I've got my parent's van for the week and it seems determined to establish my status as The Local Cryptid by terrorizing an innocent 7-11 clerk.
...I might need to back up a bit.
My mother is an eminently sensible woman who knows herself well, and when The Plauge hit, she knew she'd need some sort of mentally and physically engaging craft project to keep herself from going insane and massacring the local zoning and water management boards (even if they have it coming). So she and Dad acquired a utility van and converted it into a camper van because while they love camping, they're past the age where their joints and immune systems will tolerate sleeping on the cold ground in a nylon tent.
They did a terrific job of it and my mom taught herself woodworking and carpentry and now the van has it's own cabinets, fold-away dining table, and removable queen-sized bed with memory foam mattress. My Dad was already a computer engineer, but he learned the dark magics of automotive software and electronics to install after-market backup cameras, a media player that would take a terabyte hard drive and a solar-powered battery and outlet so they could wake up and just turn on the kettle and griddle for breakfast without having to exit the van into a cold morning on an empty stomach.
Truly, the height of Camping Luxury.
My parents are both in their mid-seventies and my primary life goal is to be at least half as cool and hale as they are when I get old.
Anyway, they take it out at least a dozen times a year and it works fabulously, but, being as I am on good terms with my parents and also finishing the process of moving house, I've been borrowing it to move large and cumbersome objects that will not fit in the back of my equally lovely but minuscule Honda hatchback.
It's a Great Van.
Very easy and comfortable to drive.
Stunningly good MPG for it's size.
The best cruise control I've ever had in a car.
It's just also.
Quirky.
Mischievous, even.
---
If this van has a fault its that it bears the unfortunate affliction that all lightly used white utility vans have in that the combination of an utter lack of branding features and the large dent/scrape I accidentally put on it while trying to escape a Denny's last Thanksgiving means that this vehicle is one addition of a Badly Spray-Painted "FREE CANDY" on the side away from being the sort of vehicle you see in an edgy horror movie.
It's got the same issue that Doberman Dogs have where they look like the sort of creature that likes to snack on toddler's faces whilst actually having personalities made of marshmallow fluff. This vehicle is unnecessarily menacing and I think nothing short of an airbrushed Epic Van Wizard will correct this. People see this van pull up and lean over and squint suspiciously at me when the driver's side door opens, and then look moderately confused when, instead of Charles Manson, a small, potato-shaped creature with neon purple hair and a statistically unlikely assortment of dogs emerges.
My own two dogs, Herschel the Hanukkah Goblin/Corgi and Charleston Chew The Taco Dumpster Dog, Do Not Like The Van. Even with the bed in it, they have a tendency to slide and roll around in the back, and both WILL chew through dog saftey belts or other attempts to secure them in there.
On the other hand, my house mate's dog, an exceptionally tall standard poodle whom we lovingly call "The Creature", loves the Van because SHE wears her doggy seat-belt with only mild complaining and gets to sit up in the passenger seat like A People.
Also like A People, The Creature likes to stand and walk around on her hind legs. It doesn't hurt her and it's entirely voluntary, but every so often I will feel a hand on my arm and instead of my husband or friend, it's a canine that's taller than I am on her hind legs who wants to stare at my face with soulful, concerned eyes. The Creature's favorite thing is that she is exactly the right height for me to hold her arm in Genteel Fashion and walk around the pet food or hardware store with her like I'm a count escorting a debutante around a royal ball.
---
As it stands, I am set to inherit this vehicle whenever my Honda gives up the ghost, and I fully intend to paint an Epic Van Wizard on it when that time comes.
The other peculiarity of The Van is that while Dad did manage to successfully install all his after-market electronics, not all the electronics get along.
Sometimes, they fight for Dominance.
The Terabyte Music Player and the Backup Camera have a particularly contentious relationship, and turning on the music has about a 25% chance of turning on the backup camera as well, and turning on the Backup Camera is equally likely to turn on the music.
Firthermore, The Van has a favorite song.
I am not kidding that Dad filled an entire terabyte hard drive with music and the software to sort it via the radio controls, but of all the Early Boomer Dad Rock (Kingston Trio over The Eagles) and Irish Folk and Symphonies and the entire discography of Weird Al Yankovic, The Van's favorite song-
The one it picks to play as victory music every time it beats the Backup Camera at their weird electronic game of rock-paper-scissors
-is The Liberty Bell March by John Phillip Sousa.
