Fabric

Last night's sleep included some very macabre dreams. I don't remember there being much of a plot, but one of the dreams included flattened-out dead people hanging in wardrobes (like they were clothes.) It was almost like being in a gigantic walk-in closet in a costume shop, with a lot of variety, styles, colors, etc.  There was also something about a round "manhole" cover on the ground. The cover and ground surrounding it had textures and indentations. People (set designers maybe?) picked it up and transported it like carpet.

I have been thinking about clothes. First, I lost my favorite tank top, and experienced a strong emotional attachment to it. Athough I don't think I pay much attention to fashion, sometimes I do have an interest in fabrics. I have actually fantasized about working in a linen or fabric store many times, but for some reason this has never happened. (Maybe I worry that fantasy would not live up to reality.) I want to learn more about how things are made, and where. Some years ago, on a whim, I rearranged all the clothes in my closet according to which country each item of clothing had been manufactured in .

I went shopping for some dance class clothes recently.

There is nothing in this pile for dance class

Bought some half soles to wear. Because it's more economical, mine are plain, without rhinestones, but I was/am fascinated by the stitching on the bottoms of them. I also ducked into a very nice antiquarian bookshop. I noticed there were some other specialty shops. For example, one store specialized in dolls. I saw a store which seemed to be about girls and skateboarding and thought, hey, they are catering to female skateboarders! I peeked in the window. There was a girl putting away some merchandise, but it seemed empty. I walked away. A boy skated past. When I went home I looked it up. Oh, naive little me! (Why do I never seem to see female skateboarders? I admit, I don't skateboard either. I did find this online: http://girlsthatskate.tumblr.com/)

Also, there was a costume shop. I flipped through the catalog on the sidewalk for a little while. I wonder if that could have influenced my dreams?  I was thinking a little bit about Beatrice D'Este.
A costumer online is quite enthusiastic about the aesthetic details of her tomb.

Here's the thing about empathizing and thinking about the dead people. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun. Like, you think, I could turn this into a creative project someday! Although, not sure exactly how to do that at the moment. Write a novel? That's sort of been done...(The Second Mrs. Giaconda) So then you move on. It kind of feels as if these characters from the past have selected you, and not the other way around. That kind of empathy seems to have almost no place in academia. But, you still get to make choices, right? You can think: Well, I am loving the great outdoors today. If there's any dead people that need to be thought about, I'll focus on ones like Thoreau and Emerson. It would be a hell of a lot more calming than fixating on that old drama with Beatrice the Tragic and Ludovico the Trollop. Ha ha! You think you can be so flippant. But then, maybe you are also feeling a little bit queasy that morning. Not for any particular reason, mind you. Even though you don't really want to think about it, maybe it could have something to do with them. Oh god. In real life, there's nothing funny about death in childbirth or dying in a dungeon. I don't want to be sick. That old drama needs to get gone, somehow. Go, rejuvenate yourselves, become flowers, be happy...

Christine's Nature:

"Nature wanted that new books should be born from me, engendered by study and by the things I had seen. Then she said to me: 'Take your tooks and hammer on the anvil the matter I will give you, as durable as iron: neither fire nor anything else can destroy it; from this you should forge delightful things. When you carried your children in your womb, you felt great pain when giving birth. Now I desire that new books should be born from you, which you will give birth to from your memory in joy and delight; they will for all time to come keep your memory alive before the princes and the whole world. Just like a woman who has given birth forgets the pain and labor as soon as she hears her child cry, you will forget the hard work when you hear the voices of your books."

--NCE, Selected Writings, Christine's Vision

And, just because...

the moon last night