"An Exploration of Intricacies" and Foreword by Finn Verdonk

Foreword
At my school, VCS, we have a triannual, week-long, multigrade trip known as Encounter Week. These weeks cover many themes (sustainable art, the local political sphere, hiking, back-country skiing, etc.) and take place anywhere from right at the school to the North-East Kingdom to Belize to China. I was part of a trip to Peru that was going to take place this May, but alas, ye olde 'Rona struck. In place of Eweek, our school invented Encounter Experiences, a shortened Eweek via everyone's new best friend, Zoom. I participated in a Creative Writing Encounter Experience, and this is one of the pieces I wrote. It was inspired by Edward Gorey's absurd and surrealist stylings, specifically this video: https://vimeo.com/23504205


An Exploration of Intricacies

    Edith wouldn’t have been seen if it wasn’t for the wart.

    She had grown accustomed to the dark must of the closet he kept her in, but she hadn’t grown to enjoy her time among the cobwebs. His Grace, the Duke of Matchbox, would often pass by, smelling of yesterday’s lunch and tomorrow’s umbrellas, but much to Edith’s chagrin, she could only spy a little circle of his waistcoat through the brass keyhole. Eventually, though, Edith grew bold.

    She wanted out and she wanted out now. The trumpets originating from somewhere deep in the air vents had grown difficult to ignore, and besides, the spiders never invited her to their weekly tea parties. Alas, she knew His Grace would never let her out, not unless it was their anniversary, so she would need to escape. She remembered, from the joyous days that their anniversary did come around, that His Grace kept the key braided amongst his uvula. And everyone knew where he kept his uvula.

    She first tried boring the door open. Not with a drill or some sort of awl-like-tool, but with a lengthy and lugubrious recounting of the birth of her most recent child, Bronwyn Pencil Case. Bronwyn wasn’t birthed so much as launched out of her mother’s uterus bedecked in aviator’s goggles and matching helmet. From then on, Bronwyn’s feet— That was as far as she got before the door stopped her and informed her that he was far too old to be bored open by some old wives’ tale. After huffily reminding the door that Bronwyn was, in fact, a very real little girl, and not a figment of her imagination, Edith set about constructing a secondary strategy. Preferably one that involved calisthenics.

    After much internal debate, and another week sans spider-tea-party-invitation, Edith had brewed up her most outlandish plan since her solution to the Suspicious Lack prowling the neighborhood and terrorizing Mrs. Linty-Downtown’s begonias. This new plan was big. It was bold. It was brave. One could say it was large. It put her cat-like reflexes to good use. It stunk vaguely of mothballs, but that was to be expected having been created in the cozy nook between the late Duchess of Matchbox’s ancient fur coats. The plan relied, however, on the cooperation of a certain avian member of His Grace’s circle of friends, so Edith bided her time.

    After one more unbearable week of abysmal arachnidian gossip, the day arrived when His Lordship, Prudence Petticoat Peacock arrived on the Estate of the Duke of Matchbox. It was go time for Edith.

    Now, for a bit of context. His Lordship, Prudence Petticoat Peacock is a bird. A large and rather grandiose bird, but a civilized bird, nonetheless. He wore only the most bespoke tailored suits and the most suede shoes with the curliest tips. He left his bottom half bare as was customary for birds of high aristocracy, and good thing, for he often ruffled up his opulent tailfeathers into their upright, peacock shape. (Yes, in what may have been the ultimate act of vanity and narcissism, His Lordship had gotten his lustrous tail trimmed into the shape of himself. The poor barber tasked with that endeavor came down with a fit of laying after all was said and done. Blamed it on the multitude of feathery particles lodged in his lungs). With his feathers standing at attention, he would wander about the property he was currently occupying, dragging along his trusty grand piano behind him. As His Lordship always said, “One can never know when a concerto might strike.” Strike they often did, and with such frequency that Mrs. Linty-Downtown began to suspect His Lordship was paying a concerto breeder to set them loose on his command.

    Today was no different. His Lordship, Prudence Petticoat Peacock, wore a smart, three-piece, velvet number with color-coordinated top hat. The deep crimson rested deliciously against the jeweled blue of his feathers. His grandest of pianos was rolling obediently a few feet behind him as he walked below the Book Trees with The Duke. Their pages rustled like a smattering of hearty heifers and whispered little blue stories about rats and poor scullery maids and men living in pumpkins and babies. The two Gentlemen—or Gentleman and Gentlebird, rather—engaged in polite conversation, nodding along as the other commented on the weather, both knowing he had mentioned the weather not but five moments before. They talked stalks: which were going up, going down, the greenest ones, the browner ones, the ones with lots of leaves, the ones with those damned thorns that kept scratching up His Grace’s favorite pair of perambulating trousers. Finally, the pair retired inside for a delicate, but sufficiently masculine platter of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

    From Edith’s limited vantage point betwixt gossiping Gladiss Grass-Spider and blabber-mouthed Bessabell Brown-Recluse, she caught an occasional garbled bit of dialogue.