You all know this song already.
...but in case you've forgotten the tune:
Yeah.
The Van's favorite song is the goddamn Monty Python's Flying Circus Theme Music.
It does not play this song at a normal volume.
Every time I turn on the Backup Camera and it manages to turn the music player on as well, The Van insists on absolutely blasting this nonsense on at the maximum volume it's physically capable of producing, which I know is loud enough to be heard from the Denver International Airport's Pickup zone when they Van decided to start playing it from the economy lot about half a mile away.
Perhaps it's The Van's way of honoring the aesthetic sensibilities and sonic enthusiasm of Mr. Sousa.
...I can't help but wonder if the purpose of an Epic Van Wizard is to control this sort of faerie-like malarkey, and channel these chaotic energies into things like Spell of Don't Break Down In Nevada or Enchantment Of Always Have Good Parking.
---
So last Friday the 13th, I get a call from my friend and housemate, at said airport.
It's roughly 11PM at night, and I have already retired for the evening.
I am in the exact minimum of clothing required to be a decent housemate and not scandalize the neighbors should I happen to walk by a window.
My feet are up.
There is a cat in my lap and fictional British people murdering each other in highly inventive fashion on the tv.
-But my friend has returned from her friend's wedding,and either American or United Airlines has managed to lose her luggage,
including,
among other valuable possessions,
the keys to her car.
...So she cannot just drive home as originally planned.
There are, as luck would have it, her spare set of keys not eight feet from me.
Being a good and decent person, I agree to bring the spare keys to her so she may get home before daybreak and not spend a semester's worth of tuition on an uber across the greater Denver traffic jam.
Being also that she Loves Activities, and it's her mom we're going to pick up, I elect to take along The Creature.
I am primarily focused on remembering how to get to the airport and not leaving my friend's spare keys on the counter, so I throw on a pair of flip-flops, step outside, remember that it's AUTUMN and my minimal evening attire is not sufficient thermal protection, step back in, grab the first coat in the closet I lay hands on, pull it on, check that I have her keys again and leave.
The trip to the airport is largely unremarkable, save that it becomes necessary for me to put on sunglasses to drive, despite it being nearly the witching hour and almost entirely darker than the inside of a cow.
It's necessary because this blissful darkness of night is violently punctured by a startling number of cars that seem to have installed miniaturized but no less powerful lighthouse bulbs in where their headlights ought to go so the oncoming traffic and sports cars that insist on tailgating me in the slow lane alike illuminate the road and my mirrors with the kind of radiance I'd normally associate with the arrival of a Seraphim.
I arrive at the distant highly discounted airport car lot where my housemate is waiting, deeply apologetic.
It's nothing. I say. Once I see that your car starts up, I'm gonna go to that 7-11 across the way that I parked in front of, get a slurpee or something and I'll see you at home.
While she is retrieving her vehicle (an equally eccentric but much more stately Subaru that is old enough to be elected to congress) I rifle through the loose change in the glove box and discover that I have exactly $6.66 in small bills and coins. The Subaru, continuing it's long voyage into vehicular immortality, immediately starts up.
Upon her return, we all remember that my friend had all her camping gear in the backseat of the car and there is no room for The Creature to ride home with her parent, so I again assure her it's nothing, and will just take The Creature into the 7-11 with me. She is trained as a service animal and needs the practice after the plague.
I wave my friend off and turn to enter the 7-11.
I promptly trip over the jutting back bumper of The Van and fall, cartoonishly, face-first onto the sidewalk.
Fortunately, I have a lot of practice falling on my face, and have learned not to throw my hands out but instead cover my face, so my unexpected self-inflicted attempted curb-stomping lightly scrapes my hairline and nothing else -my sunglasses even stay in place- and I get up and resume my quest for a slurpee.
It's well known that the airport is a lawless place, and the 7-11 across from the discounted airport parking at the stroke of midnight is no exception.
