Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

8:58 a.m. - 2004-12-03
Gargoyle House
Not far from the bookstore is an old neighborhood that used to be very rich (sort of Tycoon Acres...big estates), then it was just average rich for a while, and now it's a mix of private homes and rentals. I like walking around there...lots of huge old trees and the remains of what used to be stone walls and guardhouses or maybe the gardener's cottage and every once in a while a stone pillar just standing by itself. Some of the homes are beautiful, some are kind of run down, and in some spots the woods have grown back and taken over...

About ten years ago somebody started building a private dream house, this huge three storey stone monstrosity with lots of balconies, stained glass windows, outside lights designed to look like torches, and even stone gargoyles crouched on the edges of the balconies. Apparently the owner worked in something to do with the building trades, and he was caught stealing materials to use on his house. "Hey, anybody seen that gargoyle I left over by the wheelbarrow? Anybody seen the wheelbarrow?" So the guy ends up in jail and his house sits there unoccupied for several years...too expensive for anybody to want to buy in that neighborhood...until finally some company buys it and breaks it up into apartments.

Sometimes ideas become obsessions with me...It's one of the things that makes me quirky and fun to be around. So lately I'm obsessed with getting inside the gargoyle house. I certainly need to find out what kind of wallpaper is there, and how the rooms are laid out, and are there little built in statues...What if every apartment has its own fireplace? There might be marble tiled floors, or parquet, or expensive carpets thick as quicksand...huge chandeliers, spooky chiaroscuro paintings.

I can't afford to live there myself, but maybe I could find out if some maid service cleans there. Or maybe I could become friends with someone who lives there, and they would ask me in for tea or whatever. I like that neighborhood anyway, so now I'm going for walks there during my lunch break and after work. I take my sketch diary because the neighborhood is visually interesting anyway...but my real motive is to find out more about the gargoyle house.

 

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!