Observations from the Top of the Hill Part III

         Winter persists this year. The snow is still thick around the grounds of the estate. Cold winds keep me inside near the fireplace. March is the bleakest of months and this year is no exception. I heard music playing in a different room yesterday; it was an old Robert Johnson record, all scratchy and poppy. However I could not locate the record or the record player for that matter. There is an old Victrola in another part of the estate but it was not playing nor was there even a record on it. Crashing sounds continue to be heard but I cannot find the source of those either.

       I drove back from criss-crossing New England last weekend. I had to drive to the Manchester airport to drop off a small party of touring musicians. It was late, around 2:30 AM and I drove back to my sister's house on the outskirts of Boston. I hadn't slept well the two nights previous so I was a bit delirious. There were no cars for long stretches and I kept seeing what I thought were animals jumping out in front of me on route 128. They were just hallucinations but it gave me a jolt each time. The animals were not of an identifiable species, but they were large and dark and perhaps resembled bears.

       When I got back to the estate, the fire was lit even though no one had been there in days. It was welcoming albeit in an eery way. The next morning I awoke to one of those dreadful black cars sitting there at the end of the driveway right in front of mail box. At the same time, my phone and internet connections went haywire. I looked down to see if someone was in the car and indeed I caught the movement of someone dialing a phone. It was not possible to identify the gender of this person. I opened the blinds in another part of the estate to get a better look and at that moment the car sped off much to my relief. “Who are they, what do they want?” I asked myself once again. Is it the government? Are they even human? I can't ever see inside these cars for the windows are always blacked out. My dreams have turned dark as a result of this. 

        I have not been to the cabin further up the hill for some time. The last time I was in there it was probably in the negative range on the Fahrenheit scale and I was struggling to stay warm. Out of the corner of my eye, a mouse walked across and spooked me. I recently went back up late one night, trudging through the deep snow to face the mouse but what I found was far more terrifying. The cabin was a wreck and looked as if it hadn't been used for years. It was in a dreadful state of decay and the lights weren't working. I pointed my flashlight at a corner and saw two huge black tarantulas crawling along the floor. The mouse looked to be about half eaten by something. I pointed the flashlight up at the loft only to see a large rat staring down at me. Then, all of the sudden, a nasty raccoon jumped out near the rat and started hissing in a menacing tone. The arctic chill had the critters of the night claim the cabin as their own it seemed. I ran as fast as I ever had and I haven't been back since. I'm not sure if it was a dream, a hallucination or reality.   

NJ Highway Hell

OFTOTH II

Observations from the Top of the Hill

Part II

     Winter came in hard this year. There are tales of a new ice age ahead and this is just a preview. They say the sun spot activity is to blame. The roads have become narrower, soon there may be no escape from the estate up on the hill. There are old cars buried around the grounds. They many not be seen until Spring. Checked the news this morning and read of a unusually large number of banker suicides. What is responsible this and who perhaps is behind this? Stress and unethical activities...shadowy figures we don't see on the news but pull the levers and push the buttons of control perhaps. Then one executive went for a walk here in New Jersey and hasn't been seen since. Wall street is a mysterious concept. It reminds me of Hollywood. It really isn't a geographic location as much as it is this thing. Something that defies definition but has an energy in the collective consciousness.

     The three seemingly unrelated women who walked up and down the road like clockwork every day last fall have vanished. There's been no trace of them since winter came. We're they real? Holograms perhaps. It remains to be seen if they re-emerge this spring. I suspect that the cell phone towers disguised as trees might be behind it. Those things are not to be trusted. They operate at brain wave frequencies and I feel the need to blame them for the troubled thoughts that can enter people's and animal's minds. It is important to build up the defenses and to know which thoughts are mine and which may have been implanted. For instance, if I think of going on a Caribbean vacation where I was to go para sailing, then I could determine with reasonable certainty that “they” beamed those thoughts into my brain. That would not normally be a thought I would I think. That's call vigilance.     

     If, however, the thought arose to drive from New Jersey to Mexico City and then stay in a junky hotel room for a few days, never leaving while drinking tequila and watching Mexican TV on a black and white set with rabbit ears and then driving back through the drug cartel war zone near the Texas border, then that in all likelihood was a thought that was my own. These are important distinctions. Yes, I have thought of doing that even though I probably never would. I even got directions on Google Maps. It's 2,657 miles and 40 hours by car from here. “Hola, senorita. ¿Tiene una habitación? That's all I need to know. Do keyboards in Spanish-speaking countries have an upside-down question mark? Some words are male and some words are female, that I know. Spanish is weird like that.

