Les Affaires de Coeur: January 2009 Archives

Sometimes there comes a yarn so unutterably beautiful that it requires the dropping of all other knitterly commitments. I got two yarns in the mail today, and they were both gorgeous, but the variegated was hypnotic. I pulled it out, I got out the swift, I wound it, and I immediately began knitting a little earflap hat.

Mind you, I already had a gift hat on the needles - nay, two gift hats on the needles. One of them on the exact size of circular needle that this hat will take. But I can't help it. It's too too beautiful.

It's the yarn equivalent of the specialest boy in the world, of the chocolate cake that you can't say no to, of lavender bath salts, of a delicious Phil Wood bottom bracket (I know, that makes no sense to most of you, but trust me on this). Can't...say....no....

This hat will knit itself, and then I will marry it.

Or else I will run off to Paris with it. My bicycles will have to come along, because they are my one (or three, or four) true loves.

Or I will go to a birthday party and eat a forbidden cupcake. Or I will drink a little too much grog and sing pirate songs. Or I will dance naked in my apartment. Or I will curl up with my darling girl (cat), and blow bubbles while our problems drift by and wave to us. Hello problems. Goodbye problems.

Later:

Had a day of full-on, no-holds-barred weirdness yesterday, and somehow woke up feeling better afterwards. Perhaps it was the minimalist, yet curiously thorough, four hours of sleep I got. Perhaps it's the second day of clear winter sunshine we've got in a row.

Or it could be that friend's offer to cheer me up. You know, cheer me up. Not that I am likely to take him up on it, but it's nice to be asked. Also, after a week of bloated yuckyness, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and got hit over the head with my own fabulousness.

I just forget, you see.

"And this ghost of your other lover walked in and stood there, made of thin air..." - Laurie Anderson, Gravity's Angel

I was asked the other day if I wanted a boyfriend, and I couldn't answer the question.

I also couldn't, because of who was doing the asking, tell the whole truth about things.

But when I thought about it later, I realized the strongest, deepest reason that I couldn't answer the question was that I don't know the answer.

And then, in a different conversation, I hear myself say that I'd wish myself a boyfriend into being, except that I don't want him (theoretical boy) getting all up in my face about everything. Because that's what boyfriends do, isn't it?

Not initially, of course. Initially they are too impressed with whatever it is that they've decided is impressive about you. But then, later, after they've gotten over thinking how lucky they are (which in most cases takes about two weeks or five minutes, depending on how soon you have sex with them), they start to have a big fat opinion about your every move, your every thought and decision and choice. As if you need their help making decisions about everything. As if you asked. Just as if you're a child with no will or brain of her own.

And mind you, as a child I had plenty of will and brain of my own. It's just that no one listens to children.

And men don't listen to women, by and large.

I have a voodoo doll which Miz Fury gave me for my fortieth birthday, and which was of some small use in getting over Boywich. I don't want to have to use it again. It's enjoying its tightly wound little nap, there in the corner of my desk.

Boywich, by the way, was the king of opinions about my every move and decision. And I didn't find it helpful in the least, though the opinion he shared with me this evening is one with which I thoroughly agree.

He said, and I quote, "Well, you know no one is ever going to be good enough for you in my eyes."

So much easier to love a married man, and put him up on the shelf next to the voodoo doll, isn't it? Neither gets anywhere near my skin.

"Nothing of him that doth fade, but that suffers a sea change into something rich and strange." - Laurie Anderson, Blue Lagoon.

PS. Methinks I will wish for a lover, instead.

PS2. I should in fairness add that Boywich does not do that sort of thing now. He's quite supportive and offers good advice when asked, just like a friend should. Which sort of proves my point that it's a phenomenon specific to romantic relationships.

I liked this meme of Wendy's, so I think I will do my own bastardized version of it - bastardized because I hate following directions, and memeish because I love lists.

Indeterminate Number of Random Facts About Me:

