Harper Would Be Proud

Today I made an important discovery, one that every young girl ultimately does through much pondering and soul-searching at some point in her early life.

I have discovered my stripper name: Tequila Mockingbird.

It's so perfect, but seeing as I don't believe my life is headed in the direction of the gentleman's club industry, I have decided to put it to another use.  This evening, I will be informing my father that I have renamed his cat.

Hobo Hat Round 2

I once had a hat that my roommate found in a box of unwanted items in the project room.  I adopted it in the way that most of my favorite accessories come to me: I try on hideously bizarre things for a lark, and immediately fall in love with them.

Apparently my capacity for affection is not without a measure of irony.

Anyway, I lost floppy ugly thing over spring break on the Fung Wa bus.  I was returning from a war protest, and sitting next to a very cute guitar-player who let me do arts and crafts with him.  My roommate was relieved that I lost the hat, having concluded that it made me look like a hobo.  I was pretty dissapointed as far as losing material possessions goes: I kinda loved that hat.

Now, my grandmother-who-loves-me-very-much is a great knitter.  So over the holidays I asked her if she would knit me a hat.  I explained having lost my favorite, and told her that I would send her a picture of me wearing the lost hat in its happier days, and a skein of yarn if she would knit me a new hat.  She explained, per Jewish grandmother style, that it would be a practically insurmountable challenge, but that she would try anything for me.

Now the most exiting part of this plan was not that I would get a new floppy hat, but rather that I would finally get to go to the yarn store and ::buy:: something.  There are so many tantalizing, luxurious yarns from which to choose, but I never get to buy any because I do not know how to knit.

(Digression: I also do not buy yarn because I am very poor.  However, over the holidays, the same time that I saw my grandmother-who-loves-me-very-much, I saw my uncle-who-is-very-mischievous.  Said uncle proposed a dare to me at lunch: that I could not possibly swallow a teaspoon of cinnamon.  My uncle-who-is-very-mischievous explained that he had watched about 20 youtube videos of people failing to do this, and that he would pay me 100 dollars if I succeeded.  Being down for pretty much anything, I am now 100 dollars richer, and I decided to splurge on yarn).

When I got to the yarn store, I looked at many beautiful yarns and made a big pile of the ones I might buy.  The store lady did not like me messing up her store, but I have used the layout method to choose products ever since I was a 4-year-old sprawled in the middle of the aisle at the movie store with 10 different episodes of Rainbow Bright and My Little Pony lined up on the floor in front of me.

After much searching, I made an astonishing find.  I discovered, tucked away behind a display sweater, the very yarn (#20 in the diagram) that my hat had been made of!  After looking at all the baby alpaca yarn in subtle, sophisticated colors, and the japanese wool that changed colors ever few inches, and the cashmere yarn with little angle hair threads coming out of it, I made up my mind.  The hat for me could only be made with Rimini Rainbow #20.  I bought it, and will send it off to St. Louis tomorrow.

And it only cost $4.95 a bundle.  

Junk mail

So I get a fair amount of junk mail, mostly from really natural medicine/nutrition/yoga whatever kind of not-so-radical non-mainstream health guru specialists I may have been willing to give my email address.  

Last week I got an email telling me to eat lots of turnips and meat.  Beans in moderation.

There is nothing moderate about the amount of beans, particularly lentils, I consume in a given week.  (Fun fact: I played the opening word in a scrabble game this evening; it was "lentil").  

A homeopathic specialist who has my email address (Fun fact: some people believe that cuttlefish oil diluted 200 times can fix health problems) sent me a holiday (read: Christmas) email.  It said, "May your daily choices reflect who you are".

This was actually something I deeply needed to hear.  I have strong opinions about how I should live my life, but I am almost always sidetracked by exceptions that become the rule.  Yes rotting in front of the computer is bad but right now I'm just really bored, etc.  

Sometimes things just hit you.

Honesty

"As long as neither of us fears the truth, we can communicate" 

-Dove Altabef

President

Cynics demand: "Why, Sparrow?  Why run for president in every election since 1992?  Your chances of winning are minuscule!  You have, in sixteen years, received only one vote!  Why?"

"I enjoy affirming that I will take responsibility for the whole world," I reply.

-Sparrow, sparrowforprez.com

Rewriting Other People's Songs

This morning I misheard lyrics to a Cat Power song.  I thought it was, 

"When we were teenagers, we wanted to be the sky.

Now all we want to do is go bed"

And I though, wow, that is my life, wow that is so poignant, wow I love this song.  I looked up the lyrics online, and it actually reads,

"...now all we want to do is go to red 

places and try to stay out of hell"  

And I don't get it.  I mean, it's not as good.  For me.  But it's interesting, because this song came on randomly, and yesterday I was thinking of this time when I was really upset as a teenager.  My mom was comforting me, and she explained that in adolescence we feel emotion more intensely than in later life.  The point being, you are in great pain now but your ability to feel this much intense pain this often will subside.  But also there is this special adolescent feeling of wanting to be everyone, everything, wanting to see how far you can extend into the world.  And I feel that every day still, but less generously now.  There is just something less generous about the way in which I want to be a part of the whole world at once.

Digression: so I'm writing this anarchoprimitivism paper, and still researching it as I write because my work ethic has really gone to shit.  So I was reading this book that explained that primitive cultures conceive of themselves as a person, surrounded by other people, organisms, and objects.  Whereas modern people conceive of themselves as alternately/simultaneously social creatures and objects of nature, but that they relegate those existences to different planes.  And that that explains our alienation from nature.  (And our wanting to be the sky?)

I would also like to add here that I have officially re-written this one song by the Counting Crows because I refuse to hear my favorite part as it is actually written.  My version goes thus:

"There's a perfectness inside you, sleeping underneath your skin"

Whereas the Counting Crows' version reads,

"There's a bird that nests inside you, sleeping underneath your skin".

Sure, their version is more poetically sophisticated, but the song is about being in love with a woman whose boyfriend doesn't appreciate her as much as the guy singing the song does.  And the guy singing the song sees the woman as flawed but ultimately perfect. I like the idea of knowing that everyone has perfectness inside them.  I really think they do.  And again I think that connects back with wanting to be the sky.  The sky is so big and eternal it's almost perfect by default.    

Sometimes I think I know everything

"Disillusion as the last illusion"

-Wallace Stevens

Which makes me think, who will I be next?  What will I believe when I am done believing my present truths?

What are you most willing to let go of? (Grammar regarding preposition placement)(haha)(no really, I am laughing.  4:36 PM.  I believe that laughing is a good thing.  That's what I believe right now)

Desconstruction

"The more we critique, the less we are able to create"

-Austin Purnell

if you are in school, remember this.  if you are not in school, remember this.  if you are critical, remember this. if you are smarter than is good for you, remember this.  if you want to make things grow, let them be flawed, and have the courage to let them grow anyway.