Hush Hour

Mouse in the House

Mouse in the House

Had a dream last night about a big & nasty rat sitting on the window sill of the chicken coop

Just sitting there staring at me

It was probably inspired by the mouse in the house that startled me silly the other night

I saw the little thing out of the corner of my eye

It was walking along the edge of the room

I jumped and stood up on the couch

Like it was going to do something bad to me

What could a little, tiny mouse really do anyway?

Thought about setting up a mouse trap

But I got snowed in for a few days

I'm not sure if the mouse is still around

Maybe if I just made it my pet if I see it again

Then it wouldn't freak me out

A change in perception maybe

It's a free range pet!

Could put food out for it

I don't think that will work

If I see it run around the house again

I'll probably freak out again

Maybe I'll let the cat inside

The cat doesn't scare me if it's an invited guest

But I guess if I saw an unknown cat jut out from behind a dresser and run across the room

That would give me a major jolt up the spine

But if I let the known cat hang out in the house with the unknown mouse

Then I'll wash my hands clean of it

It's just what the cat does

They hunt little rodents because that's how they work

And then it will bring them to you as gifts

Just what I wanted, a dead, stinky mouse...

Still living with a mouse somewhere in the house

Strange Islands Part 3

North Brother Island

reivax from Washington, DC, USA

   Uninhabited until 1885, North Brother Island became the site of Riverside Hospital which was founded to treat and isolate victims of smallpox and eventually other diseases. June 15, 1904, the island was the site of the wreck of the General Slocum. It was a steamship which burned and over 1,000 people died either from the fire on board the ship or from drowning before the ship made it to the island's shores. Typhoid Mary was confined to North Brother Island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. After World War II, the island housed war veterans who until the nationwide housing shortage abated and then the island was once again abandoned. In the 1950s, heroin addicts were brought to the island and locked in a room until they were clean.  Many thought they were being held against their will as wall graffiti attests to.

   The island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospital buildings are deteriorated and in danger of collapse and a dense forest now grows over the ruins. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, one of the largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Herons was there. As of 2008 the Black-crowned Night Herons also have abandoned the island for reasons unknown.

Population: 0

Plum Island

Another island of interest in New York, Plum Island is off the Eastern end of Long Island. Following the Spanish American War in 1899, Plum Island was purchased by the United States Government for approximately $90,000. Once home to the Army Chemical Corps, in 1954 the United States Department of Agriculture established the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Because of the nature of the research at the facility, access to the island is restricted. The facility may  be moved but there have been many theories about the strange experiments that may have taken place here over the years. Unidentified species of animals have been seen and photographed washing up on the shores of Eastern Long Island for years and many suspect that these creatures originated at Plum Island.

Population: Unknown

Exclaves, Oblasts and Other Geopolitical Oddities Part 2

Killcohook, Delaware

Killcohook, at Finn's Point, is one of two places in Delaware that shares a land border with New Jersey. The Twelve-Mile Circle, a colonial era agreement, defined the border of the 2 states as being along the low water mark on the New Jersey shore of the river. Later, the land on which the refuge lies falls was created by land fill and so it falls within Delaware territory. Killcohook consists primarily of marshland, and there was an emphasis on breeding of migratory waterfowl. The American Black Duck was singled out for protection in Killcohook.  The U.S. Congress revoked its status as a wildlife refuge in 1998 by and currently it is being used as a disposal facility by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Population: 0

Comment: I like the wildlife refuge idea better than the dumping ground. I think that it should be developed somehow, maybe as a weird resort or secret town or something.

Marble Hill, Manhattan

Marble Hill is the northernmost neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. Due to the re-routing of the Harlem River through the Harlem Ship Canal, it is politically part of Manhattan/New York County but it is located on the North American mainland and has a land border with The Bronx. It is rather small with a land area of just 0.1183 square miles.

Population:  8,463 (2010)

Population Density: 70,525 people per square mile.


Comment: I like the idea of an area of Manhattan which has single family homes.