TALL TALES AND SMALL STORIES... URBAN FOLKLORE: 2020

Friday, December 4, 2020

"MAXIME AND FRAU HÖLLE"

Maxime or "Max" as I used to call her, was a flaxen haired, Blue-Ridge-Mountain eyed wild child, a rebel and a renegade, who became a wandering nomad suffering from a severe case of chionomania... she was also an incredibly talented, intellectual, outsider artist who disappeared after a whirlwind global trek from the Piedmont just west of D.C. to the posh Park Avenue area of Manhattan to the Gothic walls of Berlin in Kraut-land and back to Gotham city, before vanishing forever after a curious stint as a tattooed laden manager of a smoke shop and adult "toy" store wedged between thickets of cabbage palms and slash pines on Alligator Alley in the Everglades.

(From a message I received on my answering machine on January the 6th of 1999)...

"Frau Hölle!" that will be my next tattoo!" "Today is her day, so this next tattoo must be of her... is it snowing up there yet?" "She's the goddess of the Nordic fairy tales who brings snow". "You know, the one that I used to talk about all the time... Remember?"
Next tattoo, I thought to myself ... what tattoos? The goddess of snow? Maybe she was famous in Germany and Scandinavia, but I never heard of her in Manhattan before. I sat dumbfounded, as it had been a long time since I had heard from Max and this latest development was rather stupefying. We had been so close for many years but I felt her drifting away (like Frau Hölle's snow?) since she had flown south to Florida to regroup and get herself back together. Frau Hölle had certainly not made an appearance in the deep south of the sunshine state in many decades. So how did Max end up there in the sub tropics after all of her years chasing after and searching for the perfect snowstorm and Lady Hölle? Maxime was so intense about this obsession that it was reminiscent of the little girl and her driven wanderings in the cult film "Spirit of the Beehive"
We must go back to when we first met to tell the tale of "Maxime and the Goddess of Snow". Of course Maxime might not have been her real name and it will remain unknown for many reasons. It's not important anyway... but her ghost story is.

Upper East Side. Manhattan. Winter of 1992

I first saw Maxime on a lush spring day of luminous wispy clouds overhead and lilacs blooming on the side streets of Manhattans upper east side. She was sitting at a bar in a German cafe gazing dreamily at the stiff, meringue like head that sat on top of her tall glass of golden Hefe Weiss Bier, like a snow cap on top of Old Smoky. She touched the meringue cloud gently and said... "You know in Germany it's considered a necessary art... that is achieving the correct head on tapped beer".
"It reminds me of snow, I love snow, there's something so pure, magical and otherworldly about it, like it comes from a distant, winter world in the outer cosmos". "I could never live anywhere where there was no snow, never". That was my introduction to "Max"...

I took a cell pic of an old photo (above) that I had from February of 1997. I always bought disposable cameras back then and took this picture of snow balls that I discovered in Max's freezer by mistake... I was looking for ice.

Max was a talented illustrator working for an advertising firm when I met her. She was also doing her own artwork, "nocturne" style images... always laden with snow. We loved many of the same artists like Charles Burchfield and our personal favorite Henry Darger. Like Maxime, Darger was obsessed with snow and chronicled the winters in Chicago throughout his lifetime. It is also common knowledge that (like Maxime), he was devastated to the state of melancholia over any winters that produced little or no snow... I was charmed by this child like quality in her as I myself loved snow too and was also in my own little world. All I can say is that we bonded instantly. We connected, we just clicked and soon became like brother and sister by the mid nineties.

... And then the time flew by like the wind and sooner or later time forgets all...

The years raced by and so did many lovers, friends, good jobs, bad jobs, times of money, no money and the roller-coaster of life in New York City. Yet, Maxime and I kept in constant contact throughout those seasons of change... until Maxime lost her life long dream of snow and herself. I didn't realize it until after Maxime had already vanished from this world. I turned around one day and she was gone. Her late brother was my only contact and he was not talking to anyone about what really happened to his sister.

"Dream a life, if you can't live your dream"...

