dodging work
02.15.05 @ 7:50 p.m.
I'm feeling a desperate urge to go out. To go out to Rite-Aid, specifically, which isn't terribly exciting, and yet...
Mostly, I want to buy supplies for my house plants, and I would likely be better served going to Fred Meyer, but that is a trip and a half. Rite-Aid is only a few blocks away. Fred Meyer is on West 11th, and I live in the East 30s. Cross town driving is not that fun, and I remember that last time I made the trip, I counted the Dari-Marts I passed and came up with a double digit number. The proliferation is ABSURD. And yet, I have never been inside one. I know they have funny returnable milk bottles and that makes me vaguely want to go there, especially since I realized yesterday that my milk was bad. ANYWAY-House plants. When I had my apartment warming, Moni gave me a tiny rosebush that suggests repotting after it blooms and the last one is fading. Plus I just want an excuse to buy a really pretty pot and hope that the plant will flourish and get moderately big. I'm not terribly good with plants, but I'm going to give it a shot, anyway. Then there's Neville, the plant I've had since the dorms. I think I bought him at the first ASUO Street Faire I went to. He's survived all kinds of torment. Negligence, mostly. I hardly watered him in the dorms, and then one summer he got left hanging outside the front door in extreme heat. And yet he lived on.
Last month, though, he got a pretty bad fungus problem. Yellow mushrooms started growing out of the soil. I left him outside on the deck because the mushrooms were smelly and I didn't want them to explode with spores and infect my rosebush, who I've just realised needs a name. It's definitely a she. Maybe Lizzy. Maybe Amabelle, which reminds me that I should work on Regency Hum Dil De Chuke Sanaam rather than continuing to think about ICRY. No, I have it, and this is FINAL, because if it isn't I'll continue to be a dork and think up a hundred different possibilities: Lenore. Um. I keep losing the point, don't I? When I left Neville outside, he died, as it's been freezing at night. All is not lost for poor Neville, though, because I took several clippings and they sit now in a jar of water on the sill of my huge (really, it's ridiculous) kitchen window. So I need potting soil not just to repot Lenore, but to revive Neville. I have a pot I intend to put him in, and want to buy something new and pretty for Lenore.
Oh, dear lord, do I love the episode of the Simpsons where Marge becomes a romance writer. It's so ridiculously accurate... or at least close to how I write. She stops to spell check every few paragraphs... I stop to word count. And eat. And I write ridiculous romances, whee! Oh, there is so much I need to work on, and I probably only want to do so because I have a million pages of Puritan Poetics to read.
I can't remember when I originally read this article (or something very similar), but it stuck with me.
Neuenschwander was inspired to create the work -- stretching along three walls of a gallery with thousands of brightly colored ribbons printed lengthwise with people's wishes-- by a tradition at the church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in Sao Salvador. There, visitors choose a ribbon that they tie with three knots as they make three wishes. They then tie the ribbon to their wrist, and when the ribbon falls off, according to tradition, their wishes are granted.
I'm really a surprisingly superstitious person, with a lot of little rituals and interest in a lot of wishing practices, omens and signs. Sign superstitions and Magic. I don't know if it's an outgrowth of Folklore classes or the reason that I love them so much. Anyway, there is an orange ribbon with three knots in it wrapped around my wrist. Frankly, I'm impressed that I could tie a knot and a bow around my right wrist with one hand. (Well, there were points where I had to use my teeth.) It seems especially... apt? symbolic? that the ribbon I used (the only ribbon I have) is from my sister's wedding. It was incorporated into the gift bag the happy couple gave my dad as part of the wedding party and I kept it to tie into my hair that night. More of the same ribbon is used in the schedule for the ceremony itself, which is tucked away in my photo album.
I also have a temporary tattoo on the same wrist, a Celtic bird design, and I was going to write "but that's just out of a sense of whimsy," but then, what is the ribbon thing if not whimsy itself?
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I've had dreams about people on Dumbrella for the second night in a row, if not the third. The third time this week, at the least. It's freaking me out a little because I've never had recurring dreams or recurring elements in dreams in close succession. What is going on? Another thing is that the three dreams share no common members of Dumbrella. The first was Julie and FJ. The second was several people, mainly Ryan, Kobold, Mr. Habits, and Mig. This last one was also supposed to be a bunch of people, but the only two I remember are Erik and James. What? What? Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Namely that I spend too much time checking Dumbrella? It's not even like it was the last thing I did before going to bed last night; no, that was reading Book VI and part of Book VII of Paradise Lost - the War in Heaven, which is a pretty magnificent passage. It's confusing.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
