(At/) Chez Chessington(’s)
The house welcomed you with three sphinxes at the front gate...an androsphinx (lion with a human head); a criosphinx (a lion with a ram's head); and the hierocosphinx (a lion with a hawk/falcon's head)-leading down a long gravel path past a row of mulberry bushes. After that part of the entrance, the towers of the home greet you as if you have stepped into a period clashed between a grandiose Victorian home, and a mix of modern style- where the house had more open space on the first level with light coming through the textured iridiscent wooden framed glass window.
The sitting area/space in the house on the first floor has an entertainment system with a smart telly which can slide back and forth into a space in the wall with one click of a button. For ultimate comfort the couch potatoes who stay (at/) chez Chessington('s), the seats come with a seat warming setting with another click of a button (this one at the side of the chair that can also recline).
Most of the days the house is left to take care of itself, and even the master bedroom on the first floor is usually not used for the majority of the day (Mr and Mrs Chessington leave their place before the crack of dawn to attend to their jobs for the Ministry of Chronomancy).
But then this place is not always left abandoned. A young little boy spends most of his early infant days/times with someone dear to him...not too long ago... on a clear, bright, and sunny day...
Theobold ran spiraling up the redwood staircase in his cashmere hoodie. A pair of knoblly hands grabbed him pulling him in one swift motion that surprised Theo. He did not expect his nanny to always manage to keep up with him. In the back of his mind he surmised that she must have been a witch. Especially with the black dolman that she wore everytime she was in charge of taking care of the lad.
Theo and his nanny spend most of their hours of the day (well, Theo lives there more so than she does...for now) at 219 Leynah drive. Almost every home in the neighborhood looked the same: with a massive black gate around the perimeter of the home, the back of every home had an olympic sized pool, including a garden full of...roses, chrysanthemums, countless ferns, plus a small pond that had some black as the midnight sky and red like the jupiter sun koi fish. The only difference was the other houses did not have Theo, or the pleasure of being in his nanny's presence. If you asked Theo's parents about what they thought about her they would respond with one word: darb.
The young lad's toosh was dragged along the jewel onyx coral polished porcelain floor tiles. His caregiver turned to face him, and wagged her finger with her free hand at the lad. His curly reddish-brown hair covered a section of the left part of his face. She bent down to brush the young one's hair right behind his ear, but it was stubborn like an untamed wild pony/stallion.
The nanny took a long deep breath, and sighed. This kid had so much energy, she smiled and thought to herself how his older sibling, Kweenie, who was in boarding school at the School of Arts, Magick, and Necromancy (SAMAN) was the polar opposite. Theo's older sibling was like a gentle young quiet tigress who would rather work on completing a puzzle before heading to explore mother nature, whereas Theo would want to spend most of his time outside enjoying trying to catch one of the morpho butterlies, and dipping his hands into the tiny pond to get his hands on one of the koi (at this point he would have to be taken back indoors).
His nanny lifted the child into her arms, and then hoisted him onto her broad shoulders. She took off with a slight gait down the stairs. The eyes of Theo's parents (Mr and Mrs Chessington) from the pictures on the wall along the staircase seemed to be disapproving of the current method of play between the nanny and Theo. The caregiver did not pay attention to the pictures on the wall as her mind was focused on enjoying her time with Theobold Chessington II.
#ChezChessington. (c) Octobre 25, 2022.
Home Away From Home
After the hour-long drive, the sign at the entrance is a welcome and familiar sight. Two tall stone pillars with a wooden sign between them form an arch over the narrow road that leads into the camp. As I drive under, the air seems to change. The scent of pine and campfires is in the air, and though the highway is only a mile away, it feels like I’ve entered another world, one with no traffic, no need for computers or cell phones.
The lake sparkles in the sun as a swan glides across the waters. A thin layer of golden leaves obscures the grass surrounding the lake, and a few fall on my windshield as I drive past. Then, my car enters a tunnel of trees so thick that it becomes noticeably darker. In other circumstances, the phenomenon might have felt ominous to a city girl like me, but in this place, it felt simultaneously familiar, comforting, and exciting. The tunnel led to a different world, one that was just a bit better than the world I came from.
When I step out of the car and my foot touches the ground, the transportation is complete; I am entirely immersed in the camp I grew up in. Though I only spend a week or two at a time here each year, I feel like I know this place better than the neighborhood I’ve lived in for over thirty years. I know where each trail leads; I know what awaits behind every door in every building.