1. I am currently singing a song in French. Okay, two minutes ago, but still.
2. I sorta-speak a couple of languages (including French), which is to say that I can converse on a kindergarten level, eavesdrop with aplomb, and semi-follow movies without relying on the subtitles too much.
3. I speak a very small smattering of a couple of other languages, but my accents are so good that native speakers will start talking to me, thinking that I am fluent.
4. My dream jobs are, roughly in order: novelist, photographer, mixer and namer of colors, dancer but not to anyone else's choreography, rock star, children's book writer & illustrator, winemaker, astrophysicist, bicycle tour leader, professional swimmer, kisser of sweet coffee-colored boys. Okay, that last one was just to see if you're paying attention.
5. I taught myself to bake bread when I was eleven or twelve years old. Then I taught myself how to cook everything else. I cannot, however, cook rice.
6. I wear radically different colors in winter and summer. Radically.
7. I own about 40 hats.
8. I have a really, really difficult time parting with books. As in, I've only done it once, and then only two small boxes' worth.
9. My bicycles all have names.
10. My two all-time favorite TV shows are Firefly and MASH.
11. I have been in love approximately four times in my life. Three out of four were philosophy majors.
12. My cat was born in the wild. Boywich once looked up several of her more esoteric behaviors and found that they are characteristic of imprinting.
13. I have had several close encounters with other wild animals - all positive and rather magical.
14. Boywich and I are very, very psychic. He once guessed the last name of a boy I was dating, with no hints and no prior information, and got it right on the first try.
15. When I was a kid I used to rename myself all the time, and I'd put those names on my school papers in lieu of my real one.
16. Sometimes my dad still calls me by one or two of them.
17. I am killer at Boggle but I kind of suck at Scrabble.
18. I think my very sexiest look is underwear, knee socks, and my pirate T-shirt.
19. To date, no one but Miz Fury has witnessed this outfit, but she concurred with that assessment.
20. I am older than many of my friends, but not than the boy in whom I am presently interested.

Looking at the stack of things I've knitted for family gifts this winter, I can't decide whether I've accomplished a lot or whether I've spent an inordinate amount of time knitting what seems like very little.

The yarns are nice, anyway. A combination of stash and newly purchased things, so some of it is more to the taste of the recipient(s) than to mine. But you know, that is in the nature of gifts.

Had lovely rides today. The only way I could have had more fun riding my bike would have been to have 20-year-old knees instead of the well-aged ones I have. Oh well. "A girl does what she can, sire." Cute and quotable, that Drew Barrymore.

We're in for a big snow bomb again, so I will be trying out my new rollers. Hopefully not falling all over the place, but - well, there is gonna be a learning curve. I'll also likely be riding in some of the snow tomorrow, trying to get in a little outdoorness (and maybe a puppet show) (really) before I get trapped in the house again. I am not loving this winter.

I am having bigger thoughts than these, and I keep planning on telling you about them, but apparently the percolating process is still in effect. Either that or I'm just not ready to share my toys yet. Mmmmm, brain toys.

Bill Nye would love those, no?

He makes me want to add a separate list of people I have crushes on who are nerdy rather than hot but whom I can't help but love anyway. Carl Sagan's right at the top of that list. Leonard Nimoy. Andrew Stanton. Joss Whedon. Um, my ex. (yes, that would be Boywich) (big nerd, that one. and very sweet.) (no, I don't have a crush on him anymore; I am just saying, that's the category he falls into)

This Mars Rover driver who works at NASA and whose name I haven't a clue about (I've seen him in a documentary). Reading this, you may well be thinking that I myself ought to be appearing in someone else's sexy nerd list...

Also, and I am not sure what, if anything, this means - I keep having these dreams in which my cat has cloned herself and become many Kitwiches, and I am trying to sort out which one is the right one.

There is something heartbreaking about the squeak of a guitar string on a recorded piece of music. Likewise, the faintly discernible sound of someone breaking a glass in the background on the recording of Charlie Parker that Kitwich and I are listening to now.

As a New Year's present to her, I let her choose the First Music.

First Music of the day is always an important thing; it's how you enter (or, I guess, re-enter, though somehow it always feels new to me) the world. And by that logic, I suppose first music of the first day of the year might have added weight, though it honestly doesn't feel portentous - just nice.

This particular album starts out vibrant and jumpy and settles itself gradually into a gently vibrating pool of molasses that carries you along with it in the most delicious way. I adore it, and it's the kitten's favorite. You can tell by her body language whenever I put it on.

Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that she's a birder, and - well, you know his nickname, don't you?

But getting back to that guitar string theory (see what I did there?), I think the reason why it always sends me a little when I hear those kinds of noises in an otherwise seamless recording is that it's a little jolt of reality. There is a live human playing this beautiful thing, and ohmygod it's real.

I had that same feeling about a conversation I had, more than a week ago (but it's still thrumming around in my bones), with the boy I like.

It wasn't the kind of conversation where you instantly agree with everything each other is saying. It was much better than that.

It was the kind of conversation that gives one furiously to think, and the kind where I looked across at him, and felt the guitar-string jolt. He's real.

You may read that and think, duh. But - how can I explain this? There's a mad difference between constructing an image of someone and falling in love with it, and interacting with a living, breathing, substantial, complicated, warm-blooded, differently impassioned human being. As a young person, I might have chosen the former.

As I am now, give me the hot, messy, complicated, challenging, beating heart of a solid human any day.