Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

On Sunday night, we lost power for upwards of seven hours, so while The Gryphon was in town for his gaming session with PAGE (Philadelphia Area Gaming Enthusiasts), I read the entire Found book by a flashlight.

The book was put together by the editors of Found magazine, who share my penchant for found objects. I contributed one item to their collection and will probably contribute more in the future.

Perhaps because it was on my mind, I found a couple objects today, which I'll share. Tomorrow I hope to have time to do a write-up of the awesome Fourth of July party that The White Rabbit had at his place.

The first item is a sticker that I found folded up, advertising a site called BloodyWallofGore.com. It's not nearly as bad as it sounds. It's a resource site for punk clothing, music and miscellaneous services. This is pretty much actual size.

The second object was a photo that I found in the Salvation Army store while looking for a chair to replace the broke-down one we've finally agreed to discard. Sitting on the seat of a mustard yellow upholstered rocker was a photograph of 15 golfers, apparently taken after a round of golf, since one of them is visibly sweaty.

A few of them look like they could be related, but there's no information on the photo, other than the date that it was taken, August 15, 2004, which happens to be the same day someone had it developed at Wal-Mart.

The photo had a dusty piece of tape at the top center of the photo, with the sticky side facing forward, as if it had been hanging from the back of a photo. But although there was some framed artwork on the wall behind the chair, they were all for sale, and I couldn't imagine that somehow the photo would have remained stuck to any painting that had been donated and that, furthermore, the store employee would have allowed it to remain on the photo when displaying it for sale.

Instead, I'm guessing that it had fallen off into the crevice of a piece of furniture and someone trying out a chair found it and then placed it on the seat of a chair, as if the owner would find it and retrieve it.

Ironically, just as I was about to post this yesterday, we lost power again. Frustrated and with nothing better to do, I took Una on another walk, where I found two more items.

The first was a flyer for so-called "slumber party" gear. Since I found it near an elementary school, I initially didn't think too much about it. Then I looked more carefully and figured out they were selling an entirely different type of "toy".

And finally, about a block later, I found a note that seems to be from two separate people. The first one writes, "Noreen Nak Mai's going to Ming Nak house. If you want now. OK. Love Nak Mai."

Then, underneath a line, it reads, "Daddy — I went to Ming Nak's House. Love, Noreen."

At least, that's what it appears to read. Not certain why there are so many Naks mentioned in this note. Perhaps they're all related. Or maybe it's some sort of junior high code language.

And thus endeth a day of found goodness.

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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