the kinky shoester

one pair of boots has to take a lot from me. they have to walk everyday, and never do they get a break. because they are the only thing i will wear until they fall apart and it's time to buy a new pair. until then i will carry them back to the cobbler and make him fix them to the moment they really want to walk no more.

before i left today to chase down a certain marsupilami, i told my cheri how the heels need fixing since i walk a bit on the outside of my feet. all my shoes have a not-so-slight tilt which makes walking a bit uncomfortable. but still i manage. across cobblestones and tram tracks, through mud and puddles. occasionally i sit down. at a cafe to have a chocolat chaud, to give my boots a rest. this time i get up and suddenly i hear one heel making a hollow noise. we trace our steps back to the said cafe, and there it is, the heel, looking rather sad, half chewed off by a thousand steps on pavement. i pick it up and we split paths, cheri to the record store, moi to the cobbler where i have been before, who puts up with my broken french. it's not so difficult when you have something to point to like a broken heel.

the happy shoester tells me to take off my boots and starts the loud machine in the back of the tiny shop to begin his work. of course, as i sit there bootless a million customers walk in to interrupt the grinding, throwing me odd glances while picking up their belongings or bringing in more things to fix for the man. i do pick up a lot of the conversations and am thinking of a new series for french lessons, hanging around in stores without your boots on. but never mind, my feet are beginning to get cold, when the shoeman calls me to the back of the store. actually there are two backs, the middle room and the inner sanctum. the first invite i get is to the middle room where i have to slip on my boots and step onto the material that will be nailed to my heels. yes, it seems the perfect height, thank you, maybe even adding a milimeter, and you know, how every milimeter counts! so off i go back to the front to sit back in my fold up chair.

then i get the second call. this time i have made it to the inner sanctum where i sit down on another chair and there's even a blue plastic ottoman placed before me. please place your now booted feet onto this here stool, the shoester requests with a smile beaming up at me. yes, he is kneeling in front of me, of course, he is a shoester after all and deals in shoes, not in hats. and shoes most often touch the floor. he has found a problem with the heel, it moves precariously. therefore he must wiggle it while i wear it. he makes me take my heel into my hands and wiggle it. uhuh. move my legs this way and that. i do spread my legs for him, all in the cause for my broken heel of course, or so i think. and as i most often do these days, i am wearing my black cordoroy skirt and as any modest lady would do, i push down the folds in front of me, so that i do not sit there barelegged, spreading my legs. but he says, no it's okay, and pulls back on the fabric of my skirt. pardon me? i say, no, no, mr. shoester. but he says, yes, yes, little lady, it looks very jolie! i say, oh really, well thank you, as i push down on my skirt some more.

he is a mere boy, this one, but he knows his craft and loves the ladies so it appears. he is so very charming with his compliments. so very polite in his honest curiosity of what lies hidden underneath my skirt. and why is there no one entering the store at this moment? time has given us this little moment where life outside seems to pause and the tinkering bell on the door takes a break, and there is just this little shoester boy, with his crafty hands on the seams of my skirt, kneeling before me, wishing for a small glimpse at my secrets. there are his tools lying idle and the smell of polish wifting through the air. and while my hands remain firmly on the pleats of my garment, my eyes meet his in a friendly way, and my lips bend into a smile.


the spell is broken. i take off my boots, get back up, , and return to the outer sanctum. this shoester does his work well. two more minutes and the heels are better than before. i pay my ten euros, thanking him kindly for a work well done and so promptly, and am back on the pavement. i do have another pair of boots that needs an expert fixing. i will bring them to my happy shoester, but then i'll be moving so my cheri will pick them up. somehow i doubt he will be invited back to the inner sanctum, though one just never knows...

the castle

i was going to blog about this recent trip i took right after i got back but then the very next day i had the most awful night and that just took the wind out of my sails. so now i got some wind back and will tell you just a little bit about it. cause i took close to 150 pictures, not all of which will be seen by the public of course, but still there is a row of photos waiting to be published! i was so thrilled to finally have bought a new memory card cause on the old one fit about 54 pictures if i wanted them high quality... then i was even afraid this place would bust the capacity of my new one, and it nearly did, if night hadn't arrived at about six, and also photographer's burnout. this shot i took on the way out, and i almost didn't feel like it, but since i had begged for it, there i had to unroll the legs of my tripod again and now i am happy for it.

when i had commented on one of greg's recent pictures he said, hey, me and ben are going back to this place, will you come along? naturally i said, hell yeah!!! cause who would pass up an opportunity to go with a couple of fearless photohunters to an abandoned castle in the middle of goddamn nowhere? actually i had no idea where it would be, but if you've ever seen any of greg's photos you would do the same, ask no questions and just go! but he did show me a shot another photographer took on the outside and it blew away anything i could have even dreamed up myself! so off we went one early friday morning, i mean early!!! 5:45 early!!! thankfully i slept most of the trip from paris to belguim, occasionally peeping out the window, seeing the landscape change from flat to hilly, to mountainous. close to the border we kept driving by this raging river to our right, and a rocky cliff to our left with an old military installation on top. quite dramatic, this scenery, and setting the mood for things to come.

four and a half hours later, greg parks the car on the side of a windy road, we grab our gear (mine is rather slender to the big boy equipment of my companions) and off we go up a muddy hill towards adventure. ignoring the "no trespassing" sign, we are more concerned about the shots we can hear in the not too far distance. has hunting season begun already, or do the rules not apply in these forlorn parts? we quicken our steps, driven by a little fear but a lot of anticipation. this forest feels enchanted without me having even seen the castle. large dark pines with outreaching branches, the brightest moss overgrowing fallen branches and treestumps, one might see an elf or two, if one looked long enough, but we were in a hurry so the fairy creatures remained unseen.

