I always fear that my readers will stop reading me, I love you are still with me 

hello my loyal readers, glad you’re still with me 😘

finally getting some work time progress

 

 

 

near ingleside

Centerville 

 

Bloomfield Hills by car

Berkley 

winter gear

 winter 

 

non-haiku falling autumn winter

the odd incongruence 

of a shatter of golden, ochre, autumn leaves 

upon a near foot of white snow 

illuminated under the lamppost 

Fritz

The first day Daphne arrived she was thrown into the whirlwind of the WB Ashbridge universe. “Fritz” apparently was Daphne’s assistant; he handled scheduling her meetings and prioritizing her duties to focus on how to comprehensively rebuild the site.

On Saturday she learned all the secret lock combos and how to navigate their security codes. Then given a tour of the grounds which were vast and they had even supplied her with a map to help get her bearings. The detailed tour took up most of the day with Fritz making sure not to leave out a single detail. On Sunday Daphne was introduced to the entire headquarters staff at a Sunday meet and greet that took place for the entire day. She was exhausted by the time the evening meal was through and fell asleep fast by ten o’clock. 

Which was a good thing because Monday started bright and early with a nine o’clock meeting with her new immediate staff.

And when had she the time to even sift through and organize all her own decades worth of physical paper notes they had specially flown in on a temperature controlled carrier, when the meetings never stopped? She had tried on Tuesday evening to start the work but the room where they had all the sealed boxes of her work had a coded lock they had forgotten to share with her. By Wednesday Fritz said he’d find out the code for her.

Fritz ? It was a nickname he said that stuck as it didn’t quite suit him.

“Fitzgerald —I don’t know why but the former ceo never got it right so it sadly stuck, but— do you see me complain?” he gave her an odd wink, “I’ll answer to whatever they call me, how about you—are you just Daphne?”

The Ashbridge Headquarters

From behind the mirrored glass she watched the meeting take place in the east wing reception room. When the meeting was over the parties dispersed but one walked to the heavy velvet draperies afterward and slipped through the secret door 

“What did you think of her?” the long time friend from Flintlock Publishing House asked the stately elderly woman who sat on the other side of the glass. She was an intimidating woman, despite her age, with sharp glassy pale grey eyes that missed nothing behind her wire frames that, with her upswept and elegantly pinned hair gave her a remarkable appearance of resembling her mother whose well known face always graced the backs of her famous novels

Celest Ashbridge Rathbone, only daughter of the great author but not the only product 

“Hmmm….” the elder woman looked back at Simone with a thoughtful glint before she said, “she will do….now come sit by me, we have much to plan.”

<<I’m sorry I can’t get away until later in the week, I have meetings every day until late in the week.>>

<<why don’t we meet up later? When is your last meeting at?>>

It is awhile before the reply comes 

<<I have two days they owe me for holiday—I can get away by Wednesday night>>

<<then meet me then>>

modern day angst

      i find myself disturbed by the surreality of life—the filters of self images of a fictional fantasy; of false representations of selves; those claiming guilt for how well they reap the backs of their followers/their slaves

who is real? nobody is real so why not put on a costume you? what does it feel like to be fake too? Try it on …. It’s bullshit armor …. she cannot move her face for the pounds of make up and filler ….a mask to hide behind that you are a miserable tool pandering to the big guy

But isn’t it the best way to navigate —what’d they used to call it…. the internet highway…. low-way, subway, underground lowest common denominator dinosaur mind

Be fake at all costs because they will laugh at your frailties 

these prisms I speak of, look at life today 

Nobody is real

I just want to meet just one person who is real 

marginal scribble

Today, with full intention, I choose to think about my time at the art suppliers on Hempstead Turnpike East Meadow New York; just off the Meadowbrook Parkway 

I choose to on purpose— no, not because I became nostalgic about it 

No …. it is more that I want to look at it with fond objectivity but also cruel eyes 

Cruel? ….yes

     because I fear to admit this but I guess it always persists that I walk as an outsider yet again

   like the comic book hulk —I just meander through cultures and observe in search 

     Remember that book “Are you my mommy?” 

maybe it is like that exactly —like a scientist I wish to observe some place I’ve been from the vast distance of time and other experiences in which to compare things to 

My first self posed question is ….What did I like about that art store—or was it more working there?

