was living behind The Lamplighter, a karaoke bar in San Diego's Mission Hills. I may not have noticed him in my drunken state as I wandered out and enjoyed a cigarette after way too many drinks. Who knew "The Chauffer" by Duran Duran had so many fans?

Regardless, there I was, staring at a homeless person across the street who worked around the green-handled Mayfair shopping cart, his back hunched, turned to me. Then, with the successful attachment of a piece of wire to his junk-festooned carriage, the man turned.

Otto smiled and raised his hands in a grandiose expectation of applause. I could hear him above the din of the bar as he chuckled then warbled out a celebratory-sounding, "Rumanumanumanuma SKOP!"

He took the handle and, with some untranslable and nearly inaudible utterance, rolled out of sight. It was as if he knew he needed to be seen, my drunken mind told me.

I immediately called Marcie, who met my invitation to join me in a raucous night of debauchery and drink and song with derision earlier that night.

"Hello?" she asked, sounding annoyed.

"Hi, honey," I said. "I have good news!"

"What good news? That you're not nearly as drunk as you sound?" she asked. "Or that you will actually save your last buck and take the bus, not walk home at 2 and skip class tomorrow?"

Well, there was precedent. I had walked home several times to allow one more dirnk or a cup of coffee. It was a bad habit only because she worried.

"Mmmm BETTER news!" I shouted into the phone.

"Oh, dooo tell," she said, softening and now preparing, I assumed, to mock me in my drunken state.

"Guess who I just saw," I demanded, smiling as I did. "It's someone important!"

"One of your many cousins?" she asked.

"No, no," I said. "Important to you."

I steadfastly refused to tell her, despite her demands, but also told her she would regret not trying anyways. She relented.

Jane? No. Chrissy? No. Chip? No. My (her) parents, brother or my father? No, no and um, no way. She threatened to hang up.

"I found Otto!" I exclaimed.

"Otto van Otterson!" she said, laughing. "Where is he? You didn't try to talk to him, did you?"

I relayed the whole incident and she peppered me with questions. Was he wearing his suit? Yes, but it was a new suit, it appeared, and only one of each kind of clothes. How did he look? Healthy, but his hair was really long and his beard was, too.

"So was he wearing his silverware still?" she asked.

And there was the question I had hoped she would ask. He had, indeed. but there was something new and classy to relay.

"He had what appeared to be actual silver flatware," I said. "He also had a can opener next to his new knife."

I had spied the change from across the street, clearly seeing the utensil heads and heir dull sheen, the triangular head of the opener drawing the eye in a stark display against the other new element in his dress.

"He had a black handkerchief or maybe a fancy napkin in his pocke," I said.

Marcie cackled into the phone. "He was wearing his formal dinnerware," she said, cracking up. "He was, he was... he was probably headed to Saint Vincent De Paul for an important address at the General Asembly of the United Urchins!"

She gasped in ragged breaths and I stayed quiet after a chuckle, listening to her laugh and then, "Oooh, that's good, honey," she said. "Thank you for telling me. You're very thoughtful."

"I'm glad your friend is okay, honey," I said.

"So am I," she said. "Have fun tonight, and try not to overdo it."

I let that hang in the air a bit. It had already been overdone. But her happiness was very clea, as was her relief. I was in awe of her compassion, despite her teasing and mocking tone. She doted on Otto in her own way. That mothering again, I guessed.

"I love you honey," she said. "I'll see you later."

"Okay, baby," I said. "See you then."

And though she was relieved, she simply had to lay eyes on him herself. And while we stalked the ambassador, Herr Otto Van Otterson, Marcie would amaze me with her idea of what lay behind Otto's life.

Characters: "Otto Van Otterson" (pt.1)

The Route 1 bus lurched to a squealing halt and the air in the hydraulics fired off as the door opened and the bus lowered. Marcie stared at the bus stop.

A laughing and rustling sound of paper bags slipped lazily into the cabin and the driver rolled her eyes, looking into the mirror bored.

"Oh my god, honey, don't look, don't look..." Marcie whisperes, grabbing my arm with one hand, hiding her face behind her ever-ready People magazine with the other and looking at me behind it wide-eyed, smiling and obviously keyed up.

