Monthly Archives: August 2015

Just Me - AmeliaJake

The car is resting in Kendallville

I am resting too, having decided to delay any quick cleaning up housework I could have done easily some years ago. Actually, I could still do it; I’ve just decided that this time. Come to think of it, I believe I always tended toward that choice through the decades. Well, see, I’m somewhat honest: I was going to plead aging, but I had to come clean and admit the truth. Oh, sigh, that reminds me – I do have to shower and spiff up before I set off again for Dayton and then Cincinnati and then back again. Auuuugggghhhh. I have the washer going now; I thought maybe that would help me psychologically to see the benefits of showering rather than going native.

I have a huge bite on my right foot, specifically on the outer side of my right foot, so I can’t really get a good look at it. It does not sting when I apply AfterBite, which is very unusual. Perhaps it is an alien species of bug that as I type is sending back information on humans to its home planet. HA. I am not a prime specimen. Then again, maybe negative information about this life form here will forestall an alien invasion. No, no need for thanks -it’s all speculation, dontcha know.

 

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

When you step outside the mundane

I’ve been caught up in so many routine errands of living that somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking about things that don’t have actual dimensions. This afternoon, though, I’ve found myself pulling together impressions of the past 36 hours or so and winding up in a territory such as what one would find in a Stephen King novel.

I have the distinct sense that I have seen, if not full-blown evil, than what I find myself calling a varmint – a varmint acting and shaped like a human, but with a badness coming through as a cloud that might at any moment coalesce into a nightmarish miasma. It is a intuitive suggestion that what you know is too awful to be real  is, indeed, real and you know fear is coming. And that “indeed” back there in that sentence, well, it is more of a breathless OH MY GOD.

I am very aware of standing at a sidewalk cafe, cup in hand, with the sun warming both air and the pavement just beyond the shade of the awning, watching normal things go by – actions that happen everyday and never trigger a thought.  And then, across the scene one car passes and you see the hunching driver as a hunching blob that is maybe the essence of the wolf that ate a grandma.

You know that part about, “But  your ears are so big” and so forth? Well, maybe it is the individual features. The mouth, perhaps. The mouth that is just a little bit different in every way from an average feature, a normal feature. Not that there is disfigurement or malformation, just the perception that it is straining to hold steady the lines of the plump upper lip before a giant maw opens.

Only it is not a Stephen King horror story; it is actually something real, but capable of causing great distress. Such an odd feeling. I’ve seen people I’ve thought looked mean, cruel, sharp, testy, but to have a visual memory of one who looks blurred and ominous is unsettling.

Is this what becomes of the things that skulk under a child’s bed, that go bump in the night? Well, for Stephen King, it made him a lot of money; I’m afraid there may be other outcomes. Breaking even might seem like a big win, come to think of it.

Just Me - AmeliaJake

A lady my grandmother would not have invited to dinner

Years ago, telling a story about a woman in the area where my grandmother lived, my mother remarked about the former’s character. She didn’t tell a bunch of ancedotes about the woman’s character, although many people did; Mother simply remarked, “Let’s just say your grandmother never invited her to Sunday dinner.”

I witnessed the behavior of a woman like that today; when you see it in person, you truly understand my grandmother’s stance, no matter how many decades have passed from them to now.