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Thursday, August 13, 2009
decay
Listening to:TWiT
Reading:Pygmy, Chuck Palahniuk
Weather:so foggy everything's wet
I love decay. I can't get enough of checking out crumbling, rotting, fermenting, collapsing, peeling, corroding, rusting, putrifying, shriveling, atrophying, deteriorating, and decomposing stuff. My favorite foods are funky: beer and cheese. I'm a happy composter. I thoroughly enjoy watching mother nature take it all back. Go ahead, build something, instantly an army of bacteria and bugs and chemical reactions and ever bigger critters and gravity and plants will start systematically taking it down. And it's so beautiful to watch.

I had the great fortune of getting to drive to Spencer, WV yesterday for work. I did presentation for the seniors and met with some individuals. I was hoping to run into my groovy musician friend Larry D, whom I haven't seen in a few years, but that didn't work out. But other than that, it was a very fulfilling trip.

The drive from Independence to Spencer is about an hour down 79 then some of the longest windiest two-lane driving in WV, Route 119 south from Weston through Glenville, Normantown, Arnoldsburg, Leatherback, etc. Now before you jump all over me about what longer, windier WV road you've driven, go drive this bad boy! I got an ab workout just trying to keep it between the lines at a min speed of 40 mph. Anyhoo, it was a gorgeous ride on a perfect driving day: overcast but not raining. Got some intermittent sunshine for the ride home, set the fields of blooming ironweed aglow. Ironweed is my harbinger of back-to-school shopping time, and sho'nuff the kid was buying her books for the semester yesterday while I was grooving on the purple show. But I also saw the year's first woolly worm, a predictor of the severity of winter, crawl across the road in front of my car. I don't know what to say about that.

Somehow while I was playing the video game-like driving I broke free enough brainspace to enjoy some decay along the way. Lots of cool old houses in varying states of going to back to their earthly components. One house was a good foot lower on the right side than it was on the left. Some old houses had viney leafy stuff growing into the broken windows. More than one old barn had the faint but still readable remnants of Mail Pouch peeling off. There were awesome cool old footbridges crossing creeks from road to house that were swinging rusty temptations just waiting for some 11 year old.

So many times along the way I quickly looked ahead hoping for a quick pull-off so I could go back and snap a pic. Rarely such luck, and on the way there I felt the pressure of my presentation's starting time. On a road like that all it takes to make you extremely late is to get behind a truck going about 8 miles below the speedlimit. I did get a couple of pix of a freakin gigantic hawk on the way back, but unfortunately he was a little beyond the optical zoom distance on my digi, and the digital zoom is rather lousy.

On the way home some of the abandoned houses got cool-looking shafts of sunlight streaming down through giant roof holes. I always wish I could stop and sneak in and look around in those places. What did the former inhabitants leave behind? Is there some nice old trim wood that would come out with a little coaxing and prybar? Some art? Drugs? Plenty of dust, no doubt, and dead bugs. Spiders!

Here's to destruction!


permalink posted by cat 8:22 AM

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Comments:
Your view on decay is kinda like the glass half-full of rodent-infested sewer water. At any rate, I like your perspective.
 
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