Holly Northrop Blog

Standing on the corner the other night while waiting to cross Broadway, I started thinking about what would happen if I were to drop dead right there next to the subway grate. Aside from the ick factor of my face on a NYC sidewalk, I wondered if my downfall would be a heart attack or possibly something a little more news worthy and evolving an out of control cab. Or maybe, I simply step of the curb just as one of those stupid red Double Decker buses forces its way through the intersection and right over my body.

Hmm.

Anyway, what made me 'go there' was a general observation of the contents of my purse moments before while trying to find my subway card. At that God given moment, I had on me; a map of Green-Wood Cemetery; my Holga half-full of grainy, but super cool, out of focus black and white photos; a big spool of black photo tape and the novel, "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner. In addition to that bag of darkness, I had a CD with roughly sixty hi-res grave stone photos; a copy of my resume; my pillbox/drug pouch, fully loaded from the trip to PA; a magnifying glass and a pocketknife. No wonder I refuse to go through the new security machine at Exchange Place. Fuck 'em, I'll walk on down to Grove Street until they are done with their little public testing for "explosives in a commuter environment". To write about my purse it is one thing, to stand in front of (locally trained) Mr. Homeland Security and try to explain myself, that is a whole other bag of bullshit that I have never been very tolerant of. Or very good at.

I think my head is just a little messy with some of Jasmine's lingering health issues and now, our sweet little Lily is in need of a vet visit. She's having trouble keeping her food down and insists on throwing it up on us, in bed and very late at night. There is nothing like the sound of a cat getting ready to gak inches away from your sleeping head. That sound will yank you out of the deepest of the deadest sleeps. I bet you could pull folks out of a coma with that sound.

SLOW BURN
Well, it is official; my cherry was popped last week when after only four years of foreplay I finally had a photo published in the printed version of the Voice. A good one too, and they used it twice. Once on the contents page and then again with the article that Nathan Deuel wrote on the OTB. AND the Voice published my Green-Wood slideshow online and that is a total buzz.

I seem to be only shooting in black and white. I have color film and carry it around with me. It just never seems to make it inside a camera. I've been shooting digital and have some great color shots of Jasmine's apartment that I'm not quite sure what I want to do with. The Polaroid was fun and I posted a bunch of new ones, but lately it has something to do with the light, or my mood, or my headspace, just seems to be grainier, slightly out of focus black and white. Maybe once spring starts I'll snap out of it or maybe not. Maybe, I'm broken.

BLOW
Well the sounds of junior high have returned to my life via Miss Harvey. Martha bought a French horn. Yep, I said a French horn. Why, might you ask? Well, I will tell you. Life is short and there is some shit that some of us want to do before we die. I want to go to the desert and Martha wants to learn to play the French horn. So be it. She's found a guy to give her lessons and honestly, I'm so fucking deaf, (and I have new headphones) that it doesn't bother me one bit. She's cute as shit sitting on the edge or the red couch, one hand shoved up the bell part and the other on the finger key note things. Zoë, is not happy and paces around in front of Martha while meowing/bitching at her. It's pretty funny and I think we might need to make a little movie about the latest Adams Family scene going on in Jersey.

Seeing how last weeks road trip was, for the most part, unplanned, Martha and I found ourselves cash poor and completely embracing the oblivious nature of capitalism based on credit. We charged almost everything. We had to and we hate that.

I spent all day Friday in waiting rooms. The first one was for Jazz's appointment with the eye doctor. This was the second opinion doctor and more of a specialist then the cute eye guy at the local mall. Jasmine's primary care doctor here wanted a real doctor to look at her optic nerve before racing ahead with a spinal tap.

Martha and I sat in the no-man's-land of a sterile, white-walled waiting room filled with elderly folks. Classic D-List rock gently drifted around the room as I shifted my bony ass around on a hard green chair in a vain attempt to find comfort. The only thing to read was the new People magazine (the one where Britney talks). Twenty minutes into the glossy goodness of People, I could feel the stupid slithering over my grey matter.

We waited for well over an hour and a half before Jazz came back to us from behind the brown door and said, "Yup, I need a spinal tap. I'm borderline but they need to check my pressure."

Okay Miss Borderline, set it up.

Speaking of pressure, Martha's back had turned into one big spasm. Probably from all the night driving, endless sitting, cash stress and well, Jasmine in general, I suppose. After the optometrist, we headed on over to the local 'Day Spa' where Martha and Jazz both got massages. Why not? It was cheap and everybody hurt. I seized the opportunity to walk around the back alleys of a small town and shoot strange black and white photos until the sun went down and my fingers were cryogenically frozen to the Lubitel. At that point, I was forced inside to yet another waiting room with yet more brain-draining magazines and local gossip. There was a little more staff interaction at the Day Spa when the local homosexual hairdresser tried to get me to put a green hat on my head because with my curly red hair, 'that color is just dreamy'.

