venerating/hating hestia

hestia (who she was, what stood for)
my d'auliare's on her says not much

she didn't get around a lot.

saddled with her tasks, many of which are hot, tiresome and drudgingly necessary. and despite all of our time, since hestia, it really does fall as a burden on one half of many couples.

the "mundane tasks" (that in quotes from some pompous assbag in the New York Times recently) without which the gears of society would grind to a halt. laundry. cleaning. meals. maintenance of the most quotidian functions of humanity.

we clean up shitandpiss and blood and mucus and semen and orange juice - all the emissions to which our flesh is so heir.

and so much dear flesh, too. partners: sexual and social. offspring, as they occur or do not. animals as they occur or do not. the unglorified, unglamorized, unpaid labor that goes into this strict machine.

at times I implore Hestia, my brow usually sweaty, my shirt evidence of the wrestle with laundry in a too small, too hot space - one of the few places in residence that does not have a low heat compact bulb. the old fashioned globe would roast any insects on contact. the fan wheezes along, an asthmatic bagpiper.

I implore this effort to be worth it, on some grand scale, and realize it's at Hestia's altar I should prostrate myself; I seek her her none-too-cool, none-too-soft hand caressing my brow, I beg her to glorify my works, see them in her name, and to build my strength and grace.

I have become more spiritual lately, and it has much to do with the mundane. Basil sprouts, the birdhouse gourds first pair of leaves, toddler-sturdy and naiive in their oaken shade: my inspiration.

I'm skeptical, and I don't think, really, in the really really scheme of things, that it matters at all that I do any of what I do. But on a domestic level, sure, put my domocile on a stage, and we do a very nice scene. Enjoyable in the moment, sure. But not without an exhausting cost. Two voices where there was only one, plus the cat, and also I talk to myself. The signal to noise ratio is low. Is that right? The signal is like at a 3 and the noise is at a larger number, say 367. That ratio would be 3:367 and thus seems like a low number.
[I'm also studying for the graduate school exam. Math practice.]

On top of pondering the questions of everything and finding myself seeing god in the steam over a pot on the stove, I seek out sentence fragments and repair them. More easy work.

love letters to punctuation marks

inspiration, courtesy utne, via others ad infinitum.

i do better in shorter distances tho, so, here, my extremely brief and charged
love letter to a semicolon

semicolon, you allow me rapid changes in direction; behind your shield i zig and zag.




(bow)

fingersnapping, cappuccino in little white cups and smart people in hats ensue.

ace

many are touched
when a humble dionysus
falls

cast on, cast off

so, since July, I have cast on and finished:
1 Undine
1 Crow Prints

I have cast on right now another Undine (such a simple knit but so beautiful if done correctly!), a Helleborus in some hand-dyed. Both of these projects are going to rub off as I knit them - Red Number 3 difficulties in my hand dyed (or just too much dye - I need to practice patience, if I really want the layered colors that I say I want) and the Malabrigo SW sock that I'm using for the Undine (for gift purposes) is shedding a lot of blue. I'm assuming that the Malabrigo folks use neither drink mix nor food dyes for their color, so I have to wonder what I'm getting on my needles and probably my hands. Eek. Not to cast aspersions. The yarn feels amazing, but so do my favorite jeans, and the process for dyeing those is hardly environmentally neutral or beneficial.

Yep that's what I do. Knit a lot, grade papers and worry about the dye in my commercial yarns.