Home
Candlestick Rescue
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2098
It's the inadvertent collection of things I had no intent of ever collecting.
Antique brass candlesticks.
Sometimes they turn up at garage sales, the flea market, thrift shops, in the summer as often as a pair a week. And I buy them, usually because they're too cheap to leave, far cheaper than buying the new made-in-India rubbish that saturates the market now. I can't resist a bargain.
You learn to spot the real ones from the fakes. The fakes are heavier, lack the color, the patination, the distress and wear. Although there are some very competent fakes out there, most can be spotted without even lifting them and checking the bases. When you get them home you try and date them, compare the styles, look for a makers mark, most are unmarked and can only be dated generally by comparing styles to other candlesticks where you're certain of the period.
And there are the "orphans", the single candlesticks that have lost their partner sometime in the past 100, 200 years. I have a special affinity for these, pick them up for a dollar or two in the hopes of eventually reuniting them with their mates, rare but it's happened, I've found one at a garage sale and paired it, years later, with another from a distant garage sale. I think, romantically perhaps, of what they've been through in their years of separation and imagine, could they talk, of their conversations and joy at being reunited.
Awake at 5:00 AM
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2100
For some reason I'm awake at 5:00 AM, filled with a murderous rage.
No recollection of waking up, just the thought of strangling someone.
And I can't fall back asleep. So review my notes, drink a cup of coffee, open a few bills - today's a long one - longer on only half a night's sleep; but tomorrow - with luck - I can sleep in.
Starbucks - Jan 12
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2083
I've been meaning to escape the restaurant between shifts for a while.
Today I managed to do so. A quick jaunt to the Starbucks down the street, furtively swipe another fistful of gift cards, then a seat on a barstool at the window. The tables and chairs are all full.
I've a lot of notes to go through. Ideas are plentiful, time is short...
There's an idiot beside me on his cellphone, talking loudly as though he were in a nightclub, I'm unable to concentrate. He's talking about the courses he's taking in University, about the Jane Austin novel he's being forced to read, what he thinks of it (not much apparently, too much detail; did she really need to mention things like 'color'), about what he's doing after Starbucks and I want to smack him for being such a boor..... And at a table next to me, a table I can't sit at because it's occupied, a fat woman with a pram is dictating from her Acer PC in a monotone:
"Love is enduring...love is always there when you need it...true love is unfathomable but ...."
Her friend is writing all this down. And I think that maybe fat chick is dictating some sort of break up letter to her friend but at the end her friend says with astonishment "You wrote this?" and fat chick confesses "yeah, it's a poem I wrote when..." and I'm going nuts in this carnival of idiocy....
Eventually they all shut up and I have a moment to gather my thoughts. Briefly, because I want to get back to the restaurant, have my nap on the sofa in the basement, listen to the mice nibbling on the furniture, then back to work....
But the thoughts, they'll wait, have to wait, because it's late and I've 3 doubles left and am pining for a nap...
Day Off - Monday, January 11 - 10
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1991
Exactly that.
Up startlingly early, 6:00 AM. Surf internet. Attempt to nap as it seems, well...just wrong to be up this early on a day off.
Hit the thrift shops. No treasures today.
Home. Attempt to nap again; the vaguest outlines of a dream:
There's a glowstick on the counter with "Bioluminescence" written across it, I can see some spattered on the floor and carpet between the kitchen and the office. So I take it and break it and empty the contents into the compost, it will self-perpetuate I think to myself and sure enough the entire compost begins to shine with phosphorescence...
And there's a ring on the doorbell and I answer and it's a rainbow child selling gift vouchers and discount books...
I'm pretty grouchy, not exactly who I'd wanna be woken up by.
Hang about the house until 1:00, just in case. Eat some cherries, make a bowl of Vietnamese style soup with the dessicated vegetables in the fridge, rice stick noodles, veggie-beef bouillon, chili peppers, peanut butter. Trying to fill in the nutritional gaps left by my schedule.
I give up again, call my friend for coffee, he's not home, leave a message and head out to the Starbucks on 14 St.
But first I stop at Zowie's, lots of junk, no real treasures, nothing, at least, that I can't live without.
Now I'm not a Starbucks fan, they make great coffee and all but I consider them, consider any company that homogenizes the urban landscape as they have done, to be evil. Nonetheless I'm collecting Starbuck cards for an art project I'm working on, so with my "Grande" coffee I swipe a handful of the cards. "They're free" I tell myself, they have no value until they've been charged, and besides, once I finish my art project it'll make them famous....
I've already got it all worked out in my head, just need the right couple of nuts and bolts and I'll be off...
And I chill in Starbucks for a half an hour, reading Huxley, there's a dearth of interesting people, a doctor has his PC open across from me watching a how-to video on how to perform cosmetic facial surgery, there's close-ups and distressing shots of sawing beneath the flesh and skin...
At least I presume he's a Doctor, he could just be a sadist or serial killer reliving happier times.
But, when you think about it, serial killers and sadists generally aren't stupid enough or so shorn of social skills to watch videos like this in public places. Only Doctors.
Back home, another stab at a nap; again unsuccessful, the beginnings of a waiter's nightmare, then up to forage again for food - Subway, couldn't be bothered to cook TWICE in one day.
And now on the PC. So ends the second day off .... no grand trips to the theater (as Mondays are dark days - a bit of a waste, this, especially as the High Performance Rodeo is playing and there are a few that have piqued my interest...).. next week I tell myself.
Page 811 of 877