Fortune’s Pawn

It’s four o’clock in the morning and I have just woken up next to a strange woman. That is probably not the best way to start a story, so let’s go back a little bit and start over.

I first met Nell a few days ago. I have just moved house, to a large and rambling apartment building near the railroad tracks in that part of town, they call it the Fifth Ward, where the Bohemian artists and the down and out of society mix freely. It’s a part of town whose real pulse is best taken at night, late at night, but seemingly quiet at, say, 10:30 in the morning. I had just lost my job at the paper, and picked up a few classes to teach at university. The apartment was cheap, and I would be able to get by on that salary and this rent.

The building was a four story walk-up, my unit was one of four on the second floor. Most of the buildings in this neighborhood are industrial, but this one was actually built as apartments. “The Hawthorne” was the name over the main entrance, but I, as most of the tenants, used the side door, off the litter strewn parking lot.

David had called shortly before my move. He was going to be in town for Father’s Day and asked if he could stay with me. You can stay in my apartment, I told him, my new apartment, but it will be empty - I’m in the process of moving right now. That worked for him, and he even helped me move a few of my things over. There wasn’t much, really. I had been shedding possessions of late, part of an abortive plan to move overseas. I still might move, but that was the impetuous to get rid of much accumulated material cruft with which one surrounds oneself over time. I still kept many books, an old typewriter of my mother’s, and my laptop. An old leather easy chair, in which I liked to write, and a wonky footstool were what we were moving the night I first met Nell.

The first thing that struck me about this diminutive figure was her large head. Not large in and of itself, but large for her small, slender body. She had close-cropped black hair, almost spiky, with little elfin locks curling down before her ears. Her close-set dark eyes would often peer out from under her brow, her face tilted down towards her feet, as though heavy. That brow carried thin, but not plucked, eyebrows, with a few hairs on the bridge of her upturned nose, revealing the eastern European heritage which most surely lay in her past. She had a slight frame, and her shoulders hunch forward when she thinks no one is looking, but she has a proud carriage otherwise. About 50 years old, maybe a bit less, but I couldn’t really be sure. Her face had a way of lighting up when she thought she had impressed you, but could turn dark and cloudy with her mood. A black sweatshirt, with arms so long that they shrouded her hands like a monk’s cowl, overlapped the waist of her maroon jeans, themselves belted with an old tie.

She shuffled towards us in her slippers, looking through some mail, and almost absentmindedly held the door open for us. She looked up, though, as we carried the chair and footstool through the door. Her eyes had an almost mischievous cast to them as she introduced herself in a voice weighted with years of smoking but still lyrical, “I’m Nell - 4A. What a gloriously disheveled chair you have there. I’m sure he has an interesting story in him.” A few, I assured her. “I’d shake you hand and properly introduce myself, but this glorious chair would tumble. I’m Ralph, just moving into 2C.” She smiled and I got the first whiff of her subtly beguiling nature as she tilted her head down in that way and peered up at me from under her brow. She held the door, and we, David and I, finished getting the chair through. As the door closed behind me David said he thought she was hitting on me. I don’t know if that was so, but there was something, that was for sure.

Moving boxes with David the next day we ran into Nell again. She offered to serve us tea in her rooms. “I’ve got the fourth floor to myself, I do my work here as well,” she said, as we climbed the creaky back stairs behind her. She had an odd way of climbing stairs: she would take a step with one foot then bring the other up to meet it, then take the next step with that other foot. In this way, right foot up, left foot follows, then left foot up, right foot following. This made for an odd rhythm as the three of us ascended those old stairs.

Unlike the other floors, the fourth floor had no hallway or lobby, the stairs just emptied out at her back door. She fumbled with a key chain which had a large number of keys on it, and a pink feather for a fob and one of those stretchy plastic bands which some women use to hang keys from their arm when they don’t have a purse with them. She could never hang this key chain from her arm though, it would take all of the stretch out of that band.

The door opened into an almost empty room. There was an old green love seat, almost looked as though from an airport with its strongly geometrical style. A matching side chair and a low coffee table completed the grouping. That was it, three small pieces in a room which many would consider a large living room. It echoed it was so spare. I commented and the sparseness and the echoes. “An empty room inspires an active mind to rest, I find.” she replied. “Sometimes I need that, with what I do.”

“What do you do?” David asked.

“I’m an artist,” said Nell, and offered him a business card pulled from her pocket, that key chain rattling and jingling the whole time. He looked it over and slipped it into his own pocket.

