FIRST VISITORS
Aside from family members, this is the first day that I have invited friends into my new apartment in Marshall. I never invited people into my house on College View Drive after my wife Kathe died four and a half years ago. She invited people, she knew how you prepare drinks or food and make people feel at home. I didn’t.
In the late afternoon my son Tom and my grandaughters brought there friend Sue Hanlon and her daughter, my granddaughter Hannah’s best friend since childhood, Ginger, to my new apartment. But shortly before that my friend Sheldon, a member of our Friday old man’s group, announced he was bringing his daughter, Felice, and her husband and son over at 1:30 pm. So on my first day as a host two groups were coming. Susie also came and Todd for the second group and we had a great time. Susie and Felice were childhood friends at Warren Wilson College. I had bought snacks and had some left over from my brother’s visit and was a little more confident this time. I had wine and beer which we didn’t drink. Mostly we sat around and talked.
But we could have sat and talked anywhere. In both cases people were coming to see how I lived. And in an odd way what they were being introduced to was who I was, which they learned about by seeing what kinds of textiles and objects from around the world touched me and were strung all around my apartment.
At 140 College View Drive Kathe and I shared in making the house beautiful by our own standards. People could see who we were by seeing what we surrounded ourselves with.
In this apartment I am more on my own, although the way things are displayed was often as much Susie’s idea as my own, in fact she vetoed a number of my most far out ideas such as covering a wall in the bedroom with a garish painted Indian photographer’s backdrop. And of course Kathe’s presence was very much here as well in the family photographs and the objects made by Kathe on the walls.
But in the end what is on the walls and on the shelves is there not for anyone else but because these objects make me feel good. I like living in their presence and many of them come from trips to India or Sri Lanka or Morocco or Greece of Germany or England or Colombia or Mexice. Objects from those countries, such as paper flowers from Mexico or mobiles from England or rugs from Morocco, bring back those trips in a visceral way.
In the 90’s I discovered the Asheville Dreamland Drive In flea market held Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday mornings in an abandoned drive in movie theater. First I was irritate by the presence of the flea market because the parking was so bad it was hard to drive by after taking Kathe to work at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 6 in the morning. But one day I double parked and went in and was hooked. Pretty soon I was there at 6 every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday morning. And soon I began humming gospel songs to myself as I walked in, I was so filled with anticipation and delight. It became an almost a religious experience for me, a form of worship. Several things stimulated me. The first was the unknown. I would never know what I would find that would touch me, often something that I had never seen before in my life. The second thing was the cost and the method of payment. Everything was much less expensive than it would have been in the mall, that was on the hilljust above. It seemed the difference in price of, for example, a toaster was simply whether it was in its original packing under bright lights with a fixed price in the mall or unboxed in a jumble of junk half hidden from sight in the flea market. And luckily there was no fixed price so I was forced to engage with the seller in an exchange in which we would both use our wits to get the price we wanted with neither knowing what the price should be. I did this by feigning disinterest or pointing out flaws or making friends first before offering a price. I would usually walk on and if after 50 steps the urge to buy the object was still with me I would circle around and in five minutes be back to make a final offer.
But neither of these explains why I became so addicted to the flea market. The reason I was addicted, and the reason that our carport filled up with precious junk and Kathe had to have it enclosed to hide the clutter, was because I found objects that touched me and made me feel alive. It is the same reason that Catholic Churches fill up with statues and paintings, it is a way to my soul. And of course that is true when I travel, as well, things touch me that I want to have around me when I am home. Luckily I am too cheap to check a bag so can bring very little back with me. It has turned my apartment into a little shrine, with objects that might touch only me, but which can make me feel more fully alive.
So that is what these visitors were able to see, what stirred my soul.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 