That art store was like Mecca to Long Island artists. 

It was like a super store just for artists. 

For scale? Now it is an actual supermarket. The building, I mean.

When I was there? When I was its worshipper? It was the second incarnation of their store. 

Their first shop on Ling Island was also in Hempstead Turnpike East Meadow. Or was that Levittown? The borders there overlap and then there is Bethpage and Wantagh 

But no, this was paradise to any true artist. 

I loved the original shop before the one I ended up working at. That one was such total grunge. It was awesome. Buckets— literal buckets— of things like pastels and charcoal ….drool….  You go firm isles like a museum and it could be the jewelry bead section with unbelievable variations of colors and textures could capture you for hours …. or the art paint brush isle with soft brushes that make your lips tingle when, with closed eyes, your rub it upon them; I know 

the sound of your boot upon the hollow floor as you go further into the recesses of the inner domain and step down into the dungeon below 

All clearance of …. more drool …. things people passed up at original prices 

and here I nearly always would faint ….. 

I loved that place …. it was sanity. It was calm. It was the beach after a storm. It was …. me

Back in those gritty days mom was still alive and I’d tell her about what I’d bought as she knew the famous original on Canal Street in Manhattan where even Stieglitz shopped 

Today, by choice, I choose to recall …. 

on this autumn day that is frozen in a polar winter storm in the mountains ….

If I went by expressway, I’d take the exit off the Meadowbrook Parkway passed the architecturally cool shaped Snapple Tea Corporation Headquarters building; a fun way to approach my job from further south the island at sunset, about 6:30 pm when the sunset turns such a lovely orange pink and the way it hits the cubes on the Snapple building is worth the moment to look

That began my work shift day; dinner at home sorted; child got from school, sorted at home, set to work when other parent arrives at 5:45

drive the Southern State to begin— but go against traffic —the New York City commuters returning to their suburban Long Island homes —as I was leaving Cedarhurst, by the City, to work in Long Island ….at dark

The shift officially started at 6:45 pm

      My then “boss” ….a twenty year old Italian American boy graduate from Pratt

I confess looking back, I loved that place— and? I knew it too— I knew it then ….and so did everyone who worked there 

   It was the worst of times in my life —but the best of times too

Worst as — I’d just lost my mother 

                    I’d just lost my custody battle 

                    I was sleeping on the floor in the living room of my ex husband who’d win custody and I had to pay half the rent —and? I had to pay Child Support 

But —the second incarnation of that Art Shop on Hempstead Turnpike that shall have to remain nameless because of touchy exposure; I loved it fondly though and I knew the family connection despite the shocking scandle there — doesn’t it just go with the whole wild life Art thing anyway? Scandal? Embezzlement ….? that just gives them more validation as artists in this oligarch world anyway — no, I’m joking but just slightly 

I’d arrive at the art store — the size of what had once actually been an airplane hanger!— to give one a sense of its hugeness! And it had every related imaginable type of art craft that could exist …. Isles and isles devoted just to art crafting 

That I pick today why? Why pause in this glass globed snow globe day to think on there —an Art Topia …. Now a supermarket ….

It was the chance to …. be among other many other artists who also were struggling ….to eat and survive …. though different from myself ….we celebrated this and —it helped get through the day because there was actual visible beauty we shared and in the —moment—created 

    so I bonded with …. my most valuable counterparts whom for such a utopian moment of bliss gave me a great …. moment to —whilst working until 3AM— pause and know ….i was not alone in the universe 

And I’d leave by 3:30 AM — return to a sleeping apartment at home in Cedarhurst and settle on the living floor; relax for a few hours before getting Persephone breakfast, then ready for school ….

I guess how I managed to not fall into depressive misery was that Mecca ….itself …. Art…. became my strength…. my faith ….and all my recreation 

Precipices of time;timepieces

I think often of that precipice of time — where you don’t know it, but you stood at a certain moment between twin worlds; a past and future 

it is weird to me…. so very very weird to me …. how I remember how Michigan first looked to me the late night when me and my boyfriend, at the time, pulled up to his mother’s house. After a long drive from East Meadow and Huntington New York thst late night road  was endless fast. Ohio and Pennsylvania went on forever but there it was, a right left right and down a winding drive 

My very first impression of Michigan was that house. You see. It was late and so dark out with nothing open. And then I met my boyfriend mother, as we’d be staying there.