“How many units are on this floor?” I asked. “Just mine.” she replied. “I don’t know why, but the building was built this way, with one large apartment on the top. I love it though, for my studio space.” This last was said as we made our way through another room and into a long hallway. There were many doors along that hallway, some with several locks on them. We were approaching the front of the building and the hallway lead us to her studio space, a long room which must have spanned the entire width of the building and had several tall windows along the western wall which looked out over the tops of the mostly lower manufacturing concerns and parking lots around us. The sodium-vapor lights from the lots down below cast an eerie dull-orange glow which came up through those tall windows and illuminated the ceiling more brightly than the rest of the room.

“Let me show you my latest work,” she said, and she must have flicked a switch somewhere, for the room suddenly had more lights on. It was still dark, but there were pools of light in the otherwise shadowy room. I could make out a couple of figures in the shadows. They were almost in silhouette when, with another switch, more lights. I could now clearly see a pair of statues, one of a man seated on a tall stool, another a man placing a box upon a tall shelf which wasn’t there, almost like mime. They were wonderfully lifelike, as I viewed them from the distance. As I approached one, however, I sensed some movement. Then it struck me, these are living! Surely, they were men, they held poses, and had been carefully dressed and made up, as for a photo shoot or to sit for an artist, but they were now living sculpture.

I cannot say for sure how it developed, I am a little foggy on the details, but Nell took on a different demeanor once we crossed the threshold into her apartment. She became stronger willed, almost imperious. She didn’t ask, she told. She almost ordered us around, and no longer peered out from under her brow, but rather held her head up and looked down her nose. She was strong, and we complied. Shortly after we entered the studio a young woman entered the room. “Bring tea, Hilda. Three cups.” ordered Nell. “Bring the pot, and some honey. That new Earl Grey, that’s what we’ll have, for Mr. Ralph and Mr. David.” “Get a move on it, girl.” she snapped. Looking quite frightened, Hilda even courtesied as she left the room.

“I was wondering if you would be so kind,” she started, addressing me. “I’ve needed to rearrange this furniture a bit for the longest time.” We were standing near one end of the long narrow studio space with our tea. David was perusing the bookshelf and trying not to look at the stoic, seated figure near him - that sculpture on the stool. Hilda hovered, nervously, near the periphery. There was a long, low couch with a gray woven throw over it, and many neutral colored pillows. Next to it were a couple of tables and a large white upholstered ottoman. The corner and fully one third of the ottoman was under one of these tables. “I’d like that ottoman over in front of the couch here,” said Nell. “We moved it when I was working on a piece recently and I just can’t seem to move it myself.”

I felt something, as she said those words, which told me that she would never have even tried to move it herself. She wasn’t given to acts of toil, there were other people to do work. She just directed. I took that direction, however, without even a thought of will. I put down my tea cup and moved towards the ottoman. It was one of those large square pieces, about four feet across. It was not too large for me to heft it alone, but it was awkward. As I picked it up I had to slide it out from under one of the tables. I heard a mew, and noticed a kitten, as white as the ottoman itself, was sitting on the corner which had been under the table. Where a cat would have jumped off a now moving ottoman, the kitten just hunched down and cried in fear. Hilda swept in and grabbed it. As she just as swiftly moved away I saw that she had dropped a note before my eyes.

“Help, we’re prisoners.” was all it said.

I wasn’t thinking as I read it, aloud, but once I realized the meaning of those words I looked up and saw a hard look in Nell’s face. “What is this?” exclaimed David. I, still with that ottoman in my hands moved towards Nell. The hard look in her eyes changed to fear, that fear of a cornered criminal, and she dropped her tea upon the sofa and darted out of the room. “You foolish girl,” she hissed as she ran.

I heard a door slam as I dropped the ottoman and headed after her, David and Hilda hot on my heels. “You won’t catch her,” cried Hilda behind me, “they never do.” Nell was nowhere to be found. Most of the doors were locked, and quite sound. “Well, I don’t know that we care about her,” I said to David. “You’re welcome to come with us if you’re scarred,” I told Hilda. “I’m sure she can’t hurt you.” I strolled towards the door to the back stairs. I hadn’t noticed, as we came in, just how sturdy it was, nor how many locks were on it.

“Nell, unlock this door!” I must have hollered that a hundred times that night as David and I tried to bust our way out of apartment 4A. Hilda didn’t even struggle, she just watched us, a mix of pity and fear, and defeat, upon her face.

As I said, it is four in the morning and I have just woken up next to a strange woman. I do not know when it was that I gave up. I don’t remember laying down with Hilda, but I awoke with her alongside me, her head firmly pressed into my left shoulder. “Where’s Nell?” I asked as I wiped the sleep from my eye with my right hand. I then looked down at Hilda but she wasn’t there. It was a nightmare, I realized, just a nightmare.

