AGFASCOPIC MEMORY REJUVENATION

I 'dug out' the old Agfascope200 from the basement...for a current project.....Within it, was stuck..crooked in the carrier....a 1965 'color transparency' of my first 'boyfriend', Lex, with his Sebastian Flyte stuffed animal......a gentle Praxitelian picture of perfection, then.....beneath his soft beauty...there was an egghead philosopher/poet, Greek-style wrestler, French-style fencer, and Theater Set lighting designer, who eventually majored in theoretical mathematics, and, later, while in Atlanta....gained a PhD in Radar System Design at Ga. Tech....Who'd a thought it!.....When this photo was taken, he was a Rimbaud scholar and poet!....thus, our 'connection'.....I wrote a book about my relationship with him.....and sent the only copy to him in late 1968.....He made scotch-taped modifications in the manuscript and, later, sent it back to me....from Washington State......having joined the Navy, he had become 'another person', having lost his interest in symbolist poetry and his 'God', Arthur Rimbaud...... Overwhelmed by his emotions, he shifted to the study of Radar Algorithms and 'Numbers' Science, theoretical mathematics and more 'sciency' stuff!.....He is still the 'great enigma' of my Youth.......Sooo many memories surface from a 1" x 1.5" slide, stuck in an old 'viewer'! 

SLEEP IS JUST THE INKPOT

Listening to a NPR re-broadcast of a rather boring program about 'the importance of regular SLEEP HABITS', yesterday, I decided to hit the sack, early....for me.....9 pm.... Awakening, full of ideas, I drug out a drawing tablet to doodle and scribble for an hour....then, returned to horizontal positioning for another hour, awakening again....alert and 'ready to go'.....However, since I WAS, after all, trying to sleep 'straight through' the night, I felt rather frustrated by my insomnia and turned on the TV to watch Frank Pavich's documentary, "Jodorowsky's Dune", with H.R. Giger and Michel Seydoux......which led me to search the internet for a hard-bound copy of Jodorowsky's PROPOSAL for filming his Version of DUNE......then, on my phosphoresent watch dial: 3AM!.... so, rather than pursue some alert activity, I listened to some boringly relaxing recording of Tibetan singing bowls and raindrops on the Lake of Melancholia, eventually....returning to slumberland and the usual Lucid Dreaming.......Voila!....now, in the world of dreams, like Little Nemo, I could both 'sleep', 'rest' and have intellectually challenging experiences within cerebral cortex's electrical interchange......The subsequential DREAM was both uplifting, optimistic and charged with creative energies...and will be discharged, later, in an Update, from last night's shorthand notes on my 'scibblepad'.....I awakened.....bladder shouting for emptying.....thinking, it must be midnight!......but, the see-in-the-dark hands of my watch 'said' 8:30......Hungry, I thought, then, that I should make some dinner........Then, leaving my unlit cave with no windows, emerging into another room, lit by light from a large window....I was confused, wondering why, at 8:30 PM, during Winter, the Sun Was Up!......I was still asleep....and all this was but a Dream......as I stumbled, sleepwalking in the dark, over a pile of DVD's that I'd been sorting, earlier, yesterday, falling into a big plastic storage box, positioned under the hole in my roof, through which rainwater accumulated as it dripped/ran through a ripped out plaster wall.......Was I, still, asleep? Was this, too, part of my labyrinthin Dream? Guess 'NOT', as i showered, donned some dry pajamas and slippers and descended the stairs to microwave a coffee cup cheese omelet and pump some expresso........Certainly, now, I am 'actually' awake, and almost ready to write and illustrate last night's Dream....the part not mentioned 'here'....for one of my Blogs...about Dreaming......Lest all be forgotten as Time separates the instantaneous from the mundane repetions of ordinariness and the interiorized conceits from the far less metaphoric lineup of sequential proceedings between the markers of The Clock..... It's almost 9 AM! Times-a-wasting and the black India ink in my 000-tip pen has clogged its point....maybe, a dip into the last drop of expresso will get it 'running' .........

