Casually haunted...

It happens. You open your windows and watch the fine mist of deja vue settle on the landscape. Have I really aged long enough for life to repeat itself or are we just paying for our sins? Being casually haunted by everyday reminders that at one time, we too, were wreckless and free?

These are the things I remember, and sometimes miss. These are the things I sometimes still cling to, tucked in a dusty drawer, crammed in a crowded closet. A pair of jeans, an airbrushed T-shirt, a notebook full of poems, pictures of the past. These are the things that once in a while, in a laughing mob of kids, I see again....And wonder, when did we become vintage? When did we finally become cool?

Flip flops, the real ones. Little 49 cent rubber thongs of no style. Perfect with button up levi's in the Florida sun.
Platform shoes. Clunky, funky, fun.
Peasasnt blouses. Embroidered. Really. No bra.
Led Zepplin
David Bowie
Joanie Mitchell
Dancing on the coffee table.
Picture booths. Distorted faces. Sepia smiles.
The smell of a patchwork leather purse. The keeper of all secrets.
Lip gloss. No color. Just the hint that I want your attention.
The perfect tan. Before the warnings, the scares, the perfect sunscreen. The kind only found on a string bikini clad drooling sun goddess sleeping in the sand.
Chicken and dumplings. From scratch.
Fishnet hose.
Forever blonde. The color of the sun. The color of the sand. The color of the dunes. The color of our childhood.
Poems. Ranting, raving love poems.
Laughter. The spontaneous unacceptable laughter that is born in the morbid silence of a funeral or etheral magic of matrimony. The uncontrollable, vibrate my body, laughter that spreads like a virus without a cure, and runs down your cheeks in taunting tears.
Princess phones.
Barefoot sandals.
Seaweed crowns.
Dancing in the kitchen.
Telephone boothes.
Ham and cheese flavoured Flings.
Big, really Big, sunglasses. "Whose behind those Foster Grant's?"
Vans. Not mini vans. Not tennis shoes. Vans. Hippie Vans.
Peace Creek. You had to be there.
Yesterday.
It wasn't any better. It wasn't glorious or anything. I just didn't know then what I know now. And it was easier.

On Borrowed Wings

There she is. The Angel blessing my house. She moved in first. When the walls were still sepia smoke stained plaster. When the shag carpet crawled up your ankles and made you feel like you needed to shave your legs AGAIN with every barefoot step you took. She moved into the curtainless house and lived here for weeks by her self. From the street, she was a billboard. "Stay tuned". And the neighbors did. They watched. Actually they peeked. They walked their lap dogs, made obsessive trips to their mailboxes. Waiting. Eventually we did move in. Hauled our haphazard lives into the living room in cardboard boxes, and started to unpack the past. We marked our territory like a chihuahua with "little man" syndrome. This is "our" house. This is home. Over the years, it has been called a lot of names.... "Clown house" when the little ones were in kindergarten...."House of Nudes" when my pubescent son and his friends actually noticed the tattooed mannequins.... "California hippie house"...when I applied for a second mortgage.... but really, it is just "our house" and we landed here on borrowed wings.

The Mermaid's Gate-Singleton-Outsider Art

Our painted house. Here at the end of the hall, is the Mermaid's Gate, doorway to my own private domain. She was born on New Year's eve. From the deck, the sky above us exploded like a giant bag of jiffy pop...and electrical parades of color rained down upon us.... The endless night was strobed with dancing technicolor stars and it was beautiful.

Then the bats came. They swooped and plunged too close for comfort. Perhaps frightened by the noise or the thought that the world was ending, they were zig zagging madly through the spectacular light show. Casting dark shadows, their swooshing, flapping sounds drowning out the celebratory cannon blasts and static-like explosions. Finally, they won. The fireworks just ceased to exist. Only the smell of burnt resolutions lingered through the night.

I came in and flicked on the lights. It seemed the world outside was satisfied with their sky shattering farewell to 2005. All was quiet. I pulled out the paint and made my New Year's resolution: This year I will be a Mermaid. And I will float in peace.