I pushed back the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed, both hands reaching back to rub my sore lower back.

You’d be surprised just how stiff you can get from holding a pose all day long.

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Pawn was visiting western Wisconsin this past weekend, and read this bizarre missive in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a response to an article about same sex marriage. I am still not sure exactly what the writer, one Charles Charnstrom, of Watertown, was trying to get at:

Whenever objection is raised to GLBT issues or same-sex marriage, name calling is invoked, usually either “hate-filled” or “homophobic.” I am against same-sex marriage and I am not homophobic or hate-filled.

Civilization is fragile and marriage is hard. Living with a person of the opposite sex is much more difficult than living with someone of the same sex. If same-sex couples are granted the same benefits as married couples, people will cease to get married and have kids.

Proof can be found in other Western countries. Babies are not being born from Japan to Italy. Russia even made a national holiday for workers to stay home and procreate.
Letters to the editor for Sunday, June 29

Last time I checked, neither Japan, Italy or Russia permitted same sex marriage, so he can’t possibly mean that those countries were lead to extreme measures due to such a move. If I read it correctly, the only reason men and women marry is because it helps to compensate for the onerous duty of living together and having sex. At least I think that’s what he’s trying to say.

Hmm….

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Pawn has moved this past weekend, and just wants to share a few words about that.

Here they are:

That night. That cold crisp night that he watched the comet streak overhead. That night was the last that he could be said to have been responsible for his own actions. Not that he had exercised any great care in living his life up until this point. It’s just that in that strange and generous calculus which we apply to the decision making powers of the artistic class, he had been cut a lot of slack. Up until the night that comet cut a gash in the night sky and everything changed.

She wasn’t with him then, not sharing his appreciation for late night walks in the less than safe neighborhood in which they dwelt. She was back in the flat starting another novel and finishing another bottle of merlot. That is how it was, in those days; she, his erstwhile muse, had no muse of her own save bottle and book, while he, numb and tired of losing her every night to those twins, he strode away each night to find some peace within.

There was no peace without, it was all traffic noise and loud conversation in the immigrant heavy district. It was a symphony in rare parts - the low hum of the sodium-vapor lights, the rich indecipherable patois emanating from the myriad open windows, the staccato rhythm of the tram wheels as they teased and taunted the edges of the cobblestone that still poked up in several sections of the aging pavement. On top of all of that was the static crackle of the power arcing from the overhead lines to the commutators of the trams themselves. A festival of sounds spanning a century converged in his little part of creation and drew him out of himself and away from the tempestuous storm which was brewing in the synapses of his drunken muse back home, back at the flat, steeping herself in cheap reds and that special sense of betrayal which age visits upon those whose ambition has been left behind.

The comet, he did not know, was early. He was no student of these things, of astronomy, nor did he have any special interest in the facts behind it. He knew only that as he walked east there was a smudgy line arcing across the sky which he could not recall having seen before. Comets are known for their punctuality, they are the timekeepers of the heavens, in the sense of the apito; that whistle blown to keep the Amazonian rivers of musicians in Carnivalé parade on tempo. Much as the leader toots the apito as he runs up and down the length of the bataria to keep all those drummers in sync, the comets race around the firmament keeping all of the celestial watches synchronized. Until that night.

All of the best minds in science agreed that comet Shinberg-Takie was not due until 21:13 Zulu Time on 3 February. Shinberg-Takie had other plans it seemed. He did not understand this, nor would he come to appreciate the peculiar effects it was to have on his life as he entered into the gravitational tug of the comet that night. It was 10:45 on the 2^nd of February when he left for his stroll, and Shinberg-Takie was already making a show in the eastern sky.

At 6:35 that evening, the large dish at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, was trained towards the eastern heavens. It operated in concert with much smaller optical telescopes from Yerkes to Griffith Park and points all over the globe as astronomers and astrophysicists struggled to understand how their eagerly awaited guest could possibly have arrived a full day early. One young graduate student in Berkeley’s sleepy astronomy department was watching the screens that night and before anyone else had noticed, he was already aware of the odd pull of ST-2008. He could no longer be held accountable either. He was already looking eastward, and waiting.

It was 8:35 in Rio and the stout yet fearsome bataria leader could not find his apito. How, he worried, would his beloved bataria sound without the steadying rhythmic guidance of his apito? The light in the eastern sky barely even registered as he, too, entered into its metaphysical orbit.

Shinberg-Takie had captured three souls by 21:45 Zulu. They all looked to the east and waited.