I know it's the stroke of Midnight because there's one of those Audubon society bird-call clocks that makes bird noises, and my arrival is heralded by the twittering call of a Summer Tanager. I am almost charmed enough by the unusual choice of chronological device to excuse the exorbitant Airport-adjacent mark-up of Slurpee prices. I stand at the machine for some time, trying to decide on a size for the price and guess what the fuck "Blue Lighting Blast" is supposed to taste like.
The Creature is being Very Polite but is somewhat agitated, I assume because she *just* saw her mother for the first time in three days and then she LEFT with no explanation, so The Creature is on her hind legs, staring woefully into my eyes, asking to be escorted around the 7-11. Even though that's not what she's not supposed to be doing, there's nobody else in here, so I let her hang off my arm and discuss various Slurpee Flavor options with her.
We eventually decide on an experiment in which I try a Small Blue Lightning Blast, and discover it tastes a bit like licking a nintendo cartridge but in a pleasantly satisfying way.
I go up to pay and realize something is amiss.
The Cashier is a young man staring at me with wide eyes, one had over the register and the other wrapped up in his rosary.
I look down at myself.
In my haste to reunite my friend with her spare keys and service animal, I had left the house in the following accoutrements:
Flip Flops.
Not matching.
It's below freezing outside.
That last part is not particularly odd footwear for the weather in for Colorado, but it's an important detail for the rest of the ensemble.
Assorted scrapes, bruises, cuts and welts on my arms and legs that come with doing outdoor work and living in a house with three dogs and a fully-clawed cat that all want to be in my lap all the time.
It's cold out, so vasoconstriction has pulled the blood away from my skin, a trait that served my ancestors well during the last Ice Age, but leaves me with pale skin to contrast the various wounds and I look like a corpse that fell out of the back of a pickup truck.
The black Bootyshorts with "CRYPTID" painted in bright red gothic font across my ass, that @theshitpostcalligrapher gave me for my wedding present.
A peculiar but extremely comfortable garment that straddles the line between "Lacy Camisole" and "Industrial-Strength Sports Bra" like the Ever Given straddling the Suez Canal.
It is also Bright Red. with black accents.
The Jacket I had grabbed out of the closet, which is in fact, a black Velour Dinner Jacket.
The Tokyo-Ghoul inspired reusable anti-covid mask a friend made me with the set of Coyote Teeth.
My sunglasses, which are shaped like a Halloween Bat. The lenses are the wings and the body is the nose bridge.
It is ALSO bright red.
A Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle that I have been audibly affectionately calling "Dear Creature" who is hanging off my arm like she's my Prom Date.
The Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle is ALSO dressed up in a black Dog Sweater that has white bones printed on it to look like its an X-ray jacket showing off her skeleton.
I look like I am taking my Very Fancy Werewolf Girlfriend to a particularly casual Dinner Party for Vampires, but the thing that's really selling it and probably alarming the kid the most is the fun accessory I acquired in the parking lot not five minutes earlier:
The "Small Scrape At my Hairline" is actually a painless but PROFUSELY bleeding head wound that I had somehow entirely failed to notice covering my face, neck, decolletage and magnificent cleavage with blood like a Tarantino Film Extra.
This does explain why The Creature has been delicately trying to use her bodyweight to push me down onto the floor for the last ten minutes.
So I don't injure myself while we wait for the paramedics she hoped this kid called to arrive, you see.
The Creature has such a High and Naive Opinion of humanity.
I decide this social situation is already fucked, and the only way out is through, and with haste, before I start dripping on the floor.
"Hi there!" I say cheerfully, to indicate this is a visually alarming but not terribly serious situation. "Just a Small Slurpee!"
The Cashier has entered the relevant code into the register before I finish the sentence. His gaze flicks off me just long enough to look at the total, and he grips his Rosary harder.
$6.66
"Oh cool! I have exact change!" I say, taking the money out of my as-yet-unsanguined pocket without looking and slap it down on the counter. "You have a good night and be safe out there!" I wave, leaving.
I get in The Van, mortified, buckle The Creature up, and as I make to leave, I have to put it in reverse, which automatically turns on the backup Camera.
It also turns on the music player.
I make eye contact with the cashier as the dulcet tones of John Phillip Sousa boom from the van hard enough to make the windshield and the windows of the 7-11 rattle for the nine-and-a-half seconds I have to wait to be able to turn the volume back down. Not knowing what else to to, I give him a thumbs up, and leave.
