*why I remember my life like it's a tim burton film.

byrd theatre. cary street. reading batman comics before I knew how to read. the snow in the winter in downtown richmond, with real christmas lights and garlands and a clock tower. peanut soup in an old hotel in fancy dresses. waffles in an old restaurant with a cast iron elevator. hollywood cemetery. that old black baptist church in downtown richmond. smashing pennies on the railroad tracks by the old white shack with the rocking chair on the porch in maryland. the dead puppy we found while canoeing around in the creek in maryland. scratch ankle farm where we went through Coalter's old Russian spy trinkets. dad's room with the rickety old french doors. all those cats. my eyes swelling shut in the nighttime, after we fell asleep quoting beetlejuice back and forth. the nice red headed girl who had to wear a wig that made her scalp itchy. horseshoe creek and taking the rickshaw for a ride. collecting fresh eggs for the morning and watching flies collecting on the fly paper hanging from the ceiling fan in the kitchen. the snow in the woods in the winter at the house on foxtrot lane. that weird serpent creature and the giant toad named violet we kept as pets. dad got them from doing some construction job... what did we name the eel thing? blacky? I don't even think it had eyes or a mouth but I did love it so and was so very worried when it started to shed it's skin and die.
nightmare before christmas. mom watching MYSTERY every night and us having to go to bed right after the edward gorey introduction. dressing up like a pumpkin and getting my halloween costume stuffed with rolls of toilet paper while trick or treating. dressing up like a dead victorian woman. memorizing edgar allen poe's the raven. dad reading us poe before bed. shopping and trying on flapper dresses and feather boas at bygones, one of my wild imagination spots

hanging out in the small old family cemetery out at loftan's grandparents virginia farm, where the main house had each room dedicated to a separate primary color. catching lightening bugs. rolly pollys. singing about dying grubworms in the form of a dark beatles song about death and organs in jars. watching batman and batman returns a million times at byrd theatre. oh yea. and dad being batman himself and dating that girl from spencers who looked a little bit like selina kyle. and told us stories about collecting dead bats in his room when he was a kid (yackety yackety yack).

all I ever really truly wanted for chrisimas were cardboard boxes big enough to make a house and a car for myself.














******I'm pretty sure that my sister will appreciate this blog more than most. I mainly wrote this entry for us, but maybe there's enough imagery for some of you to appreciate it.*******