"In every heart there is a room"… and mine in in this room, occasionally but rarely floating up the curling plastic Italian staircase where I'd like to imagine sleep tucked eight in a bed, are Laura Ingalls Wilder and her siblings, cousins and neighbors, waiting for the Winter of Darkness to end and her father to stop twisting dead grasses into logs for the fire (I've tried it, it's harder than it sounds).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, and on the ground floor falling lower it is toasty and warm, lights flicking on and off like angry candles – spontaneously combusting and dying at their leisure, and I am here, I am alive, and I greet you, even if your greeting isn't so much of one as a maneuvering around looking at what in your mind (and perhaps now in mine) is 'not really what you were expecting'.
The day is nearly over and I can say that it has been worth the little physical energy and rather unexpected mental energy to complete the week. I'll take seven more, in three months time…
Enter – was clearly looking for something and clearly always will be:
"Thanks, yes could I have her name."
"Chao."
Exit – was clearly looking for something and clearly always will be.
Enter – a slightly tubby little boy (yes, I can say that), and a thinner one with a football:
"Do we have to pay to have a look around?"
"Thanks a lot."
Exit – a slightly tubbly little boy (yes, I can say that), and a thinner one with a football.
Enter – woman in reddish pink jacket, perhaps a daughter in tow (though she wasn't of the age that needed to be towed, I expect it was for another necessary reason):
"Is this a place anyone can put up things?"
"We have a place…even crafts and other things?"
"Is that an American accent? Where in America?"
"Thank you ever so much."
Exit – woman in reddish pink jacket, perhaps a daughter in tow (though she wasn't of the age that needed to be towed, I expect it was for another necessary reason).
Enter – couple (women, dressed to nines all gold jewelry with a laugh that read years of smoking capris) and man in comb over and gold rimmed specs:
"Do we have to go upstairs?"
"Heahha, heahha."
"What we'd expect is right."
Exit – couple (women, dressed to nines all gold jewelry with a laugh that read years of smoking capris) and man in comb over and gold rimmed specs.
Enter – two lovely ladies who'd just been to 'Mrs Potter' so they were and took a moment to look around:
"Quite into our drawings now you see."
"Oooohh it was delightful."
"See, it has perspective."
"Well, what we've discovered is that you're not from this Island…is that why Africa is so big on your map?"
Exit – two lovely ladies who'd just been to 'Mrs Potter' so they were and took a moment to look around.
Enter – purple hair carrying really really really strange dead flowers (where do people find these things and then why do they put them in their homes?):
"Clever inn'it."
Enter – purple hair carrying really really really strange dead flowers (where do people find these things and then why do they put them in their homes?).
Enter – couple (one large/one not so large…not so large one carrying the bags of course) eyeing the stairs before they even get the door open:
"They look lovely but…"
"Thank you."
Enter – couple (one large/one not so large…not so large one carrying the bags of course) eyeing the stairs before they even get the door open.
Enter – classic white short sleeved polo shirt, dark jeans and black boots, backpack, sweater around the waist, with a pointed, yet slow walk of a SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE MUSEUM girl:
"Thank you."
Exit – classic white short sleeved polo shirt, dark jeans and black boots, backpack, sweater around the waist, with a pointed, yet slow walk of a SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE MUSEUM girl.
and finally: they'll never read another word of their work, but introducing a wider (however narrow they may be) public to a shrewdly edited scrap of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari, …who at one point dug me out of a hole in the middle earth of my postgraduate degree theory seminars… is enough on a day (week) like this.
"when chaos threatens…draw an importable, inflatable territory" accompanied by eight bits of paper white picket fence cut outs, I guess it is just a little chuckle isn't it.
