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The Scarecrow Garden
Jun. 9th, 2006 10:30 amLuckily for Tim this neighborhood was shot to shit and getting worse each day. Voodoo Town wasn't like the rest of Terminus. VT was a minature third world country. An eight block slice of hell that not even the yuppys could gentrify at the height of the real estate boom. Where else but here in the VT could he get away with erecting a Scarecrow Garden in his front yard?
See Tim's an artist. The kind that needs to remind you of that particular little fact every time you talk to him. He works in sculpture mainly and his medium of choice, to use his words - "...the menagerie of discarded commoditys abandoned by the very consumer driven society that not only created them, but once demanded them with the raw need of an addict. Rediscovered purely by chance, during psychogeographic expeditions into the city whereby through the juxtaposistion of consciousness and the enviornment new interpretations of expression can be discovered and utilized!".
Translation: 'I use a bunch of shit I found that people threw out!'.
We're sipping beers and sitting on Tim's front porch staring out at his Scarecrow Garden. He has a little swath of dirt between the porch and the sidewalk that could have arguably once been a lawn in some remote period of history. Now it is a field of crucified baby dolls. Seven rows long and seven deep, these are the baby dolls you or your kid sister used to play with. Each of them martyed in the name of art, each of them painted in a variety of colors. The front rows are the colors of flames, a series of shock reds and surrender yellows that shift hues as the eye drifts back into violets and blues that terminate in black. This last row, the 'Kali Flowers' as he calls them are the ones that disturb me the most. Painted pitch black with blood red lips that grin obscenely, adorned with necklaces made of decapitated barbie doll heads, they hang off their wooden cross with the zeal of fanatics.
Here and there you can see a blank spot in the rows. That's where some of the local kids have snatched them up. Tim tells me he's seen a few of them, tied with barbwire to the front of bicycles driven by armed children who patrol the area for the local dealers. Tim's convinced that they use them as protective talisman, as a kind of magical defense against rival gangs and the law. I remind him with a shrugh that maybe just simply think it looks cool. Tim doesn't like that answer as much as his own. Artists are funny that way.
I drain my beer and thank him for the bag. Sunset soon and already you can hear the first pop-pop-pops of the evening. Cars squeal and now you can hear more Pop-pop-pops. With a little effort, you can hear over the dogs barking in the distant, someone screaming. Well that's me I reckon. I light up a smoke and navigate my happy ass away from Tim, the Scarecrow Garden, Hard Street and finally getting the fuck out of Voodoo Town without without so much as a glance back over the shoulder.
Until next week when I'll need to reup.
See Tim's an artist. The kind that needs to remind you of that particular little fact every time you talk to him. He works in sculpture mainly and his medium of choice, to use his words - "...the menagerie of discarded commoditys abandoned by the very consumer driven society that not only created them, but once demanded them with the raw need of an addict. Rediscovered purely by chance, during psychogeographic expeditions into the city whereby through the juxtaposistion of consciousness and the enviornment new interpretations of expression can be discovered and utilized!".
Translation: 'I use a bunch of shit I found that people threw out!'.
We're sipping beers and sitting on Tim's front porch staring out at his Scarecrow Garden. He has a little swath of dirt between the porch and the sidewalk that could have arguably once been a lawn in some remote period of history. Now it is a field of crucified baby dolls. Seven rows long and seven deep, these are the baby dolls you or your kid sister used to play with. Each of them martyed in the name of art, each of them painted in a variety of colors. The front rows are the colors of flames, a series of shock reds and surrender yellows that shift hues as the eye drifts back into violets and blues that terminate in black. This last row, the 'Kali Flowers' as he calls them are the ones that disturb me the most. Painted pitch black with blood red lips that grin obscenely, adorned with necklaces made of decapitated barbie doll heads, they hang off their wooden cross with the zeal of fanatics.
Here and there you can see a blank spot in the rows. That's where some of the local kids have snatched them up. Tim tells me he's seen a few of them, tied with barbwire to the front of bicycles driven by armed children who patrol the area for the local dealers. Tim's convinced that they use them as protective talisman, as a kind of magical defense against rival gangs and the law. I remind him with a shrugh that maybe just simply think it looks cool. Tim doesn't like that answer as much as his own. Artists are funny that way.
I drain my beer and thank him for the bag. Sunset soon and already you can hear the first pop-pop-pops of the evening. Cars squeal and now you can hear more Pop-pop-pops. With a little effort, you can hear over the dogs barking in the distant, someone screaming. Well that's me I reckon. I light up a smoke and navigate my happy ass away from Tim, the Scarecrow Garden, Hard Street and finally getting the fuck out of Voodoo Town without without so much as a glance back over the shoulder.
Until next week when I'll need to reup.
