i'm helen gassenheimer. i live in birmingham, play fiddle in bands, write songs sometimes, and knit compulsively. i've dabbled in print making/painting/mosaic/wheel pottery. i love to make stuff, especially if it can be useful and beautiful at the same time.
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short story:
yard installation.
for E.O. Wilson.
LONG STORY:
my dearest friends and i have had some pretty unfortunate roommate luck in our lives. a twenty-something named Cat for whom meowing was a standard in her vocabulary- shifting in tone to correspond to her emotional response. a 40-something named Charles who instead of closing the bathroom window to keep out intruding pigeons (a suggestion made by myself and another of our roommates) purchased three small inflatable tubes and inserted them into the windowsill. on them he wrote in sharpie "GO AWAY WINGS." the latest in this trend of roommate weirdos comes from my boyfriend Pete. Pete's roommate had a full cleaning crew in their brand new apartment 7 times in 7 days. one afternoon Pete came home to find the apartment absolutely smattered in tiny specks of blue painter's tape. after some careful inquiry his roommate informed him that they were to mark all of the tiniest, seemingly invisible to the naked eye, scuff marks and spots the cleaners had missed. the unbelievable time vacuum of this ridiculous act INSPIRED me. how much time could this dude have saved if instead of reaching for the roll of tape he had grabbed a rag and fracking cleaned it himself?? it's crazy! it's hilarious! so the other day while i was having a conversation with a buddy and unknowingly standing in the middle of one of the trillions of ant beds i've been meaning to eradicate from my yard, the light bulb went off. i should really do something about these ant beds. BUT FIRST i should definitely spend all afternoon locating and carefully marking them because, honestly, i need to learn how to waste time. it's how the other half live.
I love how this makes me think of seen-from-the-air directional signage for a fairy colony...
ReplyDeleteOn another note, it also makes me think of the time I nearly adorned tiny piles of dog poop with miniature flags.
See, some folks who once lived across the hall from me had an incontinent chihuahua, who would poop on the apartment stairs. The dog's owners never once cleaned up the little pieces of evidence... ever.... I was rather miffed, as you might imagine, and brainstormed all kinds of passive-aggressive ways to get revenge (including tiny flags to draw attention to the mess). Eventually, though, I just cleaned up the days-old, maybe weeks-old, poop, complaining all the while.
Also, I love Helen!
love this! and it's not just that the story is laugh out loud hilarious, but the images are quite beautiful and interesting as well. What a fabulous concept!
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