I’d never thought one day years later I’d be writing invitations for my wedding reception at that address. 

Or that the child I’d one day have would be living there now 

If I could go back to that cold winter day we first stepped out his volks wagon golf and freeze time…. 

Id just pause for a long while ….walk out into that road and look down the way we’d come and just look at who ever it was she was ….because she would no longer be her again 

then look at that house and realize why I felt the energy that I felt that day when I’d stepped over the threshold 

That house more than any my parents lived at —has known all of my heartbreaks and transitions and ironically, been longer a part of my history. Isn’t that strange how even this grandmother of my child has known me longer than my own parent 

Daphne & the Prism Cells/Cloudy thoughts

And as she looked out the window of the air plane and stared into the clouds, the mimosa seemed to swirl Daphne’s thoughts into such a brilliant sunny, sun kissed tint of orange blossom 

Daphne was on her way to the isles of folklore and fairytales where the ancient ways of memory brewed thick among the ruins and Daphne had a few lost ruins of her own 

Those dreams she cast off 

What was it that her dream of Tolkien was trying to tell her? He stood in a swirling wormhole of time in an underground tunnel that looked like coal mines and he stood reaching out to her, his cost tails flying in the sweeping wind sweep of the time warp currents …. “before it’s too late ….”  he reached out with his hand for her to come with him …. what was it he said again ….?

She said it aloud to the airplane window,

“something has gone wrong with the time lines of history ….”

  but whatever could that mean ….anyway? and why in her right mind would she still be asking herself what a dream meant? It was a dream. Just a dream. Dreams don’t mean anything. 

But then the Ashbridge thing happened —isn’t that interesting? As if —as if ….she was meant to become involved in this —no! That’s silly! What a thought….how crazy she was to even imagine such a wild idea, as if! Meant to ….

And she stared into the clouds and let her mind instead think about more tranquil thoughts, like memories of Father. 

Yes, thst day when everything got better. It was a long drive in his shiny silver car and she fell asleep several hours into the journey. He had been telling her about his work but all that she understood was that he helped people and was very important and could marry people in a church; maybe that was why he was Father. 

She had not been well at first. It was hazy to remember. The bad memories would come often. The scars on her spine that would never go away. Sometimes in the middle of people talking she would —go to sleep with her eyes open. She would hear things. But could not move. 

What she remembered must about the drive to New York was his voice. It somehow made her feel that everything was going to be all right. He kept talking all the way to New York. He told her about the sermons he wrote and what they were about, he told her about the poor people in his congregation that he needed to help by changing laws in Washington and he told her about his two sons and how he was sure they would like her.

She remembered she asked him about school with trepidation and with relief his reply was unexpected,

“no—I’m not sending you to school,” and st first this fell cryptically without explanation 

After quite a long time on the drive, he had sighed,

“education of life—nothing better than travel; I’ll take you straight to history, we’ll go to Europe —and I’ll hire a private tutor for when congress is in session—you’ll like the city, I’ll show you the good spots of old New York, the old jazz joints ….”

She stared into the black and cloudy grey past the window glass and then her head got all cloudy too making her fall asleep against the glass 

Detroit again

Thanksgivings, Christmases, New Year’s Eve there in Michigan—yeah, I worked all the holidays there and twelve hour shifts those were with Christmas Eve and Christmas morning bright and early thank you. Do I know hard work? They were open every day of the year. And nobody liked to work holidays but I always got stuck with them. 

Customers were really nice to me on those days, though— and would apologize ….as they bought things which is always that strange moment of gratitude and something else on either side but always more positive unless I think about the holidays I didn’t get to be with Persephone. I missed them all. Even Chris got to be at them but I was working. He was usually unemployed but nevermind that(I have been the breadwinner for two men, isn’t that interesting?)

yeah I do deserve more don’t you think

put my feet up, go to Tahiti and not feel a pang of guilt 

more thoughts like of thanksgivings of past

I’d head out early as the sun was coming up as the store would open at 7 in the morning. Those mornings when the ice covered the sidewalks and there was no sun at all and walk past Euclid stree with the old cemetery all along the way till the corner. The winds always picked up right along thst strip. I split open my hand falling on the ice on the way one morning. That was such a cold day. 