That was something that my Maxime would say to me during rough times. I never realized how profound and tragic those words were until Maxime disappeared inside herself a few months after settling for good down in Florida. It seems she had given up on her life long dream of finding the perfect snow storm in a world of winter and building a career of paintings, stories and art on it somehow.
I was sitting in my writers studio, watching television (during a snow storm appropriately) when almost those same exact words that Maxime spoke to me echoed out of my ancient TV set from an old episode of "The Outer Limits" starring legendary Gloria Grahame as one of several lost souls "trapped" in a dream house. Maxime was now trapped in her own dream house many, many miles away from where it ever snows. She vanished from the real world soon after and is only a shadow of herself, spending endless days and nights wandering around the "dream house" with other "dreamers". Just like Gloria Grahame they're all "trapped" inside the house without windows or doors that they can open to escape from it... but escape to where and what? It turns out that those lost souls did not really want to leave that dream house and have to live a life outside of the safety of their fantasy world. It was all pretense and denial. They created that world of no doors and no windows on their own and so had Maxime. So...

"Dream a life, if you can not live your dream".

I lost contact with Maximes brother and believed that he had really disappeared on me on purpose because he wanted nothing to do with that tragedy or past, until by a freak chance I learned that he had died, taking Maximes secrets and where abouts with him forever.
I could never find the "dream house" where she escaped to... All I know is that it is just somewhere where it never snows.

Friday, November 27, 2020

"WEE-WILLA-WINKIE"

Like a forelorn Sentinel of the night of yore, "Willa" haunted the streets of Manhattan....

"I only feel free, truly free when I am out wandering in the middle of the night... anonymous and alone." F.V. Ludwigslust

"Wee-Willamina-Winkie"...

She reminded me of a waterthrush.... a type of solitary, secretive warbler and the way it scurried along the marsh and stream banks back home, just as she scurried along the side streets and alleys of lower Manhattan all night.

Only her legs moved as she rushed... oblviously in circles to nowhere. Willa's head would be tilted stiffly to the right, her shoulders and trunk rigid and both arms swung to one side motionlessly holding plastic bags or such that were slung over her left side. She was a strange mixture of a little lost waif and a sad, aged woman and very reminiscent of Patricia DeCou of the film "The Blair Witch Project". Wee-Willa-Winkie could almost appear to be a child from a distance until she orbited by... and then her long, weary face framed by thick, witchy, brown hair would expose a lost, forgotten soul.

Never a night went by that I didnt see her and yet no one in the area knew her name or where she came from... no one. All of a sudden she appeared out of thin air and was one amongst an often crazy cast of odd characters on that off-off broadway stage in the deep bowels of the city... but hers was a solo show with an audience of none.

It was still my early years in New York and I was a notorious night owl. I could and would often be out at any given time at night as I worked late and would then hit the after hours and secret meeting places with my friends. It was on these nocturnal jaunts that I first noticed Willa. I would see her only in the dead of night and always alone on what appeared to be a routine, orbital path up and down the cement, paved trails that traversed the island. She would frown slightly as she sauntered by me, as if her nightly mission had been invaded by an unwelcome alien.

Was she wandering the neighborhood as a sentinel?... or was she merely searching for something that she would ultimately never find in this life?

She reminded me of a street urchin version of the legendary lamplighter of old urban folklore "Wee-Willie-Winkie". Someone whose destiny was to roam the nights alone forever.

This went on for years until I realized that this poor soul never slept, she just walked the nights away... but why? I puzzled over it for years and still do.

I have the undying curiosity of an alley cat and I have always loved a mystery but that wasnt the only reason that I was fascinated by Willa... it was my similar driving obsession to wander after dark like her, all over... not wanting to ever go home. I longed to be out all night with the Moon, the Stars and... the Meteors.

Photo and story written by Fritz Von Ludwigslust.

November 18, 2020

"BLUE-BONNET"

Oh Blue-bonnet ! Probably one of the saddest stories, that I will write about. Blue-bonnet was another lost, wandering castaway on the island of Manhattan, that came and went like the echoe of a soft whisper in the night. She was another unknown, yet often seen sight in the early morning hours in the city. Blue-bonnet was also another mystery, as none of the locals knew her name or where she had come from originally. She just appeared out of nowhere one day. She was to the sunlit mornings, what ghosts were to the nocturnal world after dark. Unlike the dead spirits of the night, she was a living, breathing ghost that haunted lower Manhattan by day.

