It's been a summer of massive change for your seldom-blogging pal CoKane. I moved again. This time it's just myself and Miss Addie the dog. Yeaaah. That's all that will be said on that topic for now.
On to my new rural existence! This undated historic photo of a dairy farm in South Jersey shows the old farmhouse where I live now.
This detail shows the house, before it had its current wraparound porch, and when it had more old trees.
The current property is big but smaller than the vast expanse shown in the photo, and still has the rear-most old tree by the house, which hundreds of years old. The circumference on this mighty wonder is 17-1/2 feet, when I went around it with a tape measure.
Here's another historic photo of the place.
Presumably that coveralled gent is Louis, the former man of the house, whose wife was Edna. (Apologies for the lacking artistry of this photo-of-a-photo, I had a lot going on when I took this. I could re-shoot but it's since been down off the wall anticipating painting. File under not giving a fuck, and also saying fuck a lot more.)
It's been the most difficult period of my life but I can't write here about most of my current and recent past events. I can barely concentrate enough to *read* anything non-essential other than traffic signs or directions on an Amy's microwave burrito. But hopefully I'm past the worst of it. And I have gotten really good at sitting on the porch listening to crickets and watching the butterflies and later the sun drain out of the day and the mourning doves on the telephone wires and ater the lightning bugs.
I can tell you I'm all about taking care of CoKane. There is something going on called Viking Summer. It's like YOLO, but Viking. And it will end in a burning ship.
What else can I tell you? I basically moved into a creepy old abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. Maybe not too surprising, if you have followed anything I've written ever. It has a lot of morbid decor, like taxidermy and assorted skulls and teeth and feathers of animals found on the property. But it's not all that creepy, despite the fact that it was vacant and in bad shape when I started working on it through July to move in in August.
The giant tree is a benevolent presence. It has owls living in it which I can hear going "who-who-whowhoo" right outside my bedroom if I'm awake at their hours. And there's so much more nature than that. It's The Country. So much nicer than waking up to insistent honking horns, as I did every day in stupid jerk Jersey City Heights.
This is not how I envisioned ending up in the country, but I have always wanted to live in the country. It's the perfect scenario for now to process and reset, but it's just lonely at night. However, I am about 20 minutes from Philly and I'll be making fairly regular trips back to the NYC area.
It's perfect here for writing. I will have to work a lot harder to find excuses not to write, such as discovering new examples to photograph of what I am tagging #SouthernJerseyGothic on Instagram. In fact, the best way to keep up is to follow me on Instagram at @colleenkane. Captioning photos vs. writing blog posts is about my speed lately. In fact, I encourage you to follow that link for more scenes from the farm and pretend I posted those photos here, because now I have to go work on the garden since all these asshole wildlifes keep chowing down on my personal food plants.
Oh just one thing I noticed about country life: people here think you have to wear special athletic outfits with neon colors in order to walk down the street. "I am exercising," these outfits say.
Another observation is that South Jersey is The South of New Jersey. I have moved back down south again! And that means prowling around more abandoned buildings. It has begun.
Bye for now, and if you're a friend, come on by to hang on the porch.
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