There’s no time before you walk in. Throw your coat in the locker with your stuff. And this is the last chance to pee until seven hours from now when the relief girl arrived. Punch in on the big grey machine then out the rubber double doors past the refrigerated cases of beer and milk

Mornings were gruesome. The store manager grumpy. The pharmacist always made me feel better which ever one it was; they were the wise chiefs who stayed in the heavenly glass cage 

If there were stacks of films to do and a line all with people asking for lottery or money orders—it was a nightmare morning. In separate bunches it was ok. All st once was the worst. And the ladies waving their sales fliers at me—which is better have memorized because they have— and always out of every item on the ad. And the wall of cigarette brands which you better know quick because ten more people just got on line. All with very heavy things to put into bags for them. Whatever you do, don’t call the manager for help. 

I still remember all the customers by name. There was Jim who always got three cartons of Misty’s light even though he laughed it was a ladies brand. But he was a tall Clint Eastwood older man type; his wife was Doris who sped around the shop in her motorized wheel chair he was so proud of.

    Jim was a funny man. I’ve written about him before here. I hated him st first. He put me through the steps —military type, you know; snap too it. I dreaded him at first when I saw him walk in. Barking orders st me. I’d make sure I had the stack ready for him before he walked in because he always showed up on day one of the sales at peak hour— and guess what?—eventually he specifically went to my line because I always had his stuff ready and I became his favorite checkout girl. He’d walk up to Margie and yell at her to not leave me with a long line 

Michigan is a lot like that even now because they choose to be different and odd there. Even their driving laws are different 

Thoughts of the legend today

I need better things for myself than this

I

find I am so bored 

of games with people and their inconsistencies 

I want to be happy and people keep smearing it; they pretend to be friends but they really don’t care; they just use with no conscience and it gets boring and it leaves such an empty feeling

I want to get out of here, a change— yeah, I have to think hard about this

Assess where I’ve been 

I guess you might say that I have the total immersion kind of life adventures. That is, I mean; I do go places; I do travel; I go to a completely unknown new place each time; I go there from a long distance 

I guess how mean this is, it’s not for a week or fortnight —when I travel from one location to the next, I really get to know the new area. I stay a couple of years. I go alone each time. I know nobody each time. I go with almost no belongings too

I have been to so many weird places. 

But I was just reflecting on this year. I arrived just over two years ago which is my average as I’ve said here before.i do these journeys. It seems. And then I go. 

I looked at my date book and realized how it’s been only a year since I had to dump my car. Just one year. Weird. I mean—in the US, unless you are lucky to live near public transportation, having no car is like walking death row for the human or someone knows someone who has a car.

I’ve managed to live in a lot of American towns without a car where this again holds true and I don’t recommend it. I don’t. It’s dangerous for one thing. And it’s not fun. But I’ve done it— like in this case, I have done this for a year here where I guess I still know no one (to ignore the predators) and …. 

I don’t recommend it but I have learned a lot about this town where I am its stranger. I have learned what most people who live here couldn’t know as they drive around. I have learned the most here about Americans as I see it as the perfect microcosm to witness what’s going on in the country right now— and me? I’m just Jack Kerouac watching it through my poet’s lens 

And what.  

My mom didn’t understand why I left New York to live to Michigan years ago. “Why Michigan?” she asked me and turned the question to all her New York friends —those from the Madison Avenue life 

No, they didn’t get it. How did I go from Southampton Long Island to ….

Long Island was interesting in and of itself; also impossibly hard without a car and a million times more fun with one; especially speeding along the beach on ocean parkway and breathing in the sea air with the windows down in summer 

Traverse City will always be magical to me where I as an outsider having only just moved there (that instance with a boyfriend)gave birth without drugs and just a midwife ….was an adventure. Ann Arbor I would do again, we lived outside in Ypsilanti 

What did I think of Detroit? I was the checkout girl on 12 Mile Road at a busy general drug store where hold ups occurred but never when I was scheduled. But I knew the locals well mostly all by name and they knew mine.

