Mysterious windows

One of my favorite books of all time is Time and Again by Jack Finney.  (He’s the guy who wrote Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by the way.)   Time and Again is a science-fictionish historical mystery set in New York City.  I say “science-fictionish” because it’s set in both 1970 and 1882.

My very well-loved copy of one of my very favorite books.

Finney set up a compelling time-travel approach: you can take any structure or locale that has remained unaltered and use it as a way of going back to an earlier time during its existence.  Time travelers must first immerse themselves in the everyday life of their destination era—the culture, current events, attitude, etc—as a way of “loosening” the mind’s ties to the current day.  Finney used the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan as a portal between 1970 and 1882.  The way it’s explained in the book, you can almost believe it could work.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about other places that would serve as appropriate portals.  I could use the Empire State Building to go to 1931.  The Brooklyn Bridge could take me to 1883.  Certain historic houses could get me as far back as the 1650s and 1660s.  You get the idea.

My favorite part of the story is when the protagonist, Si Morley, arrives in 1882.  He boards a Fifth Avenue coach and looks at another passenger:

…I sat watching him from the corner of my eye, tense, excited, almost frightened at my first really close look at a living human being of the year 1882….This was no motionless brown-and-white face in an ancient photograph….There he sat, a living breathing man with those memories in his head.

I still remember when I first read these lines.  I had goosebumps.  Because I get this.  I so get this.  It’s not about witnessing a historic event or meeting a famous historical figure.  It’s about being a part of that time, even briefly.  Like when you first visit another country:  “Look!  Actual Italians/Indians/Australians/Peruvians!  And this stuff looks just like in the photos!  Hey, they really talk like that!”  Except you would be visiting, say, 1862:  “Hey, Lincoln is president and right now they’re all living through everything I’ve read about!!”  It would blow my mind to see and interact with 19th-century people as live, Technicolor humans and not as static black and white relics.  To walk through streets with the old buildings when they were brand new.  And before they were torn down.

If you’ve read this or this, you know I’ve had some strange experiences with people who are no longer with us in corporeal form.  I’ve freaked out a few of you (you know who you are) by being able to sense things without your telling me.  So I wasn’t surprised when something else peculiar happened a few months ago…

I was on a train in New Jersey.  We were about to stop in Newark—the tracks go over the Passaic River and into the station.  I was looking out the window as the train passed over the railroad bridge. For a second or so, I saw the scene not as it is now, but as it might have looked in the 1830s or 1840s.  It was fleeting but I remember it vividly.  Lots of trees, low small buildings and houses, and boats.  What I recall most distinctly is a mill with a waterwheel near the bridge.  When I got home I looked for lithographs or maps of the area during that time, but no dice.  If I did a thorough archival search I might find some but it doesn’t seem worth the effort.  Maybe I imagined the whole thing, maybe I didn’t.  I’ll probably never know.

All I know is, I hope it happens again and that I’ll be able to verify it.  I would love nothing more than to peek through one of those mysterious windows of time again.  Until then, maybe I’ll entertain myself by thinking of going to Flushing Meadows Park to see the 1939 World’s Fair.

I haven’t checked the Almanac yet today…

. . . but I’m fairly certain that Hell has, in fact, frozen over.

I was informed today that There’s something about Mr. Weebles is going to be Freshly Pressed.

It’s too bad they didn’t choose Hey, nice rack or one of my Fuck You posts, but I guess WordPress has higher standards than I do.

Weird happenings in the House of Weebles

As many of you know, I’ve heard dead people.  I’ve heard them here, here, and also here.

So now I’d like to tell you about some of the peculiar occurrences in the Weebles house that didn’t involve hearing the voices of disembodied people.  These have all involved electronic devices of some sort.

It started last summer.  One day I came home from running errands and went into the bedroom.  I turned on the light but it didn’t go on.  I figured the bulb had burned out so I put in a new bulb.  Still, no light.  WTF?  It had worked fine that morning.

I figured maybe there was a problem with the outlet.  I went to unplug the lamp so I could try it in another outlet, but that’s when I saw that the lamp was already unplugged.  It hadn’t been unplugged that morning.  And it’s not as if the cats could have knocked it out; the plug fit too snugly in the socket for that.  Whatever, I plugged the lamp back in and that was that.

