Mouse In The Hardware Store
The other day I went to the hardware store and inside the store there was a little grey mouse and a big black bird, and outside there was a little kid singing along with a car alarm.
Just past there is where the school kids have recess, and there's a chain link fence to separate it from the bike path. Occassionally there'll be a ball on my side of the fence, and if there's no kids around I'll huck it back over to the recess side. Then there's a couple dumpsters and storage containers that look like they have broken school furniture, and just beyond that but deeper into the briars it looks like there's a little encampment-- tents and tarps and sometimes clothes hanging up in the sun. I'm guessing the tarps come from the hardware store and the rest of the infrastructure is from the school dumpster? I want to know but I don't want to get in anyone's business. I mean I don't want someone poking their head into my house saying where'd you get the chairs mate?
Beyond that there's the pond, with a nice little pathway all around and vine-covered trees swelling lugubriously over the water's edge. Sometimes I take a loop around the pond but I never run into any hardware store employees smoking weed before work, which seems odd. Maybe they're hiding in an aqueduct? or more likely they're just smoking up in their cars, that's probably it.
Then there's the rear of the hardware store parking lot, we're here already. I forget why I'm here so on the walk up I think about my problems and my dreams. Oh yeah, I need something for the shower drain and a few other bits and bobs. Cruising through the store it seems like everyone here knows exactly what they want and where it is, I'm the only one going up and down every aisle like hmmmmmm interesting, what are these little guys, oh, interesting. I see a little grey mouse shoot across an aisle and I see that the guy cutting keys sees it too, but the guy doesn't look around to see if anyone else saw it, he stays on task. Missed connection. Then something way off in the distance moves faster than it should and it's a big black bird up in the rafters on the far side of the store. There's birds in the big box stores all the time, but I think this is the biggest one I've ever seen and it's a little concerning. As with the mouse, no one acknowledges it.
Whenever I'm in a building different enough from my house I start fantasizing about what it would be like to live there, and seeing the mouse and the bird intensifies the reverie. The big box hardware store gets no natural light, that's a problem, but otherwise there's a bunch of benefits. I think I'd wall off two or three aisles and make that a little two story building-in-a-building, using the wide shelves as side rooms, with a wood stove where I burn pallet wood in the winter. Plenty of room left for the standard fantasy home stuff-- practice room, nice big studio, wood shop obviously, dig up a big chunk of the parking lot and have a garden, make a room around one of the entrances and have a little cafe. Maybe cut a big hole in the roof and wall it in, make a big interior courtyard? That'd help a bit with the light problem. Jog on the bike path into Cranston each morning, spinach pie, ice cream cone, Job Lot. If I lived in the hardware store, a single mouse wouldn't be much of a problem, but for a big black bird, I'd have a long funny afternoon trying to entice it out of an open door.
Meanwhile back in consensus reality I'm back in the parking lot unlocking my bike. There's a little kid singing along with a car alarm, and every couple minutes there's a pre-recorded announcement from Gabe, the solar powered camera sentry, telling everyone in earshot that he's there watching the parking lot, don't worry.
Gabe's speaking tone is corporate, fake-friendly, and menacing. The car alarm is basically neutral, I mean the main information I get from a car alarm is "this car has a car alarm". The kid singing along has a somewhat similar message ("I'm here and I can make this sound"), but the vibe is much preferred.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, wwwwwWWOOOOOO wwwwwWWOOOOOO wwwwwWWOOOOOO, EEEEE-AUGHHH-EEEEE-AUGHHH-EEEEE-AUGHHH
Some music is like this, mimicking the sounds of the environment in a sort of animism way. Thinking of boogie woogie piano music (sound of trains), French filter house (sound of a huge soundsystem at a great party), industrial (industrial), Tuvan throat singing (wind)... it's not really "in dialogue", but there is a desire for a sort of mystical union, if not control. For the car alarm kid it makes sense-- kids interact with cars quite a lot with no semblance of control or agency, it's only natural they'd try to deepen the relationship through mimickry. On the other hand it could just be "if this thing can be this loud, so can I". I remember that feeling as a kid, I still feel that way.
links / misc
- I'm just about to hit send when I realize this is like a John P poem. Here's my quick and dirty mock-up:
out of respect to the artist I have done a completely unconvincing job. For back issues of or subscriptions to John P's tremendous comic book KING CAT check out Spit and a Half: [link].
- Flan just celebrated her big 100th show over on WFMU, congrats! The show airs Wednesdays from 8 -9 EST, streamable here: [wfmu.org]. All 100 episodes are also archived at that link.
- For more "animal in a building / general uplift", here's a little snippet from the "Ask Tomato Bread" advice column in Mothers News #21. Many people wrote to me about this when I first published it, hope it still works:
All back issues of Mothers News are readable in full in the castle library, go up the stairs and it's on the third floor, they're in a milkcrate somewhere in the middle of the room. Or just click this link: [link].
If you got here through a link, click here to go outside and come back in: [outside]
Archives of previous posts is here, in the coat room: [coatroom]
To sign up to get these posts in your email for free, click here: [substack]
To write me a nice message, use the contacts page: [link]
To leave a little donation to help in the maintance of this castle, OR to simply hear the sound of a large bell, which is good luck, visit the temple area: [link]
As always, if you're bugging out or need a respite from endlessly scrolling the feed, you are welcome to hang out in the castle as long as you want. :)
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