88 - I could use someone

I've started knitting again. Mostly because it's cold. I need a scarf. I need mittens. I have absolutely no problem with knitting in public. I'll knit in church, in class, in the restaurant while I wait for a table. Do you think it's strange? Good for you. I don't care.

I have a witch hat that I made myself. You can't find a hat in a store that will fit my head. So I constructed this glorious specimen of blue felt one rainy day last year. I find that I wear it more than I intended to, especially indoors. I wore it all day yesterday while I was knitting. I wore it while I watched The Godfather. I even forgot it was there after a while. Strange? Definitely. But I still don't care.

I just painted my parents bedroom for them, since they were having a hard time doing it themselves. "Consummate Vs!" I'd cry. Alas, it fell largely upon me to smooth the texturing. As I toiled, I contemplated painting subtle designs into the blank stretches of the wall. Things you wouldn't notice at first, but would leap out at you like a stereogram when you stared long enough.

Sometimes I long to retreat from the world for a while. I'd stay in a house in the woods and paint the shutters outlandish colors. I'd walk round the garden wearing scarf, hat, and all; I'd stand around in a dress made of strips of bright fabric sewn together and trailing behind. I'd build a campfire and sing at the stars and scramble eggs for anyone who stopped by. And I imagine that, maybe, in that whimsical place, all the odds and ends of my existence would fit together. Each individual eccentricity would be diminish in light of the whole. Nobody would even notice that I was wearing brown shoes with a black belt. What would mundane mean then?

Am I serious? No... no not really. I'm almost done with school, almost out in the real world. I don't want to run around in the forest like this. No way.

But... I haven't lost my imagination yet. When I look at empty styrofoam packaging, I still see a doll-sized house of many rooms. When I look at a huge tree, I still gauge whether a house could be built in it. I remember when I drew cities in chalk on the driveway and played by walking down the outlined streets into the square outlines of buildings. If only I'd known that the world would be so similar. Lines in the dust, people walking with their heads down, and only one in a thousand looking up long enough to realize we're still playing games.  ¶ 17:41