"Onward, through the fog!"---Oat Willy
First, the Grand Leader of the Local Faction is a Kool-Aid brewer called The Orange King, who daily dispenses free product to the masses. “Drink Me!” the stuff insists and the people do. “It makes us taller!” they foolishly contend. “It let’s us see things that are not there!”
Now as bad luck would have it, a great plague has inundated the land. The people here run from it, hide in their bungalows, cover their faces with magic cloth to keep the pox at bay. But the Orange King will have none of it, promising his subjects shelter from the storm if they will but wear little bells around their necks. “Faith, not fear!” he counsels and they eagerly jump up and down, ringing their wonderful bells.
The king sits in the counting house, counting out his money. The queen lies in the parlor, eating bread and honey. And the gravedigger rolls his deathwagon through the town, throwing another body on the pile.
To be continued. Or not.
Life In The Time Of Cholera
Welcome to Purgatory. The Sisters of Charity told us about this place decades ago when we were mindless tots, barely able to pay attention. Purgatory is the outpost to which the souls of sinners are assigned for atonement. Hopefully, when their papers are all in order, they will catch the 10 a.m. express to Heaven. Dante claimed that there were seven terraces of Purgatory but the nuns had no appetite for the sordid details.
If you have previously resided in New England, California or New York, Purgatory is a morose, unacceptable state of being. If you’re from Kansas or North Dakota, it’s not too bad a change. Movers and shakers, people who strive for great accomplishments are helpless here; slackers are right at home.
The days are pretty much the same in Purgatory. Nobody takes you out to the ballgame, nobody bounces into a neighborhood bar where everybody knows your name. There is no music in the air. Not a soul down on the corner singing “Sweet Adeline.” That used to be an indication that wedding bells were breaking up that old gang of mine, but now there are no weddings either.
The citizens of Purgatory plod along to funless jobs in carefully delineated boxes, feast on non-sumptuous takeout lunches and drive home in empty cars to watch sporting events played in venues where cardboard people don’t cheer. Are we having fun yet? Well, the task is lighter for the janitors.
Sometimes a crack of light slips through the constant cloud bank. The air and water are cleaner with so many vehicles sidelined. A friend has discovered a remote beach, peopled only by sand crabs. Glad Hands Sally is back at the massage parlor. A vaccination is being prepared which will allow everyone instant access to heaven.
We sit in our domiciles, watch ancient television programs and wait for the interminable cloud to lift. We remember what life was like BP (Before Purgatory) when we could go to parties, meet girls, hoist a few cool ones with the bros. We imagine how wonderful things will be when the Renaissance finally comes. Look—is that a patch of blue sky over there? Or just the Cosmic Joker leading us on?
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to live in Occupied Territory? A place where alien forces control the land and the citizens are forced to bow to their wishes with little hope of resistance? A country like France under Hitler, India during The Raj.
Do you remember the old Saturday Evening Post story, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where an extraterrestrial civilization slowly invaded an unaware midwestern town while the population slept? The aliens had hundred of duplicates of the townspeople growing in pods in a vast field, waiting for the originals to go to sleep. When the locals went nighty-night, the dopplegangers took over.
The new Joe Smith looked just like the old one, but there was a certain reserve, a slight hesitancy in conversation in the newer models. The locals were slow to catch on because this was an unprecedented event, impossible to imagine.
The same thing could be happening today. Some of our previously reasonable friends are turning up dazed and confused, perhaps brainwashed by unknown entities. They are beginning to do things contrary to the town’s interests, seemingly contrary to their own. There seems to be no rational explanation for their deviance, but everything could be explained if they were replacements grown in a pod field.
Every day, their numbers increase. One day it’s the butcher, the next the baker, soon the candlestick maker. Eventually, they will control the city, make decisions affecting you, begin growing thousands of pods to export to nearby towns. By the time they are discovered, the police may be converted. If you try to escape with warnings to the outlanders, you may be pulled over, jailed or worse. Once out of the bottle, the genie will be difficult to hogtie.
Stay alert. Look for signs of perfidy. Organize the resistance and counterattack before it’s too late. Before long, we could all be eating grasshoppers, worshipping at the Church of the Soma Drinkers and wearing leashes. It’s the rainy season and the pod fields are growing apace.
Places To Go, People To See
We may be living in Limbo, it might be the rainy season and great flotillas of Covid bugs could be hurtling through the air, but some people still have serious business to attend to. When a man is approaching his epic 80th birthday, rarefied measures must be taken to celebrate the occasion, especially since the odds of yet another epic birthday are not encouraging. Photographs must be taken to record the accomplishment, proof must be delivered that the honoree thrives, that one foot is not firmly planted in the grave, that body and soul are not covered with leper’s spots, inverse psoriasis, Morgellons disease. Everything must be bared, like it or not.
The theme of the first of three birthday blogs is 80 Years And Still Standing, in which Bill is likened to a building which has seen its day, crumbling perhaps, or showing signs of wear but refusing to topple. To capture that theme, we sought out photographess Kimber Greenwood of nearby Newberry to help plan poses and insert appropriate backgrounds to meet the theme. “I am the Queen of Photoshoppers,” declared Kimber, “place your trust in me.” Bill would like you to know that he does not approve of photoshopping bodies, only buildings, so his head was not moved to a better body.
Further proof of this is the set of pictures in the second birthday blog, taken by bare-bones photographer Sam Rivera of Avalon Park, who does his tricks with nothing but lighting and a little makeup. A person has to really want to see Sam because he is not easy to find.
First, you drive about 15 miles past the Orlando airport, then get off Route 528E on a dubious road which leads past a nuclear power plant and a gigantic landfill, giving one pause to contemplate whether he is now heading directly for Hell. But nope, just when all looks lost, up pops the charming little community of Avalon Park, which would be right at home in the middle of The Villages. And there is Sam and his helpful wife Bethany right in the middle of it all.
Several people have asked what one of these sessions is like, terrified at the prospect. Well, it’s like this. You show up at the agreed upon hour as clean and well-groomed as possible, your entire ensemble of costumes in tow. In my case, that was almost irrelevant. For almost 30 minutes a makeup woman does the best she can, considering.
The posing usually starts with the most clothing you will be wearing all day, then a little less with each pose, the better to make the subject comfortable. Bethany and I had exchanged ideas for a few weeks and she had about fifteen classic poses ready. I had chosen a category which provided fine art prints in which Sam’s expertise in lighting a subject rose to the fore. The Riveras have more lights than Fenway Park and they know what to do with them. Bethany monitored the poses and constantly asked for a little movement here, a little there (“pull in your stomach” was a popular request).
An hour after the shooting was finished, Sam posted large photos of each pose separately on a huge TV-type screen. The three of us first chose 67 shots, then whittled them down to a dozen, the size of the package I’d purchased. Many of those will be included with the second blog, a few with the third.
We may be living in Limbo, it might be the rainy season and there could be gigantic flotillas of Covid bugs hurtling through the air, but some people have serious business to attend to. When a man is speeding up to 80 years, neither rain, nor snow, nor fear of insects can stop this near-octogenarian from the swift completion of his appointed rounds. The results will appear on October 29, November 5 and November 12, just about the time Joe Biden will be thinking about making his appointments. I hope to be considered for a prominent elderpost. I will have already proven I have nothing to hide.
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Image by Kimber Greenwood |
That's all, folks....
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
