Yesterday I went for a tour of a historic house in Queens. Built in the mid-1600s the Lent-Riker-Smith Homestead is the oldest house in New York and the oldest privately-owned house occupied by humans.
I think the house is occupied by something else, though, because none of the pictures I took inside the house were saved to my camera’s memory card. Pictures from the yard and other parts of the property were saved as normal, but the demons inside the house prevented the pictures from within from being saved. Further weirdness: several of the pictures are saved twice with the exact same filename. How can two files with the exact same name exist in the same directory? They can not, unless your camera is filled with phantom devil ghosts.
Seriously, though, it is very strange. It was very humid outside, and I know at times the camera — a Canon A640 — behaves weirdly when the humidity changes abruptly as it did when I stepped inside the house. But how can two files with the same name be created?
The photos from inside the house would have been interesting, but my main interest in the house was the cemetery in the back yard. It’s a small family cemetery where members of the Riker family are buried. The Riker name endures today mostly by virtue of the nearby Riker’s Island prison, but in their day the Riker name was widely known for other reasons.
Anyway, it was a fun little thing to do. I have wanted to see the Riker Cemetery for as long as I’ve known it existed, so this was a rare chance. Admission would have been $20 but a friend who works for the current owners of the house comped me free admission. I am special, you see.
….
My stage-left eyebrow has been twitching like mad for weeks now, as have muscles in some of my fingers and throughout my glorious innards. This would not merit mention except that I discovered that every single person I mention this to has a different theory for what causes muscle twitches. Stress, caffeine, potassium and/or magnesium deficiencies, excess electrolytes… What could it be?
….
I started writing haiku this weekend.
After she loved me
I remembered the words we
read off rubber stones.
…..
In the rapture of
the dead we found poison and
half-blossomed laughter.
….
I was writing a lot of syllogisms a few weeks ago, thinking it was a perfect formula for profundity. I can’t remember what I came up with but I think syllogisms might be more fun with an element of randomness, as might happen two people were playing.
Two people start with the same idea (the major premise) and, separately, they introduce the minor premise, and then combine the two minor premises to reach the conclusion, which would likely have no logical connection to the major premise.
So if a major premise was something like “Human beings are animals” (a textbook example of one type of syllogism’s major premise) then I might respond with the textbook minor premise of “All animals die.” Someone else, however, might say “Lice are animals.” Put the two together and we find that all animals die from lice.
Yeah.
….
The naked root stings
with the freckled infant on
a tearful thatch palm.
….
A bossy mutt spells
the grindstone for Mercury,
Mars, Jupiter, earth.
….
Future mascara
bombs the bones of dictators
with an aimless clown.
….
Gagging on the scent
of wigs and grease in New York’s
finest taxi cab.
….
Eyebrow is still twitching.
I just told the story of the haunted Riker-Lent house, and in return I got a story about someone who made a camcorder video of a hotel room where a famous person died to find that the image of Jesus Christ was plainly visible in the pattern of the wallpaper and headboard of the bed. Nice.