Saturday was all about goofy fun and loads of laughter. First, we went to the thrift store were Martha found an 8 x 10 Last Supper painting, ("What kind of place is that to have a dinner?") and a lacquered three-frame depiction of Mary, Jesus and a couple of Saints. Jasmine, not to be left out of the blasphemy, bought a Pope plate commemorating the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963.

From there, we headed on over to a real music store, the kind with pianos, guitars and drums. The beautiful thing about three women walking into a music shop is that to the staff, we were invisible. Martha screwed around over by the guitars while Jazz and I set up camp in the piano room. Jasmine is quite good considering she has never had a piano lesson. (She took trumpet for a few painful years.) I remembered basic stuff and kind of sucked considering I had five years of keyboard. But she and I did have a moment, Jazz on one organ and I on another, where dare I say, it was angelic. I'm a sucker for those B minor, E minor, and F sharp combos.

But all that fun was just a diversion to the real mission of the obligatory trip to the dreaded Wal-Mart empire.

THE MAPLE SYRUP BAKED RIGHT IN
A visit to Jasmine always means that at some point, there will be a trip to Wal-Mart but on this trip, I noticed something different. Back in the far left corner of the store, and deep within the bowels of the demon, was proof that Wal-Mart is horrible to its very core. Way past the frozen Perogies and extra wide isles of soda, sat a McDonalds. Like a worm inside a rotting apple or cheese inside the pizza dough, or even like the McDonald's McGriddles® Breakfast Sandwiches themselves! So completely unnecessary, disgusting and of no nutritional value what so ever.

As I stood in front of the cart parking area for McDonalds, it occurred to me what was missing. They need to put a Disneyland inside a Wal-Mart. They could put the rollercoaster on the roof. If it's happening in Vegas why not at a Wal-Mart? I'm thinking something along the lines of a Splash Mountain theme with cartoon characters. Wal-Mart could come up with a series of loveable cartoon characters that would walk the store, greeting customers and entertaining the kids. Think of the Polaroid moments! Employees could not only have the opportunity to make a shit wage selling shit product, they could now do it from inside a suffocating 60 lbs Furrie suit.

Ah yes Wal-Mart, where I can buy not only non-descript beef patties, but also enough ephedrine to start my own personal little Meth Lab and a double sided axe for all my chopping needs. Trust me, I have chopping dreams, er, I mean needs. Yes, needs.

DOUBLE BUMMER SAVED US
I shot way too much film of local farms, abandon business signs and an old drive-in. All the little things that make up the dead towns that pepper the Pennsylvanian landscape. Martha said that everywhere out there, (as in 'not in here'), is weird and she blames me. She said that after 14 years with me she can no longer function properly in Middle America. Middle America is like a bad acid trip. I don't think I can take complete responsibility for just how much like brown acid the middle of PA is but I will bow my head to the idea that I do have a tendency to point shit like that out.

But why fight it? I stand out no matter what happens and sometimes the strange just finds me. Maybe because I just might happen to be standing in the middle of a Sheetz parking lot just outside of Punxsutawney, pointing a Polaroid up towards the sky.

"What the heck are you taking a picture of?" a local hayseed asked me.
"The colors." I replied with a smile on my face, not even trying to blend in at all.

The ride home was fucked up, and it sucked to be in the car with me. After a night of sleeping in a room that was located directly under a whole floor full of Christian, pre-teen, wrestling team boys, (no shit) I woke up sneezing and coughing all over everything. I didn't stop until some ten hours later. I even took two (2) Benadryls and one (1) of Martha's Allegras. Nothing helped, although I did pass out for an hour. But when I woke up I'd start sneezing all over again until I'd loose my breath and almost swallow my tongue. It was great and technically Martha was right, I can't swallow my tongue unless I chop it off and THEN eat it.

I think I need to start having the same expectations for The L Word that I used to have when I was in high school and watched General Hospital everyday after school with my best friend Sherry. The only thing that was expected from that soap opera was for it to be on. Plot was not an issue and believability was never a consideration. If we skipped school, then the whole run from All My Children, One Life to Live and on into General Hospital was room ambiance to our pathetic southern Ohio lives. That and Lynard Skynard [Leh'-nerd Skin'-nerd].

But the point is, nothing groundbreaking was expected from these shows and we were never mentally challenged, except for when Luke raped Laura on the floor of a disco and then they ran away together to Ice Princess Island. While on the run, Luke and Laura fell in love but she was already married to a guy named Scotty, who went nuts when she ran away. Somehow, Scotty and Laura divorced and she then turned around and married Luke, (the guy who had just months before raped her on the floor of a disco) but not before he managed to save the town of Port Charles from being frozen from Cassadine's weather machine.

As far as I can tell it's every woman's fantasy, to not only fall in love with your rapist but to run away to exotic locations with him. While "on location" together, you can help save the planet. Then, with nobody in the way of a complete 180, nothing else says submissive-punching-bag better than "I do". I mean, if he rapes you before you marry him, just what is to be expected when you lay down the "till death do us part" line?