then we came around the last bend and i could see parts of the massive walls of the castle, obscured still by tree branches, but these could not hide the grandeur that was rome... when finally in full view, my eyes wanted to pop from their sockets, and words absolutely failed me. i wanted to go mad with my camera, but caution prevented me and we rushed straight for an iron frame leaning up against one of the towers. it had horizontal bars, maybe was an old bedframe, which was used for a ladder undoubtedly by many others before us. greg went first and i followed, while more shots rang through the air. last came ben and we were inside, walking on wobbly ground. greg said, watch where you step! and i can see why, there are small holes made by heavy footsteps in the floor, and then there are places where the entire floor was missing. the castle had been attacked by a fungus which forced the owners to leave it to rot.

an interesting thing, among so others, about this place was that across the way sits its nemesis, another castle that is still inhabited, looking pretty and new, used as a hotel. it reminded me of how everything has its opposite, like darkness has light. that even earth has a nemesis planet somewhere out there...

but here we are, inside the castle. i will end my narrative here for now and will continue when i have more photos ready to be seen.

white stripes

i apologize for the last post being so long. not that it's too long in itself, but i just received a terrible case of white striped blurry vision when i tried to read it all the way. i still have trouble seeing straight! something will have to be done about this, maybe tomorrow. today i already made a new banner, so i'm tired! :)

xoxo

one stormy night

nothing stirred outside. i was sleeping in my parents bed next to you but some inner demons must have tugged at my consciousness so i got out of bed over the boudoir table with all my little precious pins and necklaces and brushes. i smiled at their familiarity. the mirror told me i hadn't slept enough and the darkness outside confirmed it, yet inside the room the light had that sunday morning ten o'clock golden sheen to it. how could i sleep? upstairs lived the other one with all his sorrows. wanting to make sure he was alright i slipped on my satin robe and climbed the wooden steps. his room looked just like ours. underneath a mountain of feather beds and cushions i saw his face, angelic, asleep. all was still, everyone was contently dreaming, and me the nightwatchman, i could set myself down at the far end of our bedroom on my writing chair, knees crisscrossed, wrapped in a blanket, with bachian cello sonatas in my ears, and record all these dreamer's stories. they weren't mine, oh no. i never took the claim that they had sprung from my own head. i agreed with epicurus that they traveled lightly, image by image, word by word, in dream pixel fashion, like precious little birds who couldn't see in the dark, and would reach me as if by accident. then they had to slip back out from my fingers onto the pages. by day they could find the places they had intended to go.
now it was past midnight and it was time for me to begin. there was still a few pages missing from the story with the doll. these had been my mother's dreams i believe. is this why i hadn't given up her bed? i needed to catch the last little feathers of her nightly visions since she had departed so long ago and who knew how much longer i could still find traces of her here on earth. i began to write and it felt laborous somewhat. i became the girl in the woods who had been led there by a spirit. at first it had this menacing presence and i had been so scared to meet it face to face. a year had passed and still i was hanging around the outskirts of those moorlands. this night of perfect quietude and midnight sunshine was going to be the night to finally follow the path.
and suddenly it was no longer frightening and the story unfolded and concluded at the same time. i had written the end before and needed to fill in that final puzzle. what was now missing was the piece that would solve everything. and it came to me in form of a great wind, a storm so big like it hadn't happened in a hundered years. this was the missing link to blow out all the old ghosts. a grand finale that ended up with two glowing faces looking up at the clear sky, up at the twinkling stars above. the wind had thrown them to the ground while it had pushed out the cloud that had veiled their view of the universe. now all was bright, all was clear.
as i put down the pen, i heard a knocking on the shutters outside. who could it be, i wondered. it had been years since anyone had ever come to this old house so deeply hidden in the forest. it had been built before the last thousand year war, a secret place with thick walls built into the side of granite rock inside a mountainous ravine. had someone finally made their way to find it? the noise became louder. it was a violent rattling now. my love was stirring slightly in the bed and uttered a groan. so i jumped and tore open the window, pushed out the shutters and yelled into the night, who are you that disturbs us at this hour? but i saw no one. instead i was greeted by a bout of air so strong it pulled my hair up toward the sky and pushed the shutters so hard that it nearly hit my face. a great wind had begun. so great that i would hear about it later in the newspapers about torn out trees and fallen structures. we heard it the entire night, howling lustily, angrily, pulling at the branches of the great oaks as if they were the strings on a violin, making the most eerie of melodies. i had slipped back into bed by then and felt my love's body heat so close to mine. i breathed in the perfume of his skin and held him tight. we made it through the night and the next few days, when the storm kept raging. a few shingles had flown off the roof when we finally could venture out of doors to inspect the damage.

but the story was done.

"we are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream" the upanishads

earthen memories

i'm scared
i want to stay in bed
and claw my fingers into your sheets
they will pull me out by the feet
kicking and screaming
even if only the child inside

i'm scared
to not feel your hand groping for mine
and only the darkness
carressing and entering me
waiting in the far corner of my lonely room
waiting there since 1969

but i choose to be courageous
to let my fingers design my destiny
to focus not on the worries
and the woman knock knock knocking from inside

instead i'll be brilliant
instead i'll be brandnew
recovering the one i once knew
underneath all the satin rubble and earthen memories