Anyway, now I know what my Future Van Wizard has got to be dressed like, and what their familiar is.
---
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while frustrating, the funniest response to historical erasure of same sex couples is people wildly overcorrecting and assuming any interaction between two men in history was a secret homosexual relationship covered up by Big Historian. i saw someone on r/sapphoandherfriend sincerely ask if Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were lovers.
ID: tags that read "I think they're lowballing it actually. I think Thomas Jefferson may have secretly been a trans man who wore a very peculiar binder"
roman curse tablets for chariot races are so funny because they're basically all variations of "cosmo wanda i wish every horse and charioteer on the red team went to hell no matter what"
we would find out later i had burned off my entire cornea - about 65% of my eye. my doctor told me it is the organ with the highest concentration of nerve endings - i was in an amount of pain that can't be spoken.
and i was blind. for the first time in my life, i was totally blind. i kept thinking about reading, about writing. weirdly, just once, about driving. we had no idea if i would ever see again. just like that - my entire life was different.
it is a strange place to reference for a soft memory, to begin here.
my siblings were taking excellent care of me, but there was a moment in the hospital where, just through bad luck and timing - both of them had to step away for a moment. i was crying at that point; not emotionally. for 3 days after this i would still be crying, my tears, like a mermaid's, a frothy pink with blood.
my brother worried about leaving me. he had another, just-as-bad emergency.
"i got her," someone said. "don't worry."
a soft hand held mine, and then she started talking.
her name was jess. she has a wife named clyde. they live a few blocks up the street. clyde fell down, but the x-rays seem to be coming back better than expected. jess says she's got long dark hair and "more wrinkles than an elephant". jess describes every chair in the room and every person. she talks about her two kids and her cats and her favorite memories from college.
a doctor came. i had to switch to a different waiting room. i tried to stand up to follow the voice - i found jess's hand, following me. she didn't let go. she kept talking the whole way: lamp to your left, just a few more steps, okay to your right is the ugliest painting, good, now a little more walking straight, you got it baby
in the new silence of the next room she sat me down and called my brother for me, telling him where we'd gone to. and she stayed there for a bit, just chatting, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet. gently describing the room to me. and then someone was rude. from the sound of the voice, a kid, i think.
"why is she crying?"
"she just lost her vision," jess said. "she can't see."
"oh." said the kid. "that's scary."
the kid tells me he is here because he has peas stuck up his nose. that makes me laugh, his mom (?) groans. she tells me about the kid (he's 6, he likes paw patrol and eating cheese), about herself, about moving from cali.
jess says she's sorry, but she has to leave now, she's gotta go check on her wife.
"don't worry," says the mom. "i got her." and then i felt her hand press into mine.
for hours like that: i am taken care of by strangers. each person just talking with whatever comes to their head - not for any reward or celebrity or real reason, i guess. just because i am scared and alone and in the hospital and blinded and need to be distracted. not everyone even got told the story - they would just pick up in the silence with - oh by the way the television is playing HGTV - do you like that kind of a thing? yeah, me too, but could never quite get into those open-floor plans, i'll tell you -
by the time my brother is able to come back, the room is buzzing. we talk to each other like old friends, laughing, cracking jokes about if you don't like hospital food wait until you get on an airplane and can't believe i'm up past two in the morning what a party animal i'm becoming. i am holding the hands of someone named drew, who likes my crow tattoo and making crochet snails.
there are many dark moments full of pain in this world. this - in the low of absolute-dark, absolute-pain: people find a way to paint in it anyway. the color splash of their voices: this triumphant, radiating kindness of - let's be here together, let me help you, let's keep going.
i never saw their faces. i can't remember many of their names. but i think about them often, and the way we all took a deep breath - and did something gentle amongst the pain.
This is a picture I took of Namego Valley, deep in the mountains of Nara Prefecture. This place is located in a very remote location and is called one of the most beautiful spots in Japan by those in the know. There are deciduous forests along the dark green coniferous mountain ridges, and during the fall foliage season, the scenery looks like a dragon ascending to the heavens. This view, which appears quietly only during the few days of the best-conditioned fall season every year, is truly a beautiful art created by nature.
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