BS: Strange old woman in my house...

Subject: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:46 AM

Send this to all your friends!

Stranger In My Mirror
© Rose Madeline Mula

Please be careful. This person has found her way into my house and could also get into yours.

A very weird thing has happened. A strange old lady has moved into my house. I have no idea who she is, where she came from, or how she got in. I certainly did not invite her. All I know is that one day she wasn't there, and the next day she was.

She is a clever old lady and manages to keep out of sight for the most part, but whenever I pass a mirror I catch a glimpse of her. And, whenever I look in the mirror to check my appearance, there she is hogging the whole thing, completely, obliterating my gorgeous face and body. This is very rude! I have tried screaming at her, but she just screams back. The least she could do is offer to pay part of the rent, but no.

Every once in a while, I find a dollar bill stuck in a coat pocket, or some loose change under a sofa cushion, but it is not nearly enough. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I think she is stealing money from me. I go to the ATM and withdraw $100, and a few days later, it's all gone!

I certainly don't spend money THAT fast, so I can only conclude the old lady is pilfering from me. You'd think she would spent some of that money to buy wrinkle cream.

And money isn't the only thing I think she is stealing. Food seems to disappear at an alarming rate-especially the good stuff like ice cream, cookies and candy. She must have a real sweet tooth, but she'd better watch it, because she is really packing on the pounds.

I suspect she realizes this, and to make herself feel better, she is tampering with my scale to make me think I am putting on weight too.

For an old lady, she is quite childish. She likes to play nasty games, like going into my closets when I'm not home and altering my clothes so they don't fit.

And she messes with files and papers so I can't find anything. This is particularly annoying since I am extremely neat and organized.

She has found other imaginative ways to annoy me. She gets into my mail, newspapers and magazines before I do and blurs the print so I can't read it.

And she has done something really sinister to the volume controls on my TV, radio and telephone. Now, all I hear are mumbles and whispers.

She has done other things - like make my stairs steeper, my vacuum heavier and all the knobs and faucets harder to turn. She even made my bed higher so that getting into and out of it is a real challenge.

Lately, she has been fooling with my groceries before I put them away, applying glue to the lids, making it almost impossible for me to open the jars.

She has taken the fun out of shopping for clothes. When I try something on, she stands in front of the dressing room mirror and monopolizes it. She looks totally ridiculous in some of those outfits, plus she keeps me from seeing how great they look on me.

Just when I thought she couldn't get any meaner, she proved me wrong. She came along when I went to get my picture taken for my driver's license and just as the camera shutter clicked, she jumped in front of me.

I hope she never finds out where you live. I really do!

Subject: Lyr Add: LIES (Stan Rogers)
From: Emma B
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:27 AM

Lies by the late great Stan Rogers


LIES
(Stan Rogers)
AS recorded by Stan Rogers on "Northwest Passage" (1981)

1. At last, the kids are gone now for the day.
She reaches for the coffee as the school bus pulls away.
Another day to tend the house and plan
For Friday at the Legion when she's dancing with her man.
Sure was a bitter winter but Friday will be fine,
And maybe last year's Easter dress will serve her one more time.
She'd pass for twenty-nine but for her eyes.
But winter lines are telling wicked lies.

CHORUS: Oh, lies--
All those lines are telling wicked lies.
Lies, all lies.
Too many lines there in that face;
Too many to erase or to disguise;
They must be telling lies.

2. Is this the face that won for her the man
Whose amazed and clumsy fingers put that ring upon her hand?
No need to search that mirror for the years.
The menace in their message shouts across the blur of tears.
So this is Beauty's finish. Like Rodin's "Belle Heaulmière",
The pretty maiden trapped inside the ranch wife's toil and care.
Well, after seven kids, that's no surprise,
But why cannot her mirror tell her lies? CHORUS

3. Then she shakes off the bitter web she wove,
And turns to set the mirror, gently, face down by the stove.
She gathers up her apron in her hand,
Pours a cup of coffee, drips Carnation from the can,
And thinks ahead to Friday, 'cause Friday will be fine!
She'll look up in that weathered face that loves hers, line for line,
To see that maiden shining in his eyes
And laugh at how her mirror tells her lies. CHORUS

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:44 AM

"Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist -- a master -- and that is what Auguste Rodin was -- can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.... Growing old doesn't matter to [men]; we were never meant to be admired -- but it does to [women]."
                                              — Robert A. Heinlein

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:47 AM

Typo alert: "protray" should be "portray".