What did I think of Ashland Oregon— I had a gig at the famed hippie shop there (I’m not giving them publicity, she was a witch) but only stayed (record breaking) six months, I’ve never been so bored in my life. The town is beautiful. The mountains beautiful but only until August then the landscape turns to Mars. Lithium is a street name. And a nearby place. It flows in the water through public marked fountains. Everyone and everything about it there felt spacey and surreal. 

What did I think Of Colton New York ….?of Poughkeepsie….of Henderson Maryland ….

sentences and I’d call that unanimous 

I think looking objectively on all those adventures, I’d never have gotten the gist of any of those places until I sunk myself in its walls and walked their streets through the seasons 

I’ve been looking for something you see

But it hit me that it feels this one year has been more like two or three but no —there it is; the day I was stranded in the mountains when they took that beast of a burden away. I wanted to know the locals. What is middle America really like? Thoughts like this. I did that in Henderson too. 

it’s research, I guess I’ve been at and I’m glad of all I have gathered. It’s made me more aware what I want and need and it has helped me to see how each of those places reacted differently to me as an outsider.  

*metaphor for/more existential thoughts

Platonic dialogue with myself 

If the experience of life is the evolution of the soul (that each incarnation we choose our lessons to elevate and purify our souls through knowledge gained by experience whether high or low road, elevates or drowns us through life’s tests and choices)

   than we may consider that the chosen time in which we incarnate into 

     ….is part of the soul’s evolutionary experience 

     so …. 

how much does identity factor into the importance “of being”?

to reconsider the question 

To further consider now, absorbing our cultural and timeline history as a unit and individual and how the two play together in the soul’s living body experience in a carnation …. 

    would thus shape an individual 

shape experiences and perceptions; shape outcomes and fates….

   

   but— what if one is made ignorant of their dna identity?

How important is that ….

    this one may find ethical cause to pause 

    I can tell you ….the fingerprint footprint of being of another background than was told you are 

    can be hugely influential upon how they see themself. What they see and how they are seen. In the physical mirror. How people react to more what they see than what lies are said. His those very things are part of the soul’s journey, yes …. but also …. 

pause again …. and again ….and yet again ….that Easter egg you click on again ….later after you forgot about it now …. and every time you go back and rewind back the years ….abd click again the Easter egg ….you never got to click —and then 

go back up to the attic and find that dusty mirror; drag out the trunk; pull the light and open Pandora’s old box…. let the light through the window 

Identity ….is as much part of the soul’s journey as their personal experience and their personal truth during this revolution’s evolution and to mesh together both the denial of the knowledge of a bloodline as its connection to your temporal experience is —an invisible soul ‘trauma’. I see it as. It internally pokes at the individual as freakish flaws that make one an outsider where they should be ‘at home’ —two fold as the denial of knowing where their dna identity lay would enhance personal meaning and connection to the current world around them is ….another invisible soul trauma —

that disconnection ….among society; not in synch with inclinations or interests 

but it is part of the experience of the soul —it is its own experience 

To examine then —identity …. and the meaning of a soul’s existence 

    indeed there are layers of why all of this does beg to humor the Greek chorus to listen to some of my stories— my thoughts …. my metaphors 

no, indeed— this (how does the choice to pick any cultural identity as your soul’s revolutionary mission befall the individual’s future road) should be examined and —dive deeply and our apparatus? This is the quiet stage in the back of the theatre that nobody goes to where we can try out all the costumes out of view of the critics 

*Prism Cells ….is a metaphor for ….

how much does identity factor into the importance “of being”?

WB Ashbridge & the Prism Cells continued

*(See this Story for your recap in screenshots below at end of post)

Leaving from DC is always such a nightmare; that airport was the worst of airports but the Winifred Brook Ashbridge foundation had paid for Daphne’s flight and they booked her in business class so, Daphne was allowing herself to luxuriate in the comfort of spacious seating and a few glasses of mimosa to ease the residual tension that still lingered leaving from where she was coming from RR Washington had left its slimy film upon her and the Orange medicinal helped.

