Beware the Tarantulas

Surfing Tip #345: Click on the images to see a larger picture.



Hello there my polyshimmering friends. You know I've been getting a lot of email along the general theme of "more pictures please." It all makes me wonder if I'm going to show up on Eastern European mail order bride websites or in dominatrix from hell f-servers, but I'm the adventurous type so damn the torpedoes! (Useless fact #79: The chap who originally was credited with this quote was talking about underwater mines not those things the Nazis were famous for in those bad war movies. Just thought you needed to know that, but I digress.) Naturally these pics are set up in the western style. Just click on the appropriate photo and you will see an even larger version of the same picture. And yes, I will validate your parking for 3.67 metric hours. Thank you and please do come again.
It goes without saying that I have certain fascination with death. Make no mistake. This does not mean I am an unhappy or unfriendly person. It just means that some of my best friends communicate with me from the beyond is all. My fascination, however, predates the currently popular "movements" which have adopted varied versions of this pose. When other girls were playing with dolls and thinking about future life, I was wandering alone through graveyards, communing with the husks of spirits long departed. But then I was the sort of kid who looked between my dog's ears because I heard you could see ghosts that way. (You really ought to try it by the way.) I've known other people who were into the graveyard scene and I find that I don't have much in common with them. They often tend to "grow out of it" which often means they become more inhibited by what other people think. Or their imaginations become more tuned to what is good enough instead of what is possible.


Either way, I find that talking to dead people gives one a sense of perspective. I was talking to an honorable senator from the state of California this one time. He had a distinguished career and died in 1892. He told me that if he hadn't taken chances and sometimes put everything on the line for what he wanted, then he wouldn't have gotten past town rat catcher. And he told me that people should go for the brass ring because when they are dead it isn't going to matter whether or not they "played it safe" or not. If you listen very hard perhaps you'll hear him? Oh yeah, and he mumbles something even now about how it helps to come from a nice family and how he wished he had lived long enough to experience processed cheese food. Naturally I was sympathetic and told him that I would bring him some the next time I stopped by.

I've always respected dead people, because ... well, the reasons aren't really important. So I always get to know them before I go into their homes. The good people who invited me in for some of the pictures you see here had a sign outside their door. They lamented in iambic pentameter because they thought no one would remember them. They came to the conclusion that their passing didn't really matter much. The earth would still turn and young lovers would enjoy summer, and their white bones would be forgotten. Well, I shall not forget them, even though they died over a century before I took on this most current husk. Today I set flowers upon their doorstep in gratitude for their Old World hospitality. And no, it doesn't matter but take heart in the fact that most of what we do when we are living doesn't matter either. But remember. "A summer at the extremest height with cold fountains and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may become more blissful yet!"
And yes, it is time for me to enter into my coffin for another day's rest. I wear plenty of sunscreen so I have some tolerance to the light's killing rays, but still ... it is not good to be out when those who think they are living stride across the land. (Beware the tarantulas, Little One.) I go now, the way of all bridges to a land that smiles on girls with crystalline teeth.



Amanda Storm (May 1998)