Tag Archives: Photography

Nary a Flea: The Things We Leave Behind

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To Market, To Market, To Buy a Fresh Flea…

Greenwood Red and I went and “did” brunch. Then we went to purchase nine (nine!) bales of very-exciting straw for my very-exciting straw-bale garden project (I hope it will look like this when it's done, only with vegetables).

So, since we were feeling all suburban and adult by doing both brunch and the hardware store on a Saturday, we thought we'd cap it off with a walk-through of the flea market.

Which was profoundly entertaining. It was a virtual feast, a garden of earthly delights, the detritus and ephemera of people's lives— plus the bizarrely and blatantly questionable attempts by someone (but who?) to make a quick buck in the most delightful and/or peculiar of ways.

Items One Can Purchase at the Flea Market, if One Should Desire to Do So:

A glass Mrs. Butterworth bottle, minus the syrup, cap, and label. This will set you back $3.00.

A piano, without strings. Or keys. Price unknown.

Ziploc bags filled with hotel toiletries, some of which also included a (hopefully) clean pair of socks. ($1.00 per. Get 'em before they're gone. Best Western soaps are hard to come by.)

Ziploc bags filled with unwanted, mixed-up Keurig coffee pods. Cheaper than any Keurig pods from anywhere else. But mostly decaf. Also, still in Ziplocs from someone's kitchen table somewhere. (In my heartless estimation, this would be a questionable purchase.)

Still in pristine boxes: the Disneyland “Monorail” board game and, its brother, the Disneyland “Frontierland” board game. These were shrink-wrapped, probably dated to the opening of the original park, pre-frozen Uncle Walt, and were $22.00 each.

A bedazzled sugar canister. (As in, someone literally took their sugar canister and hot-glued plastic rhinestones to the surface.) $10.00.

A Flowbee. Not bedazzled. Definitely well-used, but still with the original, if battered and dog-eared, box.

Pirate, sea-farer, and other-masculine-weathered-male ceramic mugs (Captain Kangaroo?). Perfect for one's morning cuppa, shared with two friends.

Very popular at the flea market: Patently Obvious Dollar Store/Tree/General merchandise: kitchen spices, feminine products, baby lotion, deodorant, gift bags, and pens. Fair warning: these cost about $1.50 to $2.00 each— because they have that flea market cachet added on now.

Miscellaneous jewelry, beads, magnets, fishing lures, buttons, and (?) in Ziplocs. (Ziplocs are very popular in the flea-market world. You can buy a bag of almost anything– a bunch of tangled anythings– in a Ziploc at the Flea Market.)

Used hats. (Prices vary. Wash in very hot water.)

Still-in-shrink-wrap but clearly aged candy– in large quantities. Like, as in, 36 packs of that gum they don't make anymore; that gum with early '90's popular font. But hey, 36 packs of old gum (new! in package!) for $3.90. Helluva deal.

Dolls. An abundance of dolls. Very, very creepy dolls.

Also, clown dolls. Even more creepy. (Greenwood Red says clowns are fun. Greenwood Red is sadly mistaken.)

A picture frame with someone's family photo still inside– from not very long ago. (This made me sad.)

A 1960 yearbook from a local high school. Reasonably priced at $25.00. (This also made me sad.)

A test missile (seriously). For $33.00.

Fine Art– actual paintings. Priced to support the artist's ego and your budget. Perfect for hanging above a fireplace:

Star Trek, Next Generation figurines (still in battered packages): Picard as Borg, Guinan, Wharf as Cowboy.

The same Lite Brite in the same box that I had as a child and that's still in my Dad's shed, waiting on me to retrieve it (Oh, I will, little buddy, believe me, I will): $30.00.

Two church pews. Not including hymnals. Sadly.

A suit of armor. (It's not real. Don't get excited. I'm an art history major and I checked it up-close. It's real metal, but it's not old; it's certainly not authentic. 'Course, the multiple-different centuries all mixed-up in one suit probably told you that.) Only $259.00 though. Not bad. Plus, it is still a suit of armor.

Samurai swords. $10 to $30 each. Also not real.

Dream-catchers of all sizes.

Chipped mugs, stained bedding, broken music instruments, sheet music, stained and matted stuffed animals. Children's clothes.

An entire corner filled with 20 to 30 vacuum cleaners. (Plug it in before you buy. All sales are final. Bonus: some of the canisters hadn't been emptied…possible treasure surprise!)

Hair clips! $1.00 each. Hot-glue, free time, and a penchant for crochet. Let no one tell you entrepreneurship is dead in America. It's alive and well at the Flea Market.

Vinyl records, cassettes, VHS tapes.

Suspicious laptops and computers. (MacBook Air for $349. Virus included!)

A shrunken head.

A circa 1901 wooden wheelchair. (This was both sad and creepy.)

A china plate with dogs playing poker painted on it. (It's possible that this came home with Greenwood Red and me.)

Salt-and-pepper caddy shaped like a horse.

The thing about a flea market: no fleas, no ant farms, no animals. (It could have used some cats, if you ask me.)

The other thing about a flea market… some of these things, these objects, you just know they've all got a story to tell. They all came from somewhere. Whose kitchen table was graced with that horse? Whose Christmas holiday was enlivened by that big felt thing with sparkles? Whose yearbook was that?