Also, I should have mentioned that the Heinlein quote is pulled from Stranger in a Strange Land.

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: jacqui.c
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 07:54 AM

That's a wonderful quote Sharon. How true.

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SINSULL
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 08:12 AM

At the outset of Alzheimer's, my Aunt Mid (not really an aunt) started complaining about a woman in her house. After several visits to confront this woman and figure out how she had managed to move into her mother's house, Mid's daughter realized that her mother was arguing with her own reflection in a mirror.

You either laugh or cry...

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:21 AM

Thanks, Jacqui. When I read Foolestroupe's and Emma's posts, that snippet from Stranger came to mind. I read the book over 3 decades ago, but I was an art major in college at the time, and Rodin is one of my all-time faves, so that line has stayed with me.

Lucky for me, the Rodin Museum is in Philadelphia PA and I live nearby, so I have visited and seen that statue many times. Here's a picture with some info about it: a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rodn/ho_11.173.3.htm">Rodin's "The Old Courtesan"

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:23 AM

Let's try that link again: Rodin's "The Old Courtesan" (also poignantly titled: "She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife")

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:45 AM

This is a better page -- from the Rodin Museum itself -- showing four views of the statue: www.rodinmuseum.org/collection/103397.html. Especially dramatic, I think, is the position of the right arm and outspread hand behind her back -- a gesture that clearly says, "There's no point in covering my breasts with my arms in modesty because there's too much else I want to hide in despair but can't, so stop staring at me and just go away."

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:11 AM

from another site... where she is called "She who used to be the beautiful heaulmière". (Which is what Heinlein called her)

I know one like her, but who does not seem so ..reconciled...*smile*....and who is still living. (as of last November.) I hope to see her again about Thanksgiving.

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: topical tom
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:25 AM

Laugh or cry? "I Just Don't Look Good Naked Any More".

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 12:06 PM

Topical Tom: Easy to laugh if it's a man singing, but if a woman is singing that song it's more poignant...

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 12:22 PM

The mother of my sister-in-law developed Parkinson's. Late in life, she could not recognize her own reflection in a mirror. If she saw herself, she was afraid. So there were no mirrors in her little suite at the care center.

And yet, when we visited, our conversations were intelligent and pleasant. She remembered me, whom she hadn't seen for 25 years. So don't give up on a person just because one part of the brain is damaged.
======
One day my own mother, who about 75, said, "Inside of me, I am not the old woman I see in the mirror. Inside of me there is an 18-year-old girl." So when we went out to eat, we chose the places with the cutest waiters so we could be boy crazy again.

Parents - enjoy them while you can.

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:49 PM

Bill D: As stated on the first page I linked, the French title (or one of them) is Celle qui fut la belle heaulmière. I can't find a website that can translate the word heaulmière but it's taken from a 15th-century poem -- I'm guessing that this word has fallen out of use now (how many helmet makers are still out there, much less their wives?) but I am assuming that the various art museums are correct and that it did mean "helmet maker's wife" in English.

The Met website also says of the statue: "In the Paris Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890, it was called simply Old Woman (Vielle femme), suggesting that both titles, The Old Courtesan and She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife, may have been fanciful afterthoughts."

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:09 PM

Oh Cripes, now I'm feeling guilty!

I thought it was the kids who were sticking pictures of an old lady on the mirror!

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:24 PM

Sharon...yes, there seem to have been many 'titles' for the sculpture adapted according to who needed to convey what sense.

No matter...it is a beautiful and important work, and I have wished I had a copy.

As is "Caryatid who has fallen under her stone"

Now I need to go read Heinlein again...

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: SharonA
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:34 PM

Bill: Yeahhhhhh! The Caryatid is my favorite!!! Heinlein's paragraph about her puts me in mind of what the heroes of 9/11 went through... :-(

IMO Rodin was a freakin' genius. Pictures don't do justice to his art; there's nothing like seeing it in person. For anyone contemplating a trip to Philly, the Rodin Museum is a must-see (right down the parkway from the Art Museum steps made famous by the Rocky movie)... but read up on Rodin first to appreciate your visit more fully.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled thread subject!

Subject: RE: BS: Strange old woman in my house...
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:57 PM

(there is at least one Rodin down at the Hirshhorn on the Mall...I haven't been there in years.)