Of course, this usually meant I had to look. Marcie would likely be asking me questions about the experience she told me to avoid. I looked and Marcie ducked her head completely into her lap, her magazine over the top and back.

"Heeee hee, ohmigod, stop, ohmigod," she squealed under her breath.

There would definitely be a quiz later. I paid close attention.

An elderly and scruffy gentleman clambered onto the bus, each foot stopping on each step, side by side one step at a time. He stared down as if to watch closely for any danger at his feet, then stomped as he reached the top, nodding to the driver.

"Muhuh?" he laughed, gesturing around at the bus and scanning me and my fellow riders as if asking a question. "Muzzum Muzzum Muzzum."

He was dressed in a brown, pinstriped suit, a derby hat and tie, all somewhat grimy. Beneath his buttoned jacket one could discern several different shirts, all button up, all enclosed by a tie, their collars stacked and close on his throat.

"You have your fare, sir?" the driver asked, her impatient face obviously familiar to the point of some tired contempt. She bit her lip and glared in the mirror.

"Muzzum, Muzzum," he said, clearly affirmatively, then pulled two crumpled bills from his pocket and raising them high over his head, his free hand now sweeping toward the back of the bus as he glanced around again.

I understood the gesture and offered him applause. He bowed and then deosited the bills into the farebox. The bus driver glared at me now.

"You need to not encourage him or we are never getting out of here," she said.

Marcie grabbed my arm, still hiding her face, but obviously laughing under the magazine, and pulled me onto the bench.

"Eh heh shesh mechuzzum muh," the odd man said, smiling at the driver with his hand out, another cocked on his hip. He looked away smugly, waggling his head a bit.

"You want a transfer?" the driver asked, snatching one of her pad and slapping it into his hand.

He snapped it into his palm, crumpling it and shoving it into his pocket in a smooth and practiced way, then picked up his half dozen grocery bags. Their contents were a mystery, but I inspected him discreetly as he strutted past in his own little world.

He was a hodgepodge of accoutrement. In place of a handkerchief in his pocket, he had donned a fresh paper napkin and, quite carefully placed, a spoon, fork and knife set against it. He wore a watch on each wrist, and several bits of string, plastic binding and even a white plastic grocery bag on them as well. He bore a lapel pin. It was Underdog.

His personal hygiene was a mixed bag. When he passed by, a strange mix of Old Spice, stale water and roting feet wafted past. He had a gray and white beard that was not well-trimmed but appeared impeccably combed. His fingernails were clean but his hands were filthy. He was a walking contradiction.

He looked around at each person as he walked by, and Marcie stayed down, squeezing my arm as she saw his broken, stained white Keds shuffle past. He sat in the back of the bus and immediately set his face against the window, flattening his cheek as he arranged his bags without looking.

"Ohhh, that is one of our regulars," Marcie said as he passed. "He is a total character. He is like, my favorite CVS urchin ever, but I don't want him to see me when I am not in the store. He stares at me a lot."

I nodded, suddenly imagining something more sinister than eccentric. "Does he bother you? Do you want me to talk to him?"

She looked at me and gave me her, "Are you THAT stupid?" look.

"Honey, he doesn't do it because he's menacing, he's harmless," she said. "God."

She was quiet for a minute as we rolled through Banker's Hill. In a sudden moment of inspiration, she grabbed my hand again and turned to me, whispering. "Did you see his shirts? I think he just layers them on when they get dirty!"

I nodded, and added, "And I think he just ties things to his wrists or puts whatever he finds on like a bracelet. He was also wearing two watches."

"Oh, Oh my god," she said, slapping my thigh with her other hand excitedly as she bit her lip then whispered, extra quietly. "He looks at watches every time he comes into CVS. He has like three watches on chains, one for each vest."

I shook my head and as we hopped of the bus outside of "Gay Ralph's" in Hillcrest, Marcie was holding my hand, obviously pleased to have seen the CVS regular in our area.

She stopped me as the bus pulled off, and said, "Okay, let's wave to Otto!"

And so I did, as his faced, plastered to the bus window, rolled by. He waved back.

"Otto?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Otto Van Otterson. That is what I call him. I don't know his real name, actually. I can't ask him because I don't think he ever really talks."