And how did it end up here, on these shelves, in these Ziplocs, jumbled together with big-eyed owl cookie jars and broken bits of clip-on jewelry, and outgrown children's clothes?

Who chose the scary clown? Who loved it?

Who sat in that chair? Played that broken flute?

Who drank from that mug and why did they pick that one out in the first place?

 

And do they still enjoy country music?

It just makes you look at your life, at your stuff: what do you have, what does it say, and will it end up in a flea market, jumbled with old Avon bottles (Bird of Paradise!) and memories. And will someone else like it too? When it can't be with you anymore, will someone else take it home to live with them?
And so many people, so many hands, so many lives– where did they go to; what stories would these things tell?
I do not know. There were no fleas to get in my ear.
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Happy New Year!

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That the wind will be always at our backs

That there will always be a candle for the snow

That there will always be time with those we love

That we never forget the good in anything

That there will be laughter and comfort and hope

That we will have what we need when we need it

That we will recognize what we have while we have it

That our wits will be sharp and our troubles dull, brief, and slight

That 2013 will be a graceful year

These are the wishes for a New Winter Midnight I have for you. And have for me.

Happy New Year, one and all!

 

Guest Post: Greenwood Red Takes a Photo

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Greenwood Red: “I have a picture for your blog.”

Me: “That's nice. Send it to me.”

So here it is: Red's dispatch from Hawaii.

I think it's rather lovely.

You can follow @GreenwoodRed on Twitter. He's funny. A lot of sports and music…and a fair bit of charm.

I Keep on Falling…

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“Now is the time of the illuminated woods.” John Burroughs
 
“The luminous birds… / Were gone or going, leaving some of their gold / Behind in near-gold, off-gold, ultra-golden / Beeches, birches, maples, apples.” Robert Francis, “Gold”
 
“Every leaf speaks bliss to me / Fluttering from the autumn tree.” Emily Brontë
 
“A sudden splendour…flush'd all the leaves with rich gold-green.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 
“Here's wealthy Nature's treasury.” Abraham Crowley, “The Wish”
 
“When the sun was low and the air was cool / …the walnut tree / Standing leafless against a flaming west. / Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, / And the dropping acorns, / And the echoes about the vales / Bring dreams of life.” Edgar Lee Masters
 
“When the Frost is on the Punkin” A link to the original Emerald Orange autumn post. A slight slant toward Halloween but also has Steinbeck and Riley on autumn, plus perhaps my all-time favorite fall painting, Millais' “Autumn Leaves.”

 

Vacation (All She Ever Wanted…)

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So, by the wanton threads of fate, it is another (sadly, another) in a long interminable string of vacation-less summers. There are worse problems to have, of course, and I am pleased that so few of these are plaguing my existence (though if the total could be zero I would be the greater pleased). Nevertheless, I can seem to find nothing—literally nothing, my dear Internets—to assuage the desire to be Anywhere Else.

Alas.

And so, because my mind is wandering in spite of the bound and restricted body, I present Some of the Places I Would Rather Be (also known as “Some of the Places My Head Is While the Rest of Me Is Most Emphatically and Grudgingly Not”):

She’s got the Basin Street Blues.

1. New Orleans: Because I know what it means to miss New Orleans…

2. The Beach: A Beach. Approximately any Beach will do.

How Blue is Your Geyser?

3. Yellowstone National Park: Because I once spent a summer working there pumping gas and it’s beautiful and amazing and seriously, you should go if you haven’t yet.

Digression on Yellowstone National Park and what it is to pump gas when you’re also female and an incomplete list of why that’s a spectacular way to spend one’s summer: (a.) because it’s beautiful and amazing. (b.) because at the very tippy-top of Mt. Washburn, if you time it right, you can watch the sun slide its way down below the horizon in a way it just doesn’t do in the flatness of Indiana. Also, if you time it right, the guy in the observatory tower will invite you in to look at his house/observatory where you will covet his solitude, his view, and his peace for the rest of your born days. (c.) because if you are female and you’re pumping gas because, by law, consumers cannot pump their own (or at least, couldn’t, back in the day) you will invariably get the better end of the argument that ensues when Mr. Women-Should-Be-Barefoot-and-Pregnant pulls up to the pump and throws a right old hellfit because a girl shouldn’t and couldn’t be doing that sort of thing. And when you pop the rebellious sod’s hood and check the oil, the ensuing purple-faced apoplexy is highly enjoyable to watch. (d.) because you haven’t lived until someone’s asked you “When do they feed the animals?” or “Where are the cages for the bears?” or “What time do they let the animals out for the day?” or “How come Old Faithful is late?”/”What’s the schedule for Old Faithful?”/”Do they turn Old Faithful off at night?” and (e.) because walking the geyser boardwalks in the moonlight will restore your faith in Something (even an amorphous something) in a way that little else could ever do. And (f.) you don’t know how big the sky is until you’ve looked at it from the mountains.

I spent my vacation at the gas station.

4. The Lake House:  (Yes, she’s still on about that.) Because there’s simply nothing for it; the soul wants what the soul wants and what it wants most of all is still—always—to sit on the dock for weeks on end and stare at the water until the world rights itself. Best of all, to have friends and family, with infinite amounts of time in quiet and lake-scented air on the sun porch with laptop and books and space…You’ve got to hand it to lake houses—they haven’t the space for anything that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, or at least the good ones don’t, and the good one is the only one I need.