An Inspiration

[learnteach]

...He lived in a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest of elms and oaks and maples. It was a house whose gutter spouts were worked into the shape of whistling sphinxes and screaming bearded faces; a house whose white wooden porch was decorated with carved bears, monkeys, toads, and fat women in togas holding sheaves of grain; a house whose steep gray-slate roof was capped with a glass enclosed, twisty-copper-columned observatory. On the artichoke dome of the observatory was a weather vane shaped like a dancing hippopotamus; as the wind changed, it blew through the nostrils of the hippo's hollow head, making a whiny snarfling noise sound that fortunately could not be heard unless you were up on roof fixing slates.

Inside the house were such things as trouble antique dealer's dreams: ...

********

I think this influenced me at an early age. "The Face in the Frost", John Bellairs.

My weathervane is whales, thanks to my brothers. It doesn't snurfle.

Comments

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Ooh... I never read that one but I *did* love House With The Clock In Its Walls.

Regarding your weathervane

[shutt3rg33k.livejournal.com]

Well, it should!

Thank you for the offer of dinner last night and I apologize for not confirming or denying. I plead not tracking headspace. I didn't go to class, and it's just as well; I would have gotten the call right in the middle.

*hugs*

[norsebiker43.livejournal.com]

Please tell me I did not miss a performance of the dancing whales!??!?
I will truely be vaclemph (sp) if I did.

B

[razor-dancer.livejournal.com]

I love Bellairs, but I've never read that one - read all of his kids books when I was younger (and reread them on occasion). You've given me something new to read by an author I like, and for that I thank you profoundly!

[kareina.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of Bellairs, but, someday, when the thesis is done and I once again make time to do reading for pleasure that isn't my friend's life updates here or on facebook, I think I'll need to seek him out. The picture painted above is... vivid.