Wallhanger

I am not what one would call a “diligent” writer.  I need time to load the breach ,as it were.  Luckily things sorta just come to me out of divine pity or drunken absolution.

I spend a lot of time in bars…. bowling alleys… laundromats.   Places that are sorta on this periphery of ones existence…if ever there was a place that the lines between worlds were stretched thin…it would be here.  Now hold up…before you go and start giving me the Fangoria  lists of humanities worst places to be…let me explain.  Funeral homes…hospitals… blah blah blah… yep… places of dark and horrible human tragedy most of the time.  I’m not talking about that path…cause we all end up in those places eventually.  Our long roads ending up in a bed of soiled sheets, slow breaths, and saline drips— eventually to end up devoid of all our fluids or burnt asunder ( put in a jar and sat on a shelf for the foreseeable future) . So I was sitting in the laundromat this past Sunday…late-night because that is when the the discerning laundromat user visits… I was mid-cleaning ritual– when my ears picked up on a conversation that was the the spark for this.

” Kerry, where did you get those socks? ” – asked the girl with the maroon CMU shirt and “I’ll try this color because I’m a rebel” hair.  ” Facebook…I use them to make backgrounds in shadowboxes and stuff…art for one of my classes” Kerry replied. The conversation quickly turned to something about graduation and Sephora aaaaaaaand I lost interest.  So I am a fan of art and my preference is industrial art.. Motorcycles are Art–Fight me.  Anyways.. what in the fuck is this girl making with used socks from Facebook?  I even had to jog my memory as to what exactly a shadowbox was.   Shadowboxes fall right in there with odd things like dioramas and people who build train sets.  Creation on a minimal scale where attention to detail and expression are the focus or intent…only to be placed on a dusty shelf– enclosed in a musty basement—or hung on a wall.

My granddad was a proponent of “hang it on a nail” in the shop. That way you couldn’t get caught in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind paradox.  The downside of this is that you end up with some Pollock-esque array of shit all over your walls that inevitably defeats the purpose you originally hung it in plain sight for.  I use this reference because we are beings that require objects the illicit memories, triumphs, or art.

How come wedding photos on the wall are so happy until they aren’t?   How are pictures of little Billy so happy at 13 but a heartbreak when he’s a drug addict at 23?  How come pictures end up in shoe-boxes…out of sight….out of mind.   I keep thinking of Kerry and her shadowboxes of used socks…her time and thought…her creation on Mom and Dads wall , some heartfelt Christmas scene where a snow white tube sock back ground has dress sock green Christmas trees and bobby sock elves dancing around.   Mom and Dad hang this on the wall during the “season”  because they marvel at their precious ones creativeness.   I’d even go as far as saying that in Kerry’s art class that her unique use of used footwear may be seen as progressive.   This reinforcement of her creative licence causes her to find enjoyment in their creation… and for years forward… people in her life receive little shadowboxes as gifts and remembrances.

— Thank you Aunt Kerry… I greatly appreciated the remembrance shadowbox you made with Grandma Wilson’s support hose.   The angel wings that were so life like, I didn’t know anyone could do that with diabetic socks.  We hung it next to her urn on the mantle.

We hang things on the wall.   Things that eventually cloud our lives.  I’m guilty as hell of it…and I’m probably worse than most.   I have that shoebox full of photos… and a few hard drives too of digital history of—-ME.   And the real truth is…tomorrow if I were to suddenly drop dead… it means nothing.     A good litmus test of this is to go to GoodWill or your Salvation Army stores.    The nick knack shelves there are the cosmic graveyard for Kerry’s best intentions for perpetuity.  You may find a scribbled note on the back…   From Jason’ 86  or To Linda with Love, Paul.    ( guess Linda and Paul did’t stand the test of time–or maybe they did and are now on the mantle)  I guess that perhaps I am just a cynic.. strike that…I am a cynic.

As I’ve gotten older…50 now, I see that I have too fallen victim to the MANTLE OF REMEBERANCE.    My best friends jacket hangs next to my best dogs ashes.  My grandfathers burial flag, (hang it on a nail), now sits next to the right of them.  A host of knick-nacs that hold synaptic responses.  Cause…lest we forget.   I don’t have them in plain sight where my mind can drift to them while sitting on the couch.  They are tucked away in my spare bedroom on these shelves I made from two pieces of ancient oak board I found in a house demolition.   The growth rings at the end are so narrow it tells its own story of short growing seasons and hostile winters.  But it’s old…it seemed like it deserved more than to be a host for lathe staples or drywall screws.   Now, it sets there as sentinel to the points of my life I yern to have back– or at least have one more conversation or ball throw.

That can really be the breaks on hard days. It’s like closing the final pages on a really good book…but the ending was wrong.  That feeling of being cheated out of something more.

Funny that we are discussion socks.  Is it just me or are socks like one of the “taboo” garments.  Ya know…the ones that get a little too close to personal sharing.    Like underwear and stuff–  that intimate existance you have between you and the garment.    I feel like something you insert yourself into has some psudeo phallic connoation. I mean…you can borrow a pair of shorts from a buddy… but you dont want to borrow his swim suit.   Cause… well… the boys.    That little area in the “no no square” that you really dont want to share .  Well at least for me it is.  I guess thats why I’ve opted out of the boxers and briefs for the better part of two decades now.   I know TMI.   But one thing you dont have to worry about is some co-ed making a winterscene in a discarded Amazon box with my deceased briefs.