Until the next day.  The television was on and I was puttering around the house.  I had my back turned to the television when I heard it turn off and then back on again.  I was nowhere near the remote control, nor were the cats.  And there was no evidence that the cable box had reset itself like it sometimes does.

Things were calm for several weeks after that.  Then one night we were sitting in the living room and our Roomba suddenly turned on.  Again, no cats nearby.  Mr. Weebles checked it out and everything seemed to be fine.  No obvious reason it should have switched on.

A few weeks later, I was in bed reading before going to sleep.  When I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, I saw that the bathroom light was on.  I know for a fact that the bathroom light was off when we went to bed that night.  And once again, it wasn’t something one of the cats could have done.

Other electronic oddities: Once, while I was watching television, the channel changed by itself.  Nobody was near the remote.  And twice, random apps on my phone mysteriously started up while the phone was sitting on the table next to me.

But my favorite was when I found my laptop and mouse neatly set up on the coffee table one morning.  I had left everything in disarray the night before because I was really tired—I just plopped the laptop, mouse, and all the cords on the table in a pile and went to bed.

These events occurred over the span of a few months.  And just as abruptly as they started, they stopped.  We haven’t had any further activity since last fall.

To this day I have no idea what it was all about.  I never felt a strange presence in the house during those times, never had the feeling someone was there.  I was more amused than creeped out by these strange happenings, but Mr. Weebles wasn’t quite so amused.  He’s glad things are back to normal, but I have to admit that I kind of miss it.

Get those disgusting holes away from me

Hello.  My name is Madame Weebles and I’m a trypophobic.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of you haven’t heard of trypophobia.  It isn’t one of those phobias that everyone knows about, like claustrophobia or acrophobia.  But it’s real.  Peculiar, but real.  Google it.  You’ll see.

Trypophobia is basically a fear of holes.  Or, more accurately, it’s an extreme aversion to holes.  Or clusters of holes.  Or other clusters of things clumped together.  It’s hard to explain.  Things like honeycombs.  Cracked earth.  Spores.  Seed pods.  Wasp nests.  Holey cheeses.  Closeup images of pores or cells.  Clusters of alien eggs in horror and science fiction movies.  The bubbles that form on the top of pancake batter as the pancakes start to cook.

I’m not just saying that these things gross me out or that I hate looking at them. It’s waaaayyy beyond that. I’m saying that they affect me on a visceral level.  I get physically and mentally repulsed.  I get angry.  I panic and squirm.  I feel nauseated.  I desperately want to flee and wash off all the cooties.

This isn’t something that affects me on a daily basis, fortunately.  If I were a beekeeper I would have a big problem with all those honeycombs, but ordinarily I can go about my days happily, free from offending visuals.  Although every once in a while a television show will sneak in a honeycomb or cracked earth or some other nasty hole-riddled item and I have to close my eyes.  And I have to prepare myself when I watch movies because you never know when they’re going to show some sort of pods or insect sacs or vampire eggs or something.  But I can safely watch cheese commercials because I’m okay with most cheeses.  Most.

This cheese does not upset me.

Yeah, I know, it sounds strange and silly. But hey, if you’re going to have a fear/intense aversion to something, it may as well have some comedy value.

I didn’t even know it was an actual thing until a few years ago.  I assumed it was just my own personal weirdness. Then Mr. Weebles found an article about trypophobia on the Internet—he showed it to me and said, “I think this is what you have.” And sure enough, that was it.  After years of getting wigged out by all kinds of dots and holes, I finally learned that my weirdness had a name!

Nobody really knows what causes trypophobia or why these images trigger this reaction in some people.  There seems to be a genetic component to it because it tends to run in families.  My mother has it too, and I didn’t even know it until I mentioned it in passing several years ago and she said she had the same problem. There are theories that it involves genetic memory—a primitive, instinctive understanding that things with holes can indicate decay, disease, or danger, and should be avoided.  But I don’t know that this sufficiently explains such an intense revulsion.

If you want to have some fun, do an image search for “lotus seed pod” or “Surinam toad.” But be warned: they’re really disgusting, even to a lot of people who don’t generally have an issue with this type of stuff.  But just the idea of them is making me sick and creeped out right now.  It makes me wish I could scrape my retinas to rid myself of those images forever.  Unfortunately, I will always have pod- and toad-related flashbacks.  Those horrific little fuckers will haunt me until the day I die.

Okay, I have to go and throw up now.