For a moment a flash of the hunting lodge came before her inner visuals recalling so many miserable days feeling trapped on that barren property, her only friendly companionship was one of the several dogs who liked to follow her around, but even the dogs had all been prepared for in case of the property owner’s demise. 

What wild luck this foundation wanted her help! 

And Winifred Brook Ashbridge’s, no less!

Who says that obsessions can’t pay off? All her hours spent in chat group discussions correcting other fans about literary details of the story and the author on the website had come to their attention. That is —when the main frame motherboard for the website which also contained all of all the author’s cited publishing notes and references crashed and with it all the information. 

At first, Daphne was a little embarrassed to mention how much she herself had as far as detailed research. When she hinted that there were boxes in a temperature controlled unit that she rented just for her WBA research—well, it was at that point (though through emails still, but) they were clearly desperate to convince her they wanted to make it worth her while and prompted a phone call from them with the discussion of a salary and a rent free apartment on the foundation’s property to keep her near the work.

What they needed was to completely rebuild not just the website but, as all the years of detailed research was now lost even the foundation itself no longer had any reliable resources for referencing WB Ashbridge—and they were the definitive foundation!

How many boxes exactly? Oh dear! Well, they spared no expenses for the crates and were being flown with their own special temperature controlled shipping freight company, which was set to arrive just slightly before her own arrival. 

Had she stopped to ask herself how long this job was to last for? Had they even mentioned this? Daphne had been far too excited to stop ….to think ….that question. 

Whoops. 

Well, for now it was a gig.

And it got her out of being jobless and homeless—and it was her favorite subject so, for now, she decided to look at it as an exciting new adventure which is what Ashbridge’s books were all about; having an open mind about taking a (reasonable and well planned) chance (as the book’s wizard liked to point out before each adventure) into the unknown which always somehow wound up involving time travel in some small or big way.

Time travel. 

As though the layers of time could be traversed….

     and now ad she looked out the airplane window into the clouds, this made her think about time …. it made her think of her Tolkien dream but it also made her think about parts of her own life she wished she could travel back to. Maybe fix some things ….that she got wrong 

It made her think now about things she forgot for many many years ….like the wicked man with the polished mahogany valet where he hung up his leather belts and ….would beat her 

No, was that a dream? She had forgotten …. It was so so long ago and she was only about five ….but it was there in the dark recesses of her memories.

She leaned her head into the glass window as she stared into nothingness….and what happened next? After she left the yellow house? 

She never looked back and she never thought about that house or that wicked man with the belts or that life ever again. It was the day Father came. Nobody said he was coming. It was after the last belting and the illness that followed. Father arrived one day—but she didn’t know him as ‘Father’ before then. But he came one day and knelt down to her; he said,

“I’m taking you far away from here and that man is never going to hurt you again.”

It was the mimosa. 

She normally didn’t like to drink. It brought back memories she thought she’d long snuffed out.

But after they left she never had to think about that place or that man because everything got better then. 

Her mind went back to those happier better days at the Evans affluent home in the heart of New York City ….her mind went back there now to those beautiful memories in her childhood with Father and the day he first got her; even as it brought tears now to her eyes, she was glad of them just now.

 

the question do I miss my ex…. it is the family we were that I miss. it is as if some tragic accident took that family away and I am the widow 

Daphne & the Prism Cells

There was time to think on the flight over for Daphne; the flight made her recall so many other times she had crossed the ocean and it made her recall so many parts of her life. 

Winifred Brook Ashbridge ….had been a turning point author in her life. Often a crutch, if you will.

Through bad times ….those characters and stories held her from the great big deep abyss of ….darkness where all her fears lay 

The stories were time travel stories and she had read them too around the time she had read Lord of the Rings and often in dreams the stories mixed 

What made her think of that now? It was the dream she had had of Tolkien just the other night ….Prisms …. and layers of time 

Daphne thought of time now ….and looked out into the ocean as she remembered the time she saw the gulf stream as a child from the airplane ….the colors ….it made her remember the man ….

   ….and the day that she left the yellow house in Miami 

Who will stand beside you when your world falls apart?

mental studio