Beach Break

embroidery, knitting and reading

You know what? I’m never going to learn how to surf. At one point I aspired to surf before I’m 40 and then it was 45 and then 50 and now it’s never. I am not disappointed in myself but am envious of those who do. In my next life if there is such a thing I will be a surfer. To escape from even the faintest suggestion of football, I drove to Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon. I will refrain from ranting about football and why I despise it so much. It’s all I can do to will my hands not to type out an old-school rant. I will also refrain from ranting about Terrible America as the two go hand in hand. I am reading all the books that lie about the house. The Count of Monte Cristo has a whole lot of men in it but it’s sort of a relief to read about men doing men things so predictable so simple, so. I’ve finished the book about the medieval lesbian nuns and it was everything that I imagined a story about medieval nuns could be. I used to faint in church or almost faint and reading about medieval abbessess makes me feel that way again. Again, I am knitting — an afghan that called for intarsia (waves of pink and gold and cream) which I’m now ignoring because I couldn’t see the little squares of the pattern to count the colors and it was beyond frustrating. A friend who’s an expert knitter suggested that I just don’t do it. Intarsia gives the illusion of depth so without it I imagine my afghan will be straightforward and simple no waves just depth, the real thing, an ocean of pink and gold, white and cream. I’ll lie under it.

I’m teaching myself how to embroider. I’m working on a pattern of a naked woman with flowers growing out of her underwear and onto her breasts. Her head is a flower. It’s spare and beautiful. I bought it on the worldwide webs one night during the pandamnic. A friend asked did you draw that of your body? and I laughed because I don’t have flowers growing out of my underwear and onto my breasts. My head is not a flower either. It’s stuffed full of other stuff an aquarium maybe with a bunch of fish swimming by, swimming round and round, and dangling from my ear a piranha in a plastic bag.