Anniversary, pt. 4: House on the Rock, Wisconsin
How long will these anniversary postings continue, you ask? I promise this will be the last one of the year.
Many thanks to my grandparents for the card they sent us, and for the cash, which this month was sorely needed.
Speaking of anniversaries: Martin’s parents recently had their fortieth. At their banquet, they inquired about me (Martin said). They told Martin they wished to take me out to dine again some day. (When I lived with Martin & Mary, I used to tag along whenever Martin’s parents would dine with M&M.)
It warms my heart to know how gratifying it is for people to take me out to dine.
I should say something about the House on the Rock, our last stop in Wisconsin. Touring it is like walking for three hours through the strangest passages of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.
It has Japanese gardens.
It has musical instruments that play themselves.
It has gigantic machines: steamship engines, train engines, music machines, Rube Goldberg machines, machines that do who really knows what.
It has thousands of carrousel beasts: hybrids of all forms, originating in mythology and in nightmare.
It has a room in which a gigantic whale – part sperm whale, part killer whale, part various other whales – battles a gigantic squid.
It has at least two gift shops. The postcards sold in these gift shops convey the merest hint of the weirdness, the overwhelmingness, of the whole complex. On the tour, strange artifacts are piled up all around you, and there is nothing to do but to follow the path, follow the path, until at the end you come out into the light. Then, in one last garden, there are kittens: extra-friendly ones begging to be scratched.
Many thanks to my grandparents for the card they sent us, and for the cash, which this month was sorely needed.
Speaking of anniversaries: Martin’s parents recently had their fortieth. At their banquet, they inquired about me (Martin said). They told Martin they wished to take me out to dine again some day. (When I lived with Martin & Mary, I used to tag along whenever Martin’s parents would dine with M&M.)
It warms my heart to know how gratifying it is for people to take me out to dine.
I should say something about the House on the Rock, our last stop in Wisconsin. Touring it is like walking for three hours through the strangest passages of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.
It has Japanese gardens.
It has musical instruments that play themselves.
It has gigantic machines: steamship engines, train engines, music machines, Rube Goldberg machines, machines that do who really knows what.
It has thousands of carrousel beasts: hybrids of all forms, originating in mythology and in nightmare.
It has a room in which a gigantic whale – part sperm whale, part killer whale, part various other whales – battles a gigantic squid.
It has at least two gift shops. The postcards sold in these gift shops convey the merest hint of the weirdness, the overwhelmingness, of the whole complex. On the tour, strange artifacts are piled up all around you, and there is nothing to do but to follow the path, follow the path, until at the end you come out into the light. Then, in one last garden, there are kittens: extra-friendly ones begging to be scratched.