By definition, the camp is finite. There are boundaries that define its property lines, and there are roads that would easily take me back into the “real world,” but standing here, I feel like the possibilities are endless. I could wander the flat paths through the main camp, taking in the fall colors and the rustic cabins. I could make my way to one of the many activity areas that hold so many memories – the arts and crafts cabin, the playground, the pool, the climbing tower, or one of the many campfire circles. I could visit other campers, knowing that I could go just about anywhere in this place and be welcomed.
Or I could wander further into the woods and visit some of the more peaceful places. The long, grassy hill that looks out over the lake. The pine forest with its carpet of soft pine needles and a scent sweet enough to make you want to breathe it in for hours. The path next to the creek with the gentle flow of the river calmly trickling over the rocks and the sunlight finding its way through the tree branches to dance in the water. Or I could climb up the mountain, huffing and puffing to make my way up the steep incline, eventually crawling my way over rocks bigger than me, until I was high enough that I could look out and see for miles.
In name, I’ve only had two homes that I can remember – my parents’ house where I grew up, and the house I now live in with my husband. Yet, somehow, every time I visit this place, I know that it is home too. Here, I feel content, happy, and loved.
Strings
I come from a small town in Kerala and my ancestral home is close to the paddy fields. Infact the paddy fields can be seen when we stand near the fence. My house is small thatched house in the middle of a huge plot. As we enter, on the right side we have the Columb mango tree. The mangoes are almost long and oval in shape, when you bit into it the pulp is colour of the sky when the sun is setting. Its too sweet to my liking. After describing it, I feel embarrased to be saying that I don't like it much. But ammamma's (Maternal grandmother) house is not just a place, its a feeling. The place has too many memories attached to it. The old house had a cowshed attached to the main house. I remember my muthashi( great grandmother) was a task master who used to keep a count of the number of eggs the hens had laid in the haystack. The younger me once fought with her when she grabbed an egg from my sister's hand. Muthashi passed away and now, this is one of the memories that we smile about.
With so many plants and trees around us, it felt like we were in the middle of the forest half the time. Unlike the place that I currently stay at, this ancesteral house had four doors in four sides. It was a strange thing because the house was tiny but it had four huge doors, I used to wonder. My ammamma used to always say that she needs some ventilation in the house. I used to wonder why she even needed walls. The house was small with one bed for her because she used to stay alone. When we went there during our summer breaks, we would sleep on the floor. Unlike the tiles here in the city, our house had rough floor, we were too close to the earth I used to feel. I could hear the millipedes, centipedes, baby scorpions, spiders, mosquitoes and an entire ecosystem made up of little insects invading my sleep. I remember seeing a snake on the inner part of the roof once. I was just lying down on my grandmother's lap and listening to her gossip with my amma( mother). I suddenly saw something brown just slithering away. It had golden brown scales and I could see some wave like patterns on it. I jumped up and started screaming in horror, my ammamma told me be calm because she thought I was scaring the snake. She said, " Its a chera( non- venomous snake), leave it".
The house had just three parts: the veranda, the inner hall plus bedroom and the kitchen. The bathroom was situated outside, just in case you are wondering. It was a small house but one thing I remember the most about it is the space in it, I remember us huddled up when it used to rain. The bricks walls were not really waterproof, water used to leak inside. Even if we fought, there was no room to keep grudges. I feel that the house used to keep us close because of its space. We would sit together on the floor and have food in vaazha ila(plantain leaf). If the power went, we would take our lamps and sit out chit chatting. When I used to wake up early in the morning, I used to see my grandmother talking to her cow and milking it. My ammamma was very much in sync with nature.
These are the memories of my home. I think my ancestral house is a place that I can call 'home' because of my ammamma. Her happiness when she saw us, he sadness when we leave after the summer break, her excitement to give us mangoes that she had collected over the season, her image standing at the door when our autorickshaw slowly faded. All this made it HOME.
Dulls and Sharps
The air was as bitter as a child's first attempt at lemonade. All sour, not sweet. Lemonade, it's just lemon juice and water right? Wrong. You just made sour water. It's not just the way the air here cuts you, it's the way it smells. The air here even smells sharp. Yet, it's not as sharp as the grass.
The grass, dulled by the grey of the sky, licks your ankles with sandpaper tongues. If a balloon were to miraculously fall, you know it would pop before it hit the ground. The grass is so long it reaches past your sneakers, clinging to you like sinners burning in hell trying desperately to claw themselves out.
