Funny how things sometimes arrange themselves. Like here, where a print of two pages (I presume), wearing ruffled jackets tinged blue and white fills a niche in the living room bookcase. The bisque bust of a boy (tinged blue and white and of more or less the same era or epoch or at least millennium) sitting in front magically arrived in this position, as if both were meant to be just so juxtaposed. As if he crawled into a niche in my brain and said, "Carry me forth to reside beside mine bros!" And so I did.
He's only allowed to visit though, since the picture neatly covers the TV and needs to be moved so we can watch the news or So You Think You Can Dance and whatnot. This would then require moving the bust as well, and he is ridiculously fragile, and absolutely living in the wrong house (this, what I'm typing now, is one big aside. Completely off topic, as these things go) along with many other treacherously delicate objects that sometimes I wish would be reduced to crumbs by some earth event, preferably when we were off frolicking (ah, there's a picture) elsewhere.
The boy and his sister, who lives in Palm Beach with MY sister, once sat in various parental niches in our several childhood homes, one on each side of some this or that. I never touched either of them -- I didn't even dare to breathe within ten feet of them. My mother, who was rather easy going about most things, did an outstanding job of instilling fear.
One of the most terrifying moments of my life -- right up there with the aneurysm -- was the day she asked me to bring them into the kitchen so she could clean them.
I was thirty.
The picture of the pages was acquired at an estate sale five-six years ago or maybe ten. It was an unlikely purchase, since I have no interest in the subject and blue is not my color, but they were adamant about coming home with me so I sighed and wrote a check (it was definitely a time when checks were still being written).
This steel engraving, La Via Appea, it's called, is another parentally provided item. The picture's elaborately unappealing motif features half-naked slaves dancing alongside carriages bearing noblepersons of an extremely white persuasion.