I saw Blue-bonnet throughout the 1990's and into recent years, but only in the morning and only in the Spring and Summer. I never saw her during the Autumn or Winter-time.

Blue-bonnet always wore a huge over sized bonnet on her head, with a thick gauze veil over her face, tied down with blue ribbons. She never actually showed her face, in all the years that I saw her. She would always walk with her head down and covered with blue veils, like a bee keepers hat. I remember one of her most unusual accessories... a small, toxic bouquet of bittersweet nightshade blossoms! Other times it would be jimson weed with its ugly, thorn apple like seed pods mixed in with the large, trumpet-like white flowers. She also would hang plastic flowers, odd ornaments and small dolls from her large sombrero-like hat, further obscuring her unseen face.

Noone ever saw her talk to anyone, nor did anyone ever see her go into a store or a shop. She would just drift through the side streets like an aimless cloud looking for odds and ends. Some say that she wandered the streets looking for a lost love, that never really exsisted, which I found incredibly sad. She appeared to be a gentle, frail soul, who had been severely damaged, and so shut herself out from the often cruel world.

Blue-bonnet would pick wild flowers and weeds that she found growing in the old lots of former tenement buildings and sprouting out of cracked pavement and asphalt. Non-toxic ones at times like Dandelions, violets and such. I always felt a deep pang of sorrow whenever I saw her. Some of the locals called her Shrinking Violet. To the best of my knowledge, she was last seen casting toxic, wild flowers onto the Hudson river, on a May day in 2003. I have never seen Blue-bonnet since then.

Blue-Bonnet ...... last seen Hudson River and Canal St. Disappeared...... May of 2003

"SAL THE STOOP OWL"

Sal, Oh Sal... was one of the many lost street spirits that wandered and lingered in our little micro-world in lower Manhattan. Sal always wore a wool suit even in the heat of the summer and carried a walking cane and an old weathered briefcase. He looked like an old office clerk who got lost after work ... like lost for ten years after a binge on skid row. Just like many of the other actors in this novel no one knew where Sal was born, where he grew up, or anything about his past life at all before he turned up in the area, to remain for many years before his passing. It was all just one more typical unanswerable mystery and status quo for the area at that time.

Sal always had a small coffee to go cup and a cigarette in each hand (pall mall filterless). He really looked like a little, chubby, dishevelled Screech Owl with his bushy, tufty brows, and huge blinking eyes. Sal also had a stout round physique and would sleep sitting bent over like a collapsible chair. He looked and sounded like character actor Eugene Pallette or better yet Eric Blore. Everyone in the area knew Sal and he became the little mascot and sentinel of our street. It wasnt long after he appeared that we all grew to love old Sal and his curious but charming habits and ways. Sal also kept a small suitcase with him on which ever stoop he was roosting at, at that moment. He kept changes of clothes, old books, newspapers, writing materials and other personal items in it. I remember seeing Sal at the corner laundromat in only shorts and a t-shirt while washing his wardrobe, which would then be put neatly back into his suitcase.

Sal refused to go to a shelter even in the harshest winter weather and so we would all take turns letting him sleep in our top hallways in make shift beds, during the coldest nights of the year. Unlike most of the other character "actors" in this "blog-book", Sal was always a constant spirit that haunted our street... he never disappeared only to reappear and then disappear again like Alice, Merlin or Cosmos (from my other book blog "Acting Out") and yet, despite this I knew even less about him than any of the other "ghosts" in my novel here. Sal could not seem to remember anything about his own parents or even where he had been born or where he had grown up. He was a charming enigma. I saw him over the years almost daily, until I had to sublet my apartment to take care of a family member in Niagara.

Sadly after almost 10 years of living on our block, poor Sal passed away after a brief illness. I thank the Lord though that Sal left this world in a warm hospital bed, amongst friends. The neighbors even had a memorial for him. It just wasn't the same when I returned that Autumn... our little Owl was gone. Sometimes, late at night especially in the winter, I think I see Sal sitting on someones stairway in the distance but its just an illusion. Many of the locals in the area still believe that the ghost of our little stoop Owl is always haunting our doorways and the corners of our street at night.

Sal ...... passed on dead of winter 2002 last seen ......on a stoop in lower Manhattan