I am trapped quietly in moth wing curiosity sometimes. It’s a soft thing, delicate, and I am there this afternoon. It started this morning, with a brushing in of common ways. A canvas peopled with figures again. Now I’m dressed in velvet, long lines of patchwork tatters mended into a seamless whole again, and I’m ready for tonight. I’ve found clothes that work at both an office party and a fetish show. I thought it would be more difficult.
At twelve:thirty-two I hit my twenty-four hour mark. It’s now sliding into four. My typing is suffering.
Nicole and I had an encounter with a strange well-to-do couple either yesterday or the day before. I’ve lost track. Tuesday, the day of embroidery and making ribbon to tie gifts with. They stopped us because of the ferret. It’s been warm this week, warm enough to take Skatia for walks to the grocery store. At first we didn’t think anything of it, as everyone stops for a ferret like they’ve been caught in a polaroid. Snick, snap, zzzzht. Wave around social niceties until the personality develops and see if you want to give them time. The woman, I believe her name is Carol, said she has a coat for Skatia, a purple alpaca coat. She works with impoverished in Peru, she said, and her spanish was very bad, so when she asked them to make her little dauschounds jackets against the cold, they first made one far too small. A tiny thing, she said, and again. All of it repeating, a vinyl man in her head scratching out the script. I liked her, though I suspect she may drink. Her husband was very soft-spoken, complimenting on my coat and talking about living in Ottawa, how fur isn’t frowned upon there as it is here. I could imagine having dinner with these people, they are so like my family back east. Having grown up strangely comfortable, their struggles have been of a different classification as mine, but not one I know how to label. It makes them idiosyncratic, used to their own social oddities. There was talk of god arranging our meeting as we parted ways, god keep our souls and bless our holidays. I like it. They felt like a little bit of Home to me, the concept, in how familiar they were, how of the same mold as so many people related to me. Back east, you see, they are far richer than we and so stranger in a peculiar way. My aunt owns a stablery outside of Ottawa, my grandmother owns a chain of middling to pricey jewelry stores and my Nana, back across the water, she’s rumoured to own a small chunk of downtown London though she still keeps her money-bills under her mattress.
The woman called while I was on the phone with Matthew. He meant to get directions to our box but instead got captured, reduced to wordless gusts of inescapable laughter, keeping him delightedly on the phone an hour past what he intended. I think he’s a good friend to have recovered, discovered, renewed. All these words for furniture and library books, but none that particularly suit. Soon I’m going to meet up with Michelle, who also phoned while we were entertaining ourselves with bubbling fits of giggles. I’m picking her up from work, the same building as the Red Coats, what James does. I don’t know what we’ll do in the hour I have before I have to be at the office. Wander around with coffee maybe. I’ll have a hot chocolate and feel too warm in my belly and too cold on my fingertips, though it will burn where my skin presses against the cup, holding it.
I’ve just received a letter, and tied to it is sleep.
I am fading, but now wondering the connection.
Thank you brain, I love you too.