Postcards from Exile

[jack_babalon]

~ In an attempt to reduce my psychic foot-print here at Vee's Boarding House for Lost Writers and Amateur Vagabonds I've been couch surfing around Terminus since Thursday. Day one found me showing up at the Folks with my Navy-era duffel bag filled with dirty laundry. Crashed there for the night after a much needed home cooked meal and nourishment of morale. Friday through most of today had me holing up in my old stomping ground at the Princess' Casa De Mod - a bright pink duplex off in the wilds of Doraville. Last night we watched Wall-E, Last Chance Harvey and a bunch of episodes of what might arguably one of the worst ghost shows on basic cable right now - A Haunting - which we ravaged with wry delight and schadenfreudean commentary. Today I did some yard work for the Princess to express my gratitude towards her hospitality. Ended up ankle deep in poison ivy yanking out a kudzu and weed jungle. Things were going alright until I made a remarkable discovery of the apiary kind. Apparently there is a kind of bee here in Georgia that make their nest in the ground. For example underbrush. Learned this the hardway via a barrage of stings across the left calf and one on the right. Much swelling and itching have ensued. Worse, I'm told that these bee's are on some sort of endangered watch list. Meaning I killed a few rare animals today by having them jab me with their stingers to death. What a complete bastard! Only a few hours basking in front of her X-Box playing Bioshock along with a chemistry shop's worth of creams and ointments grounded the next few hours in relative distraction.





~ Later Vee called me up and said she was missing me something fierce. That was my cue to return to the nest. Got the Princess to drop me off at the nearest station. There I ran into a curious juxtaposition of billboard adds at the platform. On the left was a poster for the Taking of the Pelham 1 2 3 remake. Big head shot of Denzel Washington accompanied by the quote - "You don't want to kill any innocent people do you?. Immediately to the right of this was another poster. This one for Western Union reading - "Can your money move at the speed of life? YES!" I don't know why but it seemed as if the Western Union Add was a rebuttal to the movie ad. Could just be me, though. I tend to see imaginary connections. Rolled out after a fifteen minute wait. Two stops in and everyone in the car got a surprise bonus sermon from some teenage kid. He shouted, but nervously so, about how God is exactly like Wi-Fi or cell phone service and that only Jesus can give you the bars you need to reach the big man. Zoned him out and watched a blood sacrifice of a dusk flicker past the city. Twenty minutes later and a few stops south of Five Points station. Caught the 83 and in doing so ended up getting off a bit over a mile from my stop. Alas, the perils of reading while commuting. This meant I was going to have to march through sundown in the hood humping roughly 80 pounds of laundry on my back with the bee bites swelling up my thighs.

Quite a learning experience, that.



~ Here's a little blurb about my new home here in West End. One taking place just down the block from me in fact. It's from the Creative Loafing's Blotter - a weekly collection of weird crimes reported here in Terminus and her surrounding sister counties. FYI: This was what I was reading right before I got off at the wrong stop earlier.

A KING’S LIFE: A man said he hadn’t seen his 60-year-old roommate since Thursday afternoon – and now it was Sunday. He said every morning, the 60-year-old man walks to a store on Campbellton Road to buy liquor – but on that particular Thursday, he never returned. The 60-year-old man’s hair is gray and “lifted up like Don King’s hairstyle. [He] also goes by the nickname of Don King,” an officer wrote. The roommate said he’d checked area hospitals and jails — no luck. The officer went to the liquor store and talked to a few people — one man said he remembered seeing a person matching that description early that morning purchasing something to drink and leaving with a lady friend.

What sinister agency could be behind the disappearance of our local 'Don King'? Are similar abductions of Don King impersonators occuring across the country unbeknowst to the uninitiated? Only time and/or our imaginations can tell.



All shots taken from around my neighborhood.

Comments

[meemeedarling.livejournal.com]

I need to visit Casa De Mod myself. No bees for me.

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

i can't help but note the symbolism of poisonous plants and insects attacking your foundations... just sayin'...