I’m finding it odd to notice how right at home I am beginning to feel and how Annie is not. I think it may in part be the work of Uncle Julius. He seems to make her rethink the smallest attributes of our new home, calling into question, it seems, her right to enjoy our own space.

The kitchen she wanted, and which I was going to build her from wood of the old church structure, became an item of disturbance for Annie after Julius told his funny little story. Of course it is fake, no man can become a tree and let alone haunt a kitchen through boards, and of course Annie knows this. Yet it seems that simply the idea of life within the framework and construction of our home is uncomfortable. More odd is that she finds comfort in Julius’ stories such as these; they cheer her when she’s find herself in down-swinging moods. I’m beginning to find him duplicitous and economic in the stories he shares and how he shares them. It seems that as he builds his stories alongside us building our house he attempts to demolish some aim or comfort of our home—as if he evokes discomfort to shoo us away and gain these spaces to his own devises—just as he seems to hide the honey in the woods from me. Perhaps he wishes to rid us so as to have a house of his very own.

He even gets funny sometimes about sitting on the piazza with us as he shares his stories.  We’re Northern folks, we have no qualms with sharing space with the man, and yet I can observe his agitation when he shares the space with us—like the deck is a space re-incarnate of the Plantation Homes from the days of slavery and he is at risk of again living this trauma is he is with us there. Absurd. It is as if, without the justification of his wild tales of the church and the man Sandy, he too is disturbed by the piazza as if the spirits of old friends are trapped within its construction. His uneasiness is nearly contagious to my dear Annie, and in her spouts of discontent I see discomfort in the very environment to which we came with the purpose of ridding these troubles.

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