It only makes sense that the sky, the midpoint between the air and the grass, was so dull to contrast the two of them. If the feeling of grogginess and utter exhaustion had a physical form, it would be the look of this sky. It was dense and deep and all-encompassing. It was the kind of sky that appears in a horror movie on the worst day of the protagonist's life. The dulls and sharps and bitters of this landscape merge and twist your perception.
You've been walking for a while, but all you can see is grass and sky. If you believed in the Christian god, this would be purgatory. Forever a blend of sharps and softs and bitter kid lemonade.
The streets...
By: Mohana
The streets flooded with a plethora of colours which made it hard to see the abyss of darkness above every person ever to walk.The bashful clouds hesitated to speak up. As the raindrops fell gently onto one's umbrella, I realized how vulnerable one can be and how the rain isn't strong enough to drown one's thoughts.
The lampposts across the streets remind one, how ravishing and manipulative the darkness can be.
How darkness can make it his life’s mission to make us run. The lights that lit up one's path, reminded one how its better to light your way than to be cursed by darkness.
Heavy footsteps, making ripples in the nearby gloomy puddles that spread across, suggests the tendency and dependency in one. Every footstep leaves a trace. But will every step be remembered?
As the rain drummed its finger on one's umbrella and as the umbrella protected one, many eventually see over realism; it still isn't big enough to cover the forgery in one's true identity. In one's smile.
What is my true identity?
Here we go again, desperately searching for our answers on the cobbled stoned streets. Walking without a defined destiny...
Pitch.
I’m writing this in pitch black. My screen is on its lowest setting. My paper is black and the words are white, as contrast creates chaos which creates creativity. Or so my mind might want to think. My bed has 5 pillows on it. Two of which I sit up when I write. One of which sits on the side of my bed against the wall and seems to sit in silence waiting for me to actually put it under my head at night. The other two pillows are decorative. They are larger and almost always find themselves on the floor at the end of my bed, which happens to be right next to my bookshelf which holds over 200 books, half of which I haven’t read yet. Above the bookshelf on the left sits a wall with photos of Paris which happens to be right next to a window that overlooks the forest to the outside of my house. The photos of Paris counter the inevitable chaos that sits around my room. Papers line the floor with thoughts I had at midnight last night etched in odd pencil marks and ink spills. My clothes from the last week happen to be scattered on Ikea chairs and my desk which holds a couple books and pens from last year looks on in utter disarray. As I write this I understand that my room is something I care about. And yet, I don’t. The idea of nothingness has captivated the way I decorate. And maybe that’s the issue with aesthetics in my own world. I want to float, and the mirror that sits above my dresser that’s covered with more clothes and books, next to a drawer that is sat upward, with newspaper clippings plastered to the bottom and my trophies and medals from my soccer career scattered among it all has caused me to think a bit harder about the way I look. The way I dream. The way I want to move among the world. Music from my headphones playing from odd radio playlists on Spotify seem to echo the dreams of a world I haven’t achieved yet. And maybe that’s the whole reason I write. Maybe that’s the whole reason my room is perpetually messy, but never dirty. Maybe that’s why my world is so captivated by the way music captures the essence of an aesthetic. And maybe that’s why I try so hard to write late at night after listening to music for an hour that’s meant to cause me to dream a bit harder about a world I want to live in. Maybe, or maybe this thought experiment is too odd for anyone to understand. But in any case, I still have over a 100 books to finish by the time I move out to college and beyond, and I still have chores to do in the morning. And an essay to turn in tomorrow. And so many things that counter the idea of an aesthetic, and yet I chase it.
Tire
There is nothing quite like the feeling of dozing yourself into a dream. Your blanket warm, wrapped firmly around you, and smell emanating it, one such that brings a yawn and a veil of safety. This blanket is a comfort and padded and a bit heavier than other blankets owned, yet soft and bearable with an overwhelming tone of drowse.
Your pillow lays holding the weight of your head and hairs contained, yet another branch of comfort and quality so charming and inviting, touch of an item precious and pure, one that functions not only to serve a purpose but to serve a picturesque view of the night and the emotions the absence of light present in the room entail. Quality above all else, perfectly turquoise-tinted sheets serving well for the mattress, a beauty, an art.
You rest, and the wrinkles and visible parts of the bed that show and prove this special piece of furniture is holding your wright come into view like ripples in the water, details that are so clear yet so hidden in the background that shine through in moments of clarity, moments of vision.
The bed is a peculiar place, and every second of attempted sleep converts itself into bits of magic weaving storylines from such wicked days into films of elegance that dance along the mind like pointers across a screen.