There was much to know about Otto, as I would find out. But there was even more to enjoy in what Marcie filled in the gaps in her knowledge of him with.

Marcie's love of sidewalk markers

Marcie loved to read sidewalk markers. She loved to know how old where she lived was. She had favorites from 1912, 1903, McKindle & CO, Gearson Public Works, and any number of companies who would place a brand on the end of a strip of laid concrete with a date the path was formed.

Today, the apartment owners next door repaved part of the sidewalk. I knew what I had to do. Thanks go to neighbor Rob Wheatley for taking a shot of me next to the work afterward. Good on you, man. Another everyday memorial act.

Maybe someone will wonder who she was. Maybe they will know.
A few hours later.
The vandal.

She also loved the other kinds of marks, from kitty, dog and kid silhouettes with names and simple slogans like "NH rules" to pop culture reference like "Kilroy was here" and even "Redrum," oddly scratched in in front of a convent on Hawthorn, they all lit her imagination afire.

I hope they don't scratch it out. We'll see!

The Down Side to Nostalgia

As much as I love the music I have collected, much of it carries the memory of Marcie and events in my life with her so strongly that I cannot bear to listen to it at times. In other moments, I am simply comforted. I am currently on a ten-minute break from work, wondering if there is "More Than This" than to be "Back on the Chain Gang" and remembering Marcie as one "Few and Far Between."

I miss our "Glory Days."

Don Juan Seamus De Marco, or Mr. Personality (Pt.3) Kazi changes everything

For several months the most entertaining event in our world and the complex denizens' was the Cat Races. Kazi and Seamus raced around the yards, pouncing, tackling, frolicking and generally being kittens.

But at the end of the day, a curious ritual was performed. The kittens would stop chasing each other and hop the fence (or clamber through its portholes), joining Dodger and Tatiana in the vacant lot beyond.

Usually sitting in a loose formation and watching the sun set over the decrepit El Cortez parking structure, or perhaps the tantalizing shadows of the fat pigeons walking its edge, the cats would sit silently as the dark crept in.

It was usually the time to get Seamus inside, because if night fell, he was uncatchable and wild.

"Frank, get Seamus in before it gets dark," Marcie would call out from the doorway. "I don't want to have to chase him with you."

But Marcie understood the importance of what she called "the catting hour," and simply made sure he came in after making his appearance among his pals, which, as a crew, she referred to as "The Meadow Cats."

Seamus had a habit of slipping under buildings, sometimes coming out with a huge, bloated paw from a sting or bite, sometimes with an unidentified rodent, occasionally one half-dessicated or putrid.

It was not a good scene to have him loose at night.

On occasion he would disappear as we pulled down laundry or tinkered with dinner in the house. Hours of searching later, we would find him going back and forth between the meadow and another yard, or the back houses.

But when that disappearing act became all too common, at about 8 months, Cammy joined the search. Kazi was disappearing, too, and long before the sunset approached.

We did not put two and two together because of all the kitten-like play. But we didn't have to. One afternoon, in the middle of the day, I went looking for Seamus iin the yard. I found him by following a growl.

"Oh, geez," I said. "Seamus! what the hell! knock it off!"

He had Kazi's head pinned and it appeared he was doing the natural thing, which is, of course, to mate with her. Marcie came around the corner, saw it, and ran away.

No way was I going to interfere. I just waited for nature to take its (inter)course.

Not Marcie. She came back and dumped a bucket of water on them, eliciting hisses and a rapid separation.

"Nice, Frank, just stand there," she said. "Catch him before he screws her again! God!"

Seamus turned on me as I tried to catch him, gashing me deeply. Three hours later, with Kazi safe in her house from her initial flight, we caught Seamus, who growled and fought the whole way home.

"Alright," Marcie fumedd. "That is enough. He is wandering, he is getting more aggressive, and now he is trying to impregnate Kazi. He's getting neutered."

Kazi had changed everything. What a fight this one was, though I knew Marcie was right and Seamus should be fixed.

The witch tree

Marcie and I used to often discuss the strange plants and animals that adorn our home and its vicinity in Normal Heights. One element of our landscaping which is a constant source of change and seems permanently out of tune with nature is a tree in our back yard which I take for a flowering dogwood.

