I recently participated in a discussion re the conversion of St. Paul, who was thrown from his horse and struck blind on the way to Damascus. “Of course our lives aren’t nearly as dramatic as St. Paul’s,” one of the other participants opined, at which point I thought, Mine is!
To wit:
KNITTING NEWS
Caryll Houselander, aka the Divine Eccentric, was a big fan of learning to do some kind of hand-crafts (she whittled little animals and Biblical figures out of wood).
I myself have taken up knitting. After a rather severe mishap in which I attempted to “wind together” two thousands-of-meters long skeins of string-like, viscose yarn that of course became hopelessly tangled, and that took literally five to six hours to unwind, I undertook what proved to be an abortive attempt to start a scarf while simultaneously watching Joseph Losey’s The Servant,
I then managed to knit out a skein of beautiful red-orange ribbon and completed what turned out to be a 9-inch or so square of…What is it? I asked myself after consulting my how-to knitting book and triumphantly “binding off.” A guest (i.e. never to be used) washcloth? A welcome mat for a gay dog-house?
In a burst of inspiration, I folded my creation in two, stitched up the sides, snipped off a royal blue tassel from one of the many moth-eaten lengths of tapestry draped about my room, affixed a silver cross (ditto) to the whole, and now have what I’m calling a makeup case! That can’t travel anywhere besides the back of my toilet as everything would fall out. Frankly, however, the whole calming, repetitive, over, around, under, and through process is such balm to my fevered psyche that I don’t really care whether I’m actually making anything.
TREASURES IN THE MAIL
Ten to eleven a.m. is always an exciting part of my day as this is the hour when the Filipino mailman is most likely to either shove the mail through the slot in the front door, or, in the event of a package, to knock.
The other day I rec’d a shoebox-sized package, return address from my brother Joe who resides with his Japanese wife Mimi in Marietta, Georgia.
Joe once sent me an autographed photo of George Jones (a mutual hero). Another time he Fed-Exed me a note, filched from our childhood bathroom (utilized by, among others, six males) and written on a piece of scrap paper in my mother’s hand reading: “GOL RAM IT. PUT THE SEAT DOWN!”
Joe-Joe must have picked up this latest memento on the recent Queers‘ tour: a varnished crocodile head with green glass eyes This has taken up pride of place in my current bathroom:
ONE OF MY MANY BOYFRIENDS
I like to keep my personal life under wraps, but I do think this photo of yours truly with the great William G. of Glendale, California, is worth sharing.
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