a negative capability scrapbook
…to the sorting office (where, I have just realised, I might find the wool for Neha’s hat!), I can’t resist sharing this clip just seen on Homo Ono‘s Songs for a Happy Friday because it seemed so lovely and appropriate and made me smile.
Imitosis by Andrew Bird
My electricity provider has helpfully supplied me with an Age Concern Cold Alert thermometer. It is a piece of double-layered card with a temperature-sensitive strip displayed in a window next to a colour-coded guide relating to the safety of the ambient temperature. A very similar device was supplied by various purveyors of baby-products for monitoring the “nursery”.
Luckily none of us is either very old or very young since, as you might be able to see, it’s quite cold around here at the moment. I think it’s more a result of the wind getting through the late Victorian cracks than the actual outside temperature.
Last night, as I alternated between chill-induced headache and sub-duvet suffocation, I remembered of the delights of that comforting garment, the nightcap (my childhood held its fair share of frugal heaters), and thanks to the stitches of the interknit have already found free pattern. Although I’m not wild about the idea of knitting 1ply wool even if I could find some. It shall have to be adapted for something slightly bulkier.
Actually, there was a period in my life when I wore a knitted hat all day and all night, winter and summer. It was made for me by my mother from this pattern (which I obviously still have).
She only knitted me three things (excluding the possibility of baby clothes which I don’t remember). That hat was the second. First was… this.
In baby pink. Baby. Pink. Made for me when I was thirteen years old. Anyone who has ever met me, even for a millisecond, will know just how diametrically anti-me such a garment would be, at any age. Even in black. But in baby pink? And apart from the colour the most obvious thing about it, to a girl not yet bought a bra and provided with extremely sensible knickers, it’s full of fucking holes. Let us leave aside the obvious fact that it’s hideous. I was used to being forced to wear hideous.
Poor woman. She tried so hard to have a daughter who was some person other than me. It is entirely possible that, in the titanic struggle of identity between us, the hat – navy blue and very plain – became a symbol of something we actually agreed upon. Something given, something taken. Which may explain why I chose to wear it all the time until, as I recall, it pretty much disintegrated, and she elected not to stop me.
Perhaps instead of using some other nightcap pattern I should ritually recreate that blue hat in a symbolic assuaging of ghosts.
As I crouched taking this picture with the camera on my phone I heard feet pounding up behind me. Turning swiftly I, rather belatedly, caught sight of the hectoring police notice urging people to take care of their valuables complete with a helpful pictogram of a mobile phone and a handbag.
The rapidly approaching feet were attached to two males, early 20s, both about six feet tall, hoods pulled right over their heads and obscuring most of their faces, the waistbands of their jeans clinging precariously to their upper thighs presumably by some sort of frictive interaction with the boxer shorts beneath, most of which were clearly visible above.
When they reached me, they stopped.
“D’yer like that?” one asked, jerking his hood towards the tree.
“Yes” I answered. “I’ve just taken a picture of it.” No point in trying to disguise the obvious. “It looks like a really sweet gesture.”
“Did yer see the other one?” asked the second shrouded figure, jerking his hood back down the road in the direction from which we had all come.
“Yes” I said. “I took a picture of that one as well.”
“Yeah” said the first, “there’s not enough love in the world. What we all need is more love.”
And with that they carried on ahead, purposefully as before.
“Yes,” I said. Yes.
A friend dropped by for lunch. We were yakking on about something or other of enormous interest and importance. Yak, yak, yak, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb we went while I made coffee and he leaned on the kitchen counter.
Meanwhile there was a background noise of which we were both, it subsequently transpired, subliminally aware without giving it sufficient consideration. A sort of viscous wet slapping noise. Suddenly there was a piercing scream.
Thanks to Krista for introducing me to this marvel. I thought today’s monster was a girl, but no, according to his daily monster page he’s a he. The subsequent book comes with a DVD which seems like a really good idea since the genesis of each monster and the ensuing development is a large part of the pleasure. And it’s an interesting way of tackling the web-to-paper transition.
I’m assuming the web presence came before the book. As it did in the case of Andre Jordan‘s book If you’re happy and you know it… which Firstspawn was flicking through in a bookshop the other day. “Hold on a moment, I recognise that name…” Yup, he’s a blogger.
I met him once, briefly, in a pub at a blogmeet at which there were not one, not two but three bloggers-with-book-deals. I haven’t read any of the books (or indeed the blogs beyond an initial sampling) so am not in a position to give any opinion on them.
Clearly my early decision not to attempt to pursue a career in publishing was indeed wise.
I could bang on for a bit about blogs, digital production, publishing and books but I shan’t since no doubt my thoughts on the subject are not original and, as has already been demonstrated, I’d make a crap publisher. However I can point to a few reviews of Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web by Sarah Boxer which discuss the blog/print transition although, let it be remembered, these are themselves hybredised offspring being the online versions of paper media: the LRB, Newsweek and the NYT.
Right. I am late. I must swat my procrastignat and get going.
While we’re on a roll of offspringing today Firstspawn suddenly lunged for his iPod saying “you must watch this, you must you must, it just so reminds me of you”. And this is what he played.
It is, I ascertained on further questioning, the 20 seconds or so from about 45″ in where the resemblance is most strong. The clenched-hand, tooth-gritted determination to stay calm whilst all about small demonic ninja-creatures determinedly wreak mayhem.
I was completely delighted at this recognition of my almost super-human (obviously nearly simian) efforts to cultivate equanimity. What a long way I’ve come!
When I do snap, which of course I do, I have not yet mastered the eye-popping evisceration techniques of Buddhist Monkey but perhaps, if I try really hard, one day I’ll be able to emit cosmic rays from my third eye and put an end to civilization as we know it.
I don’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed that apparently the level of “cartoon violence” in the two Buddhist Monkey episodes is ok but the rest of the Happy Tree Friends output is, according to our young critic, “just sick”.
Sigh.
While we’re on a roll of offspringing today Firstspawn suddenly lunged for his iPod saying “you must watch this, you must you must, it just so reminds me of you”. And this is what he played.
It is, I ascertained on further questioning, the 20 seconds or so from about 45″ in where the resemblance is most strong. The clenched-hand, tooth-gritted determination to stay calm whilst all about small demonic ninja-creatures determinedly wreak mayhem.
I was completely delighted at this recognition of my almost super-human (obviously nearly simian) efforts to cultivate equanimity. What a long way I’ve come!
When I do snap, which of course I do, I have not yet mastered the eye-popping evisceration techniques of Buddhist Monkey but perhaps, if I try really hard, one day I’ll be able to emit cosmic rays from my third eye and put an end to civilization as we know it.
I don’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed that apparently the level of “cartoon violence” in the two Buddhist Monkey episodes is ok but the rest of the Happy Tree Friends output is, according to our young critic, “just sick”.
Sigh.
Me: You know last night we were having a fascinating conversation about favourite words?
Secondspawn: Yes?
Me: So what’s your favourite word?
Ss: Lava!
Me: Lava? why?
Ss: Because it’s only got four letters and it sounds like it’s got more.
Me: ??
Ss: It’s spelt L-A-A-V, you see, which is only four letters, but it sounds like it’s spelt L-R-A-V-E-R which is seven letters.
Me: … aaah.
frizzyLogic 