    “...were simply divine,” Lord Peacock was proclaiming when Edith managed to tune out the mudslinging eight-leggeds.

    “I can’t help but agree, Your Lordship. And the way they incorporated those Prisoners of War? Simply above.” His Grace kissed his bundled fingers.

    His Lordship humphed.

    “What?” queried His Grace.

    “I actually found it egregious and rather distasteful. They were only foals for heaven’s sake.”

    “Oh.” The pair fell silent. Even Edith, from within the wardrobe, could tell it was a Most Awkward Silence. This couldn’t have played out better for her. As everyone knows, once a Most Awkward Silence is begun, it can only be ended with an Apology of Utmost Sincerity. And as everyone knows, His Lordship, Prudence Petticoat Peacock, and His Grace, the Duke of Matchbox were both far too toffee-nosed to apologize first. That meant this Most Awkward Silence would drag on. Perfect.

    A while back, Edith had observed that, while it may not have been all that large, the keyhole was the perfect size for her nose to poke through. As of yet, she had only used this lovely fact to catch a whiff of His Grace’s cologne (canvas and teakettles) as he walked by, or even a small aroma of dinner. But now she could use her svelte nose poked through the keyhole as a lure.

    For whom? For whom? I can hear you hungry, greedy audience members crying. Well, as everyone knows, a svelte nose looks nearly identical to a pinky fat, delicious, long worm. And who likes worms? Birds. And who is a bird? His Lordship, Prudence Petticoat Peacock.

To Be Continued...
Perhaps, we'll see.

Catch Up Post #3: Food

While this time has been challenging for us in some ways, mostly we feel lucky: We are still employed, we are healthy, we were able to stay home when the virus seemed all over the community. While I always feel bad saying this, there are also so many things that I have truly enjoyed—family time, not racing around trying to get my kids places, not worrying about what to wear to work!!  I also have had time to cook more—nothing fancy, but we have certainly branched out.  Finn has been baking quite a bit too.  He has made an amazing coffee cake a couple times, we made s’more cups, and potatoes over the fire.  Enchiladas!  Indian food!  Latkes!  The pizzas have gotten much better.  And last Finn made amazing baked mac and cheese.  In our previous life, my bar was pretty low: I tried to keep it healthy, and I made sure there were protein and vegetables.  It has been fun to find the time to try some new things.

Catch Up Post #2: Easter

We decided to go all out for Easter—it felt important to somehow distinguish this day from the day before and the day after (even thought Easter was not really otherwise a big deal for us).  We all dressed up, and we had ham, fancy rolls, and fancy drinks.  The Easter bunny came, with weird treats from Amazon as well as normal treats because we discovered Snowflake Chocolates had a curbside option!!

Catch Up #1: Continuing to find ways to entertain ourselves

Ooof.  I guess it has been a while!  Distance learning (or, more accurately for me, distance teaching) took up more time than I anticipated.  And as we adjusted to quarantine living, our “new normal” became, well, normal—so much so that I forgot I should be documenting this time in history.

While I am going to (hopefully) post a few things from the last month, we are right now experiencing quite a loosening of quarantine rules.  This began on April 17 and continued as VT didn’t quite see a spike in cases.  While so far, things seem to be going well (and I actually went INSIDE a store for the first time in two months), I am right there with Health Commissioner Mark Levine that we need to be careful of complacency.

While we have been getting out more, and there may be some kids’ activities starting up, we have still had to be creative to stay entertained.  I am going to steal from Facebook for this example:

My kids aren’t particularly compatible when it comes to playing outside, so we created a game that combines creativity and athleticism. It is a badminton/volleyball/tennis/racquetball mashup. But here’s the kicker: Anyone who was 5 points ahead received a new racquet, including (but not limited to) a crock, a sprinkler, and a yoga ball. Both players received a new racquet if there was a 10-10 tie. Feel free to suggest a name for this game. It was a huge hit!

We even had a tournament with friends, complete with a winners bracket and a consolation round. There were even prizes that were given away Yankee Swap style. While rules were loosening at this point, I still made everyone sanitize their hands and the ball all the time!

Oh, and we also joined the puzzle craze: