praise: Modern Antics

The Practical Guide for Gnomes, or Duende's Travels Part I

Duende was named for the Spirit of Flamenco, because he wields a guitar and looks mighty happy playing it. Deunde is approximately one foot tall. Duende has a goofy, opiate-induced-looking grin. Duende is a garden gnome. 

Here's how it all started: my friend Chris, who is one of those willing to overcome the time-space continuum to have coffee with you tried and true college friends, offered me a Gift of Welcome and Housewarming upon my arrival in his beloved Metropolis. I held Duende at arm's length.  

"What is this?" I said (see photo for look of amusement/incredulity/distaste).

 "It was thirty dollars," he said. 

"Okay," I said. 

So I adopted a guitar-playing garden gnome, we launched a tradition of buying each other expensive tchackies, and the adventure began. Chris's anonymous hung over high school friend was staying over. Having just returned form a trip to South America, he was full of Flamenco terminology. In some dialogue I scarcely remember, the word and definition for duende was uttered, and the Guitar Playing Gift Gnome was thus christened. 

So that's the back story. 

Now, how did Duende the gnome get to Maine? A cow pasture in the Midwest? Alaska?  San Francisco? The Phillipines? And back to Maine? Read on. 

If you've seen the film Amélie, for which I have a soft spot because it played an important role in the romance that is now my marriage, you may already be over the story of a traveling gnome. But you have to give Duende some credit for overcoming a few obstacles.  First of all, he hailed from an antiques store in roadside Mass. Then, I had to smuggle him home on the subway (Chris had nothing for me to take him home in but a bag from Ralph Lauren.) I had to sneak him past my minimalist-at-heart husband, and propose things like "He could live on the balcony (read: fire escape)," or "Just imagine if we kept him in the fridge, the look on people's faces when they came over..." all to no avail. The gnome had to hit the road. 

The gnome was made to roam. 

So I called my brother. Ben has a lot in common with a foot-tall garden gnome. He's seven feet tall, but he plays the ukelele and the banjo, likes wearing baggy rustic clothes, and smiles a lot. He also likes gardening and farms. It seemed like a match made in heaven. So when Ben came to visit, I took the gnome out of the Ralph Lauren bag and handed it to him ceremoniously. "Try to keep it in the family,"  I said, since it had come from Chris, and I didn't want to just pass him off to anyone. 

Ben tucked Duende under his arm and kept him there while we scoured Williamsburg for a dinner spot. We were the hit of Roebling Cafe where Duende silently played in the candle light while we enjoyed simple/complicated/cheap/expensive food and a few cocktails. Ben, in college years, had learned to hold his liquor. I, in my yoga years, had not. We snapped a couple of photos of Duende in the candle light, smiled to nearby table occupants, paid up, and left. 

Ben took Duende on the train with him to Boston, where he played the ukelele and sang and bosqued up enough change for breakfast with Duende as his sidekick. Then, when he got home to Bar Harbor, he took him to the health food store where he worked; A+B Naturals. Duende, he said when he called, fit nicely in the band above the counter with a bongo-playing monkey. He kept an eye on him while working, he said, and after all, he reminded me, he had filled up his living room with a ten-foot orange bean bag chair and the goat-skin djembe he had made for me in Gambia. 

Then Duende went missing. 

Post cards appeared. Duende talking to a couple of brown cows. Duende digging a ditch. Duende at the foot of  redwood tree. Duende atop Chistopher McKandless's  bus in Alaska (we think this one was a Photoshop job). Duende in Somebody's Livingroom. 

Then Duende reappeared for a couple of weeks and kicked it on the counter with the monkey.

One of the postcards from the west somehow got misread at the post office, and instead of going to "A+B Naturals, Bar Harbor, Maine" It went to "A+B Naturals...The Philippines." Upon learning the non-receipt of the most recent postcard, the perpetrating kidnappers, or their accomplice, shot a fresh copy under the door from a Mini Cooper. A few days later the original appeared, bearing the stamps of its own misadventure. 

Then Duende had his biggest adventure. He vanished again for a week and postcards appeared of Duende in an anonymous man's backpack overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, and then in front of graffiti art in the Mission.

When he came back, he had on a satchel. Its contents contained a box of Rice-a-Roni, a commemorative coin, a tie-dyed t-shirt in gnome/infant size, and a book by Noam Chomsky. 

This was the state of affairs when I showed up in Bar Harbor for Ben's graduation last weekend. I paid a visit to A+B Naturals and  pointed behind the counter. 

"That's my gnome, Duende," I said to the young and well-meaning cashier. "Can I see his postcards?" 

She looked at me with incredulity/amusement/distaste and let me take pictures. 

"Where is he?" I asked, peeking around the basket of an elderly man as he carefully placed his items on the counter.  "I'd like to see him." Secretly, I had thought of stealing him myself, taking him to France or Pennsylvania. 

"He's around somewhere," she said, "go ahead and look." Amid tall bags of Natural Herb Popcorn, brussel sprouts, whole grain breads, dried mango, and Seventh Generation cleaning products I sought, but did not find, Duende. 

 I returned to the cashier at the front and reported this. 

"Oh," she said nonchalantly, "really?" She kept ringing up the elderly man's purchases and barely looked up as she shrugged.

"He must be traveling again."