Anyway, The L Word isn't even as believable as anything that was ever on General Hospital. I now realize that I extremely dislike just about every character on the program because every single cliché within the lesbian community is in use. I can almost see the conference room white board with the all the characters names across the top and little boxes below, each one filled in with a predictable behavior or affliction. Some characters have several clichés running in rotation so all that they do is hop from one superficial event to the next. The writers of The L Word are really bad soap opera writers. This shit would never fly in the straight daytime land of soaps and that stuff is total crap. I expect at least the same level of hogwash as General Hospital. Come on girls the bar is already low enough.

WOMAN'S WORK
More health scares with Jasmine this week. For the moment, things seem to be in a small holding pattern. I can't tell if it is just Jasmine's natural hypochondriac abilities at work or if there is something more sinister below the surface. Telling me to relax is really something that just doesn't work much anymore.

She is coming home for spring break to meet with her main doctor here about a new thing. Heredity might be at play, so we aren't as concerned but then some days we are. It flips every other day and I am slowly losing what is left of fucking senses. This Friday Martha and I will be in Pennsylvania. I hope we can get there in time for her appointment with the eye guy. This is all for the second opinion about the spinal tap. Her doctor here wants to make sure she needs a tap and not drugs first.

I, true to form, buried my head in my photography. Green-wood Cemetery is up. It took me five days to scan all the negatives. Not five solid days, I did have to work and talk endlessly on the phone with Jasmine about health issues. Anyway, the gallery here is up and I will be putting a smaller one on Toycamera later on in the week. I'm also going to see if the Voice will run it. They were interested a few weeks ago but now, things might be different. Everything else about work is.

Regardless, it is good work and I am very proud of it. I think I managed to catch the feeling that was with me on the one rainy day. It is a strange sensation to walk alone among the dead with nothing but a camera. I've always enjoyed it, but I'm funny like that. Martha went with me but we would separate the minute we left the car. She traveled over one hill and I over the other. She managed to shoot a pretty funny little video clip of the two of us but outside of warming up and drying off in the car the shoot was a solitary event. She shot some very good photos as well.

SUNBEAMS ON GOLD CARPET
Lately, I have had to think about my mother more than I normally would and more then I am comfortable with. All this aging stuff has me trying to guess about her health issues so as to gauge my own demise. Heredity is a funny thing. I can't remember how old my mom was when she went through the change but if I had to guess, it probably started before the age of fifty but really hit peek levels by the time she was fifty-three, and those where some good ole days I'll tell you. I was thirteen and she was fucking crazy as a loon. It was somewhere around the age of fifty-eight that she developed uterine cancer and had a hysterectomy. She then went on to live another twenty-two years with varying degrees of health problems. I have yet to find out what she actually did die from although I know she had just undergone her first round of chemotherapy when she died two years ago. But what kind of cancer is a mystery to me. All of my doctors are interested in my family's, (particularly the females) medical history but that is so hard to give when everyone is dead. Yes, I could find out if I really wanted to and I will probably have to but not just yet.

So for now they'll get this list. Breast and Uterine cancers; extremely high blood pressure; hypertension; mental illness, specifically manic depression with panic attacks and high anxiety; alcoholism combined with prescription drug abuse; cigarette smoker for fifty years, osteoporosis and cataracts. Yep, that was my mom as defined by illness. The sum of all that's wrong, well at least what I knew about.

I think that I just might be stronger then my mother ever was. Now that is a bold sentence and I'm still working on processing that thought but if I line up both of our lives, well... I'm thinking that an idea of that caliber just might have some weight to it. I mean honestly, once she married my dad she had thirteen years of VP bank wife, country club loving, republican voting living before I came along and created half of what was wrong with her. By the 70's all she had in her life was a fucked up teenager who did normal fucked up 1970s type stuff. There was only ONE of me so other than that, she pretty much had the run of her life if she wanted it. Instead, she cleaned the house, grew zucchini in the backyard, sat at the kitchen table, and stared out the window for hours on end while drinking Black Label beer and chain-smoking Salem cigarettes. Maybe, that's the way she wanted it. The only probe into my mother's brain during those dark years was kept on a pad of paper by the phone. In that pad of Provident Bank notepaper, my mom would write these wacky sentences; nothing that I can recall now and not anything I could have begun to understand then. I left home a seventeen and while she did seem to calm down a tad bit, that woman was as high-strung as they come. And why yes, the apple didn't fall very far from that tree.

I don't think my mom could have handled working full-time in the fantastic mans' world of publishing, or faired well with any kind of artistic talent, moonlighting the self-indulgent process of creation. Or nurtured a shaky child through college, with the constant health scares and the ever looming fear of the cancer coming back. She could have never walked away from a marriage, even though I know that for many years she was painfully unhappy with my father. She could have never ever handled moving to Denver, DC or NYC and none of this could she have done before the age of forty.

I have no real point here other then I've been thinking about my mother and as I mentioned before, I'm thinking about her a little bit more then I am comfortable with.