MERCURIAL...

A house. Forsaken, at the edge of an overgrown path. An ocean at its doorstep. A lost field of dry grass.  A slumbering mercurial night. Wind washed, in the rain. The rain, rain, rain…

 Forest tendrils dripped and dragged forlorn roots. Muddy steps, torn and smothered.  Waiting alone beside an iron gate, exposed.  It swung like a child’s swing, on rusted hinges.

Effortless footfalls from long ago. Perhaps hundreds of 

them. Over those broken stairs that led to even more broken 

doors.  In the rain. That sweet, endless rain. 

                     

Green moss, resembling old man hairpieces, slid down its 

broken shingles. Cracked drainpipes rattled like rocky waterfalls. 

Hawks, enviable raptors of the forest, sat in damp feathers, 

on the roof peaks, calling to each other.  Dawn was about to 

break. Their amber eyes scanning. The hunt was about to begin.

A house, cold now, in the last vestiges of winter, longed for 

warmth. Fields parched and barren stretched beyond its border. 

                             

Muffled rooms, framed by broken glass windows. A great 

silence, except for 

the froth and bubble of wet drapes flapping in their wake. 

A neglected stone fireplace emitted its final embers before ceasing to function.  Someone had been there. Someone, in the murky hours. Someone passing by.

Ashes covered the broken hearth.  The house breathed 

heavily. It remembered. Woken at last by starlight in the old 

fire. It remembered what it was like before winter’s frigid goodbye.

                                    

Someone had lit the fire. Alone in the cold. Then wrapped in the old drapes, had sat before its low flames. Smoke drifted through the vacant rooms.

  

A house, neither grand or new, sat peacefully in the silvery quiet of the morning.  Once, long ago, mortal souls walked and lived in this place. 

Time pondered. In the rain. Waiting for Someone. 

The rain gurgled, then dwindled, drenching the house while it waited. In the rain.

Photographs 2026

BUBBLE GUM HOUSE

"Create with the heart, build with the mind..." -Criss Jami

One fall, I was incredibly bored. It was a posting season, and I was left to my own devices. The kids were little. We’d made Christmas cards, with  real twigs and leaves, slapped paint footprints on  curtain material. Had trouble cleaning off their feet. I made so much fruitcake, that probably no one would eat.  I ran out of freezer space. 

It was time for a new project.  We were living back east . Big house. Lots of walls. Lots of ceilings. I’d been scouring DIY magazines on how to freshen up the  house. I got a rip roaring idea from  watching a talk show. 

PAINT. Be creative with paint. And lots of it. “Don’t be afraid to experiment” said the paint experts.  “Okeedokee,”  I thought.

So I plopped the kids into the car and we toodled down to the paint store. I bought them each a small paint brush.

My good friend, the  paint lady, was very helpful .She said I had “artistic flare”, and I should “run with it”. The newest thing was to  sponge  all sorts of colours on the walls.

I came home with cans and cans of pink paint, a can of robin’s egg blue, a can of bright green, wallpaper, wisteria stensils, big painting sponges  and stir sticks. I gave the kids a couple of those to go with their paint brushes.

Most of the rooms I had already covered up. I started with the music room. I  painted it bubble gum pink. Had trouble with the corners and the top edges. Got some paint on the ceiling. Didn’t have any painters’ tape. So instead I took a roller brush and a long handle and smacked pick swishes all over the ceiling. Looked like pink feathers.

In the kitchen I slathered water on striped wallpaper. Then smooshed the pieces  against the wall. Only half way, with  a big border. Then  sponge painted the top half, over old paint.  I chose pink and green. It looked kind of festive. 

The kids wanted to sponge paint. I gave them  newspaper to paint on. the wall. They got pink paint everywhere. Then the cats walked thru it. Paddy pink paw prints all thru the kitchen.

I made the computer room bright, robin’s egg blue, with stencils of  and more blue swishes on the ceiling. Another room ,  I painted  pink bubble gum with  stencils of purple wisteria all along the top edges near the ceiling. Well, I tried. I couldn’t quite reach, so they were all sort of  crooked. So I just added more wisteria and hoped no one would notice. Then I swished pink on the ceiling cause I  was having way too much fun.

The kids just watched, at this point, and pointed if I missed a spot.

Systematically, I worked my way through the house. It took me 10 days. I ran out of pink paint twice and  had to go get more.  My friend from the paint store, came over to have a look. She was very diplomatic.

She was intensely interested in the  wisteria room with the pink swishes. 

She  kind of stopped and stared at my handiwork in the kitchen.  “Creative,” she warbled “ very creative. And you did this all yourself?”

She marveled at the striped wallpaper. A little crooked but not too bad. Gave the eating area a jaunty look.

In the dining room and music room she  made  “Ohhhhs and Ahhh’s” at the bubblegum world I created. “And no tape whatsoever?” she said “None? Well, well well”

We found pink paint dried on the grand piano. So we spent the afternoon carefully  scraping it off.  Guess I didn’t quite cover the piano at the time.

When she left and I closed the door, I saw her doubled over at her car. I thought, at first, something was wrong.  But no.

She was just laughing so hard she was shrieking. 

The kids liked the bubblegum  house. I let them draw on one of the pink walls.

We had to live in it for a little while, then we were going to sell the house and move. Got student pro painters to come out and give an estimate. They craned their heads around to look at the wisteria rambling down the wall. 

I wondered if they laughed themselves silly as well. It was pretty funny.

 They covered  the entire house in  white paint. Covered up the  wisteria., the blue, the green and  all that bubble gum  paint.  All those wonderful swishes disappeared like they never existed.

I never painted again……more’s the pity, cause when I  go by the paint store I get this awful  hankering………

Photographs 2022