Why Do I Blog?

People ask me why is it that I blog. Sure it's some part of an ego thing, but mostly it's because I feel some sense of keeping my self history alive, a little bit of immortality. Writing a chapter in my autobiography, posting my feelings, remembering the past. Easier than writing a manuscript and sending it away to some editor who will in the end reject it for it's narrow appeal.

When I re-read the post of my mother or father or of my dogs, it always stirs those memories long forgotten and makes them alive and real again.

Like the time we bought a 2 story Victorian house in San Francisco. We had been looking to buy a house for a while when one day a painter, in his painter overalls came to our cafe to buy a latte. I asked him where he was painting and he said he was painting his house to sell. Where? I ask. Down the block he says. Excitedly I call my realtor and tell him we have to see this house, and it's not even listed yet! Back then it was bidding wars to find a real deal and this I felt was the real deal. We see the house that evening. The house was a semi-ruin, but I was smitten. Never mind that the first layer of plaster had been scraped off giving it that rustic Tuscan feel. Never mind that it didn't have sheet rock in the kitchen, just bare studs and a non existent kitchen, never mind that the banister was gone so that one could plunge to their death from the second floor, never mind that the two fireplace mantles had been taken off and not replaced (the painter said that he took them to his house in Minnesota, nothing like raping a beautiful Victorian), and never mind that the parquet on the floor had lost it's glorious luster. I was in love and knew with that gut feeling that this was it. Oh by the way, the bottom flat was in pretty good shape and was rented out. Of course we had to jump through so many hoops to get the lender to approve the loan, like going to Home Depot and fabricating a mock kitchen, lenders won't lend on a property that is not livable. We got the house in the end.

After moving in and the tenants downstairs moved out, my partner in the cafe moved in with his boyfriend (this is San Francisco). The house, a two unit flat built 100 years ago started to act funny. Yeah you heard me, act funny. The house was before the Great Earthquake used to be a girl's boarding school. After the Great Earthquake, the city gave tax breaks to convert stately houses into units, which happened to our house. Unfortunately, they split the house right down the middle and created what they would eventually call a railroad house, long and narrow, but still had it's charm.

But getting back to that acting funny part. I believe that strange occurrences starting happening because the house reached it's hundred year mark. Now, I'm usually a doubting Thomas always more scientific than religious , but the stuff we lived through was thoroughly real.

Take the time when I came home, the red light blinking on the phone showing that there was a message on the machine. I played the message only there was no one there, only a recording of our voices in the cafe. I could hear the conversation we had that morning in the cafe, but I could also hear some weird strange One Step Beyond cello music playing in the back ground. This message went on for 15 minutes, strange since my phone messages only held about a 2 minute recording time per message. I had the phone company check it out. They said that the call came from inside the house. This made the hairs on my arms raise. At Christmas, the guys downstairs left the state for the holidays. We stayed home. One evening we heard the piano playing downstairs, Morzart's 9th Symphony (I know this, it's one of my favorites) and you could hear it really clear from our upstairs bathroom since that is where the grand piano was positioned below. We listened to the music with increasing horror. Hey remember there was no one home downstairs. Even my husband, who is the greatest Doubting Thomas ever, was shocked. We both ran downstairs and out the front. We pressed our ears to their door. The music continued to play, loud and melodic. We quietly inserted our key into the lock, twisted the lock and silently pressed the door open. I could still hear the music playing loudly and from in there, and then when we swung open the door, the music abruptly stopped. I pushed my husband through (he's the man for heaven's sake), I walked behind him. We checkout the salon (as they liked to called it) the front family room and there was the grand piano, silent, mockingly still, mysterious and in the air a sheet of music floating to the ground, Mozart's 9th.
And that is why I blog, to remember those weird and sometimes wonderfully mysterious things that happen in life.