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This from The Independent on Sunday in re Barack Obama planning a foreign trip:

An Obama international tour is likely to tap into the wave of enthusiasm in Europe – particularly Spain, France and Germany, where his colour, youth and, above all, message that jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war have created impassioned interest.
Obama plans foreign tour as Bush flies to Britain - Americas, World - The Independent

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A week ago The Independent online broke the story (poo-pooed in the US MSM) that the Bush administration and our viceroy in Iraq were negotiating a then secret agreement with the Iraqis which would allow Bush to “declare a military victory in Iraq and say his 2003 invasion has been vindicated before he leaves office.” Here is an excerpt from today’s follow-up, which details modifications to the agreement meant to molify an increasingly restive Maliki government:

The agreement is being negotiated by David Satterfield, the US State Department’s top adviser on Iraq, who still maintains it can be initialled by a July deadline which Mr Bush set last year last year. “It’s doable,” he told reporters in Baghdad. “We think it’s an achievable goal.”

At a news conference, Mr Satterfield kept repeating that the US wants only to create a more independent Iraq. “We want to see Iraqi sovereignty strengthened, not weakened,” he said.

But Iraqis say that US demands for long-term military bases in the country even if the numbers are reduced, give the lie to that assertion.

US negotiatiors are also determined to maintain policies that allow them to arrest Iraqis without the approval of Iraqi courts, maintaining immunity for US troops and contractors from Iraqi prosecution and carrying out military operations without the Iraqi government’s knowledge or approval.

Washington also wants to retain control over Iraqi airspace and the right to refuel planes in the air, which has raised concerns that President Bush wants to have the option of using Iraq as a base to attack Iran.
Bush forced to rethink plan to keep Iraq bases - Americas, World - The Independent

Is it just me, or is this guy up for the George Orwell Public Speaking award?

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Just read this in Gail Collin’s column over at The Gray Lady and thought it precious. In regards to the “scandal” of Jim Johnson, and the vetting of vetters:

When Johnson quit on Wednesday, the McCain headquarters issued a statement saying that the fact that he had been selected in the first place raised “serious questions about Barack Obama’s judgment.” This does not seem like a great avenue of attack for a campaign in which a large chunk of the top staff was recently dismissed for being lobbyists.

Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate the cases, the McCain spokesman said: “America can’t afford a president who flip-flops on key questions in the course of 24 hours.” Under a McCain presidency, the bleeding would presumably go on for weeks and weeks before the inevitable occurred.

Although McCain has, so far, not demonstrated that he can manage anything more challenging than a backyard barbecue, that still does not make the Johnson story look any better.
Op-Ed Columnist - Gail Collins - Barack’s Bad Day - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

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I wrote back on February 25th, while I was in London, of the growth of the British Surveillance Society.  Well, today in theTelegraph comes news of a Manchester band, The Get Out Clause, which has turned that to their advantage:

Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets.

With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, suitable locations were not hard to come by.

They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester – including on a bus – and proceeded to play to the cameras.

The Get Out Clause, Manchester’s stars of CCTV cameras - Telegraph

The resulting video is quite effective, as you can see here:

The Get Out Clause: Paper

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“The groom has come unexpectedly, during a dark night, being welcomed appropriately by the wise virgins, whom he has rewarded. And the reckless virgins have been banished, because they have squandered the chance to meet Him.” — Romanian Rail Sector web site

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Wow - two whole weeks without a post! What kind of slothery is this? No, I have not forsaken thee - merely busy and distracted. Let’s review some recent events…

Been watching a lot of Dexter lately - What a good show!! Two energetic limbs up!

What a rollicking good time we have been having with the primaries and all? Wright or wrong, those newsdroids just can’t help but love their puns. The events of last night, wherein Obama swept NC and was nearly IN was all the buzz. Now it’s kind of a death watch. Last time I wrote about a death watch, however, it was for Mr. McCain, so I’ll just leave that alone.

One of the great things about having a MythTV box is recording shows to watch later. One of the bad things is that you’re watching them after everyone else has. I watched last week’s episode of Law & Order tonight, Bogeyman, and within the first few seconds realized that it was “Ripped From The Headlines” of the unfortunate suicides, last year, of my old online chum Theresa Duncan and her hubby Jeremy Blake. I paused the playback to quickly Google “theresa duncan law & order” and was rewarded with a mixture of hyperbole and spoilers. Thanks for that last. Seems that my online cohort is shocked, simply shocked, that the media offspring of General Electric Corp. would exploit the seemingly benign (!) suicides of a couple of conspiracy minded bohemian artists for a good story. Here’s an example of the outrage:

Law and Order has violated the memory of Theresa Duncan and slandered Jeremy…

Which seems like the perfect follow-up to this prophetic post from August 20 of last year:

Sounds like a potential episode for Law & Order.

Oh well -
what can we do… No sense crying over spent artists…

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