THE THRONE'S JOURNEY TO THE MUSIC ROOM ....and.....BACK

 Just after arriving in Atlanta, in the Fall of 1968, and needing some furniture for my new home with Johnny Lowe and Bill Mello, I purchased...at an auction on Spring Street....an old, dilapidated Chinese 'throne' chair......in the fashion of my usual practical consideration and aesthetic sensibility......Within a year, I had 'decorated' the music room with the then fashionably high tech electronic equipment.....you know...big, McIntosh tube amplifiers, big KLH 12's with external crossovers, big Revox tape recorder and big Thorens turntable.....Well....BIG!...everything was so BIG.....I even 'upgraded' the already big speakers with a pair of humongous planar electrostatic panels.... from a failing startup manufacturer of 'conceptual' electronics....thank you Garland Christopher Keeler......in Canoga Park, California...(acquiring, thus, a pair of huge, wooden shipping crates, later used as substrata for an encaustics project, utilizing a thousand colored Crayons that I found at Peachtree Quality Salvage Company) So.....for aesthetic balance, the decor of the music room had to be scaled on the 'big' side..... This decorating challenge was met by housing the pre-amps, amps, tuners...well...all that 'Stereo'...and later, Quadraphonic.....equipment in an English Tudor cabinet that was originally designed for a room, several times the size of my 'music' room, a 17th century Welsh chest that conveniently housed all of my 33RPM records.....and, of course, a 'chair', placed in the 'sweet spot' for perfect aural perspective of the new 'surround sound'......The Chinese 'throne' chair was, if not very comfortable or moveable, 'perfect' for its unusual new function......... So, pages and thousands of words later....and a couple of years.....having ditched my 'career' perspective at Saks, Macy's or any other 'employer'....I sold everything and moved to Europe........Years later, with some newfound wealth, I came across the 'listening throne', now ensconced in a fancy-smanchy upscale antiques store......It had journeyed from my music room to Mike Deasy's antique store.....to Atlanta Decorative Arts Center, via a couple of 'in-between' owners....finally landing in a Museum-setting.......and more and more words...edited out of this short bloggy entry.....it came back to me, with new 'museum' restoration and French Polish, and has remained, sans its earlier room companions.......now overseen by a painting entitled "Vanity".....I think I'll dig out James Burke's series, on VHS...of course....on "CONNECTIONS".......Much of our lives is just Happenstance, isn't it?.......and that 'happenstance' varies, vastly between the Lives of the inattentive and the hyper-vigilant......

NOTES FROM MY COUSIN SUZIE TAUBERT, AS WE IRON OUT THE WRINKLES IN THE 'SAVAGE' HISTORY..........

Yes, Effie was our grandmother. I was almost named after her. She was a stately woman, much taller than her husband. After the divorce, she married John Haddock and moved to Indiana.... but not before she kidnapped my mother and enrolled her in Mrs. Bachman’s School for Girls in Florence, Alabama where mom stayed until she graduated. Pop remarried and had another family. He left my mother $1.00 so she wouldn’t contest the will. Effie and mother moved to Nashville, where she met my dad, after she graduated. Effie died when I was two. Dad took a job in Texas after she died and we moved shortly after. My dad loved Effie. He said she was clever, funny, a good business woman (she kept the books for Pop's grocery store).

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Effie and John Haddock had a speakeasy in Indiana. That why Mom had to be in a boarding school. Pop had taken her out of school as she entered the 8th grade…to take care of the boys. When Effie heard about that, she snuck into the house and took mother in the middle of the night. Mom said she would come down to Florence once a month and take mom and her girlfriends out for lunch and a day of shopping. Mom said she was bigger than life. Furs, cigarette holders, strands of pearls, & driving a Dusenberg convertible. John Haddock died in my mom’s senior year, so Effie bought a house in Nashville. My dad was their “iceman” and they were the last on his route. He’d often stay for dinner and play cards. Mom was working in a button factory and dating other men but would often find my Dad at their house playing cards with Effie. Mom was dating Percy Priest who went on to become a state senator…she dumped him for my Dad. She’d often remind him of the mistake she made when she’d get mad at him. My sister, Jean had memories of Effie and adored her. She swore she saw her in mom’s hospital room as mother was dying. I was there but I didn’t see her, but Mother was talking to her Mom in her last breaths. Jean was down the hall, talking to the nurses and looked into the room from a distance and saw a tall woman standing at the foot of her bed.

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[In another's memory ......Your dad was a grocery delivery boy.....not an iceblock deliveryman.....presumably, in H'ville....on Holmes Avenue......Clara was visiting Mrs. White, Opie and our Grandfather.....on a break from her 'Catholic Boarding School'.....Clara offered Edwin all of her saved money....to 'take her away from "All This Mess"......after which, they eloped........The "pieces" fit together in several ways, don't they, Suzie? ]

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