There are times when realization start to rock, and all one can think involve the feeling that they are truly about to fall into a sleep the day has led to for quite some time, those moments blend back into the unassuming nature of the doze.
Sleep is a pure and unconscious beauty of the human condition, each breath breathed under its spell belong to the trust of a function of body that may fail but ultimately, and hopefully, does not.
We are beings that need this kind of safety, this type of feeling, for all tired individuals of the world require a bed to lay their heads and belong to their own world, portions of each day at a time.
The Farm
Climbing the ladder built into the old barn wall, I make my way up to the quiet of the haymow. Guided by the rays of sunlight streaming through the cracks in the weathered wood walls, I am just able to make my way to my nest, the place where a few bales have broken loose from their twine binding and have scattered to make a cozy spot to sit and listen and dream.
Across the way, I hear a high mewing sound, and I smile realizing that the mama cat who has been looking heavier than usual has given birth to her kittens and has chosen the perfect place to keep them safely nestled from the hawks flying overhead and the hooves of the cattle moving restlessly below and the collie, whining at the bottom of the ladder, awaiting my return.
I breathe in deeply as the hay, freshly cut, baled, and sent to the loft fills my lungs with the odor of spring. It’s a pure, fresh, clean bouquet that mixes with the scent of the rain beginning to hit the old tin roof, sounding like a parade of soldiers scurrying overhead, enhancing the volume tenfold.
I hear the muffled, hollow ringing of the dinner bell, take in one last, deep breath, and make my way back to the ladder that will lead me to the collie, whining more loudly now, knowing that the sound of the bell will bring me back to him. I carefully make my way down the wall, ruffle the head and chest of my waiting companion, and we run off to my grandparents’ small, warm farmhouse kitchen to pray, enjoy a hearty meal, and share our adventures of the day.
Metal Nights
The Brass Mug is a classic establishment for the hard drunk, hard smoked, hard of hearing, and hard for any Floridian jock of the upper middle class to understand or appreciate. Only positive violence is allowed within its black plywood walls. Bloated feedback, pagan growling, and pits every Friday. Several regular the joint. The others show up with Marlboros and the occasional blunt. Each corner is filled with a fresh haze by midnight between the cigs and smoke machines. Within the cancer miasma is a swirling mass of bodies. Most pack sardine tight at the stage while a dozen others sprint in circles around its periphery. Anyone standing outside of this dance of flailing arms and body slams must be wary of the unexpected limp torso being flung at them, possibly ramming their tail bone into one of the small wooden beer tables bolted to the floor. For those who can look past the chaos will notice an old stripper pole on a platform of rotted black and white tiles. This is where the geezers, soaked moshers, and gassed bodies over three hundred pounds make their narrow retreat to sit. From afternoon till one am, the lights never come on in the venue. Only two small bulbs on the porch provide enough to see the sweat beads on the black shirted figures. The crowd flocks there between sets for more smokes. Outside, they are provided with a view of North Tampa, pits of wetlands stirred with Wendy's bags, hot cars rushing past moldy strip malls and car dealerships. By night it all melts into the humid black and conversational puffs.
Without the banging inside, the venue would seem moderately abandoned with its lack of signage and tinted windows. Once in, anyone with sensitive ears is bombarded between roaring amps and a yelling man with a clipboard. He always asks what band the person came to see, a question most have no clear answer for. After an hour of beers, they may meander to the incoherent bathrooms, each with a black door and their gender labels covered in stickers. Within them are white stalls showing each pen and marker stroke in its full glory; butt fucks, regular fucks, tongue, cocaine. Drunk screeds slashed on the damp plastic. For the bathroom, purple portable fans are the antidote to its stagnancy. They sit on the bar for anyone rejoining the tight crowd. There newcomers will stand. Their hair will blow into their nose as they try to avoid being drenched in nicotine. But it's to no avail. Standing at the mercy of the haze, more motely caravans will peel into the parking lot. Each faded section is filled with yellowed Winnebagos from the 80's, sputtering pickup trucks, and roached minivans. Monster energy cans bounce to the pavement before tipsy feet leave the front car doors. It's a comical scene that borderlines on stereotype. They all amble to the door in their patched vests and dark shirts. Blood of Angels, Promethean Horde, Scorch, The Convalescence, Athiest, Obituary; just a few of the names that sticker the windows and splatter the clothing of these buzzed wanderers. All are there for one simple thing, to roll their heads to the undulating rhythm of the strings and bust sixty dollars on patches, tapestries, cup holders, and more shirts.