Time will Tell: July 7th, 2015

Woodstock, NY. 

We're here for an Amanda Palmer concert I simply had to attend, despite the 5+ hour drive there and back to Wilkes-Barre later that evening. My boyfriend of over three years is with me. Our relationship has gotten weird in a way foreign to me. Maybe I'm too withdrawn. Maybe we BOTH are too withdrawn. Am I boring? Uncompassionate? Unrelatable? I'm tired of figuring it out, so I opt to go on adventures with him to see what happens, figuring if we keep moving whatever the problem is will level out and we'll pave over it.

To take advantage of the long drive, we leave early to check out the town.

The street is busy, narrow, and full of folky thift, music, and noodle shops. I bought throat losenges at an old apothecary, and refer to the tin of elderberry candies as if they were from an antique shop.

A park in town offered the public pieces of chalk to draw and write on its asphalt and concrete walls. 

I buy a ukulele at the music store and wind up holding it beween my legs during the entire concert.

Then we went into the candle store.

At this time in my life, I wasn't one to gush over tapered candles or candles in general. I liked them plenty, but they weren't present at my altar as much as they were scattered on countertops and passively in in the living room.

This shop had every shape, color, texture, and scent of candle you could possibly imagine along with a selection of small gifty items I don't remember buying. I grabbed a few mini neon drip candles as a gift for my friend.

In the back they had this mostrosity. It was a pillar cluster of dripped wax. Layers upon layers of wax. Years and years of wax. Small knick knacks were nestled in the colored stalactites.

A sign nearby told us oglers how many years it took to create.

It was far more than three years.

Time will Tell: June 26th, 2017

 

Myself in Nana's backyard with a sword.

Who does this sword belong to, anyway? 

At the time of this photo, my Nana I suppose. Bestowed upon her by the death of her husband, my grandfather, who had died several years before. 

My Aunti Kris is in town from Japan to clean out Nana's house. Nana has been moved to a retirement home and her house is going to be on the market soon. With a discerning eye, Aunti Kris pillages the attic, basement, and bedrooms - finding treasures from her parents, her and my mom's childhood, and my own. A lot of the items are gifted away to people who will cherish them. Props are donated to the local theatre where Nana worked, project pieces are donated to the thrifty craft shop down the road, photos are organized and properly stored on family shelves. (They won't find their way to the superjunkfest of the internet or a local yard sale just yet.) We did make time to play with the Little People Village Circus/FireStation/CarWash play set before it went off to its new owner.

Then Aunti Krist found this sword, see? I never knew it existed. My grandfather loved King Arthur and was an avid reader of history. I assume he sourced a lot of these texts while he worked at Barnes & Noble during his retirement. My childish mind too young to imagine him pilfering through historical texts at local bookstores. (Which is now what I believe to be far more accurate.) I guessed this sword was a memorabilia piece of some kind, unpresented in their home decor during my lifetime. Maybe it was a prop from a play? They were actively involved in theatre, too.

Nevermind the suspicions of origin or meaning - the sword becomes an online sales piece and we have a photoshoot with it underneath the pine tree in Nana's backyard. That's what I'm doing here. Dusting it off and exposing some strange piece of my grandfather's niche underground world of interests.

Scroll. Find a Memory. Time will Tell.

Today is one of those gloomy overcast days where 2o'clock feels like an aimless early morning hangover, It pitied me enough to allow me to realx in the living room for the majority of the day.

I took a nap, wondering why I wore anything but pyjamas.

Retrospecively, I imagine I did very little other than eat sugar cookies my mom and I made for a holiday promotion later this season, and work out a rhunic code dictated by a family friend who overcomplicated his holiday light decorating with the idea to encode the lights with a secret message.

Did his house get adorned with a message for the nerds? 

Time will tell.

Some of the afternoon I spent reading a book by a lovely friend I met at a Zinefest in Scranton several years back. It's called White Elephants, and while I'm unprepared to give a glowing review at this time due to slow metal processing, (it well deserves a timely review), the habitual documentation of unearthing strange neighboring treasures laid within its pages has inspired me to undertake a new project. 

After scrolling through photos on my social media platforms searching for one photo I knew existed digitally somewhere, I realized I have all of these stories and fragments of my life captured in time but rarely, (if ever), spoken about with anyone. 

Does anyone besides me really care about any of these stories?

Probably just my mom and she's the only one I could imagine reading this, but I'm going to give this project a shot anyhow.

At least for me, so I don't forget.

Pictures found in a feed can be just as mysterious and becoming as one found in an antique photo album at a rummage sale down the street.

In fact, that's a great comparison.

My photo albums are buried within the rummage sale of the internet - all the glory of looping GIFs, formulated ads, and hypocritical advice columns.

Today I will begin with the first photo. Twenty minutes to write about a memory provoked from it.

Will I overcomplicate this idea or slough it off completely after a few days?

Time will tell.

Although, I really would like to do this.