Today, as I tried to get outside for some air (bad idea... the air tastes like a cloud of exhaust and made me choke), I noticed Seamus staring into the tree. Mind you, this tree has hosted hawks with fresh pigeons in their claws as they ate them, an owl, hummingbird colonies and even a woodpecker.

Even without those odd visitors, an early lesson in the environs here usually means I take note of Seamus taking interest.

I saw nothing, but then I realized he was watching the petals of the little white flowers on the tree as they drifted down onto the ground. I took a "Seamus' eye view" picture for you:

The cat's eye view of a dogwood

Marcie and I dubbed this tree the "witch tree" because of the creepy things that have fallen out of it over the years we lived here together. The tree, firstly, has a knack for dropping very well-aimed leaves down your shirt, usually the back of the shirt, in fact. It constantly sheds.

The leaves would not be bad, unless you knew what lived in the tree. The tree hosts a multispecies community of spiders. No, the tree is infested with spiders. I am not saying they are social spiders, but they seem to have plenty to eat as they multiply and winter over in the thing.

I can likely be fogiven for thinking, at first, that this lovely 12" construct was a webbed-up bat:

A grim cocoon

That thought, of a small mammal webbed up in that mass of tightly-woven but chaotic webbing, may be macabre, but it is wholly fictional, obviously. However, what is not fictional is that, in the many, many webbed clusters like this in the tree, one runs a good chance of finding black widows.

How do I know? Why, I am glad you asked.

The tree, when we moved in, was one giant nasty collection of leaves in webbing. When one day I decided to water our hanging plant, Marcie asked me to knock some of the webs down and clean the tree up a bit. Bad idea.

As I gleefully sprayed down the nasty chunks of dead leaves and branches, adding them to the growing pile under the tree, something caught my eye. A jet black, fat, lurching body clambered over the leaves from a soggy cluster of gummy detritus. I spray it and the round, clumsy thing flipped over for a moment. A big red hourglass stared back.

Squish. Buh-bye. Black widows are not fun. I don't like small animals which can kill, spider or not, useful or not. I kept working but then saw another. Squish. Then two more, smaller ones, and an immature juvenile whose more colorful pattern I recognized from an article on the latrodectus morphology. Squish-squishity-splorp.

There were other spiders, not all of them black widows, the bigger of which I sprayed away from me, the smaller of which I ignored. I could not believe how many of the widows there were, however, especially in a tree. I believed them to be more interested in being more hidden and near moisture and darkness.

I was rolling up the hose when I noted a black, shiny body nestled between my shoelaces, legs drawn in tight. I sprayed it off carefully and swear it tried to bite me as I did. Squish.

As if this entire experience was not getting unnerving, Marcie chose that time to retrieve some laundry. As she walked out and the occasional branch of deadness and spider fell from the weight of the water, a bag of black plastic fell and plopped onto the ground, scaring her and me both.

It was shaped like a little human.

Now, our neighbors at the time had children who loved to throw each others' toys onto our roof. In retrospect, I had no reason to think it was a baby, except for the meaty, wet splat the bagged form made. In other words, it had me thinking.

"Honey, go inside," I said.

She looked at it and then at me. "Just throw it away, honey." she said. "It's junk."

I checked it anyways. It was a cheap doll with a soft middle, covered in mud and obviously having gathered a lot of leaves. I dropped it back in the bag and went to toss it in the trash, when my grip set off a little wheezing cry.

"Maaaaaamaaa," it said.

I paused and got a shudder down my spine, then dumped it. As if did, I shook off a spider whose thick web was making it hard to shake, stomping it as it finally landed on the ground. Squish.

It was a fat, brown, "golden garden spider." But I was done with the creepy mess. I have never sprayed that tree out since, and likely never will. But Marcie decided that the tree would be called the "Witch tree."

"It looks like a tree a witch would fly out of on her broom," she said. "It's totally creepy, honey."

Or perhaps a bunch of spiders and a soggy, infested baby doll could fall out and cry for mama.

But that tree is just one of many little wild features and woodland creatures our abode sports. I will sprinkle in our experiences in that realm as we go along.

In fact, the white flowers mean that it is almost time for the skunks and possums to make their appearance and move in under the house. That's a lot more fun than spiders, by far. And a lot more story, too.