RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
2001-02-08
It�s with a pang that I've removed the link to torquil�s diary tonight but he stuck on this password protection deal so I just backed away. A pity to lose that trans-continental flavor, but there you go, so long Banquo�s ghost. I�ll admit now that I had become convinced, while we were �linked� (from my end only, of course), that my writing was disturbing him somehow. The entry in which Thor was crossing the river with his hammer and the river started running hard with the menstrual blood of a giantess who was straddling the river upstream�I said to people, �Don�t you think THAT one�s about me?� It's sad because now they'll never know.
But I have just one more Martha Stewart thing to say.
My black canvas shoulder bag, the one I took to India, was very dear to me for the way its fittings clinked like spurs. Months after my return, while I was still living in Boston, the rubber shoulder strap guard snapped, and this excellent bag�s one design flaw was that the strap guard couldn�t be replaced. So I fashioned a stylish sort of bandage out of silver duct tape and carried on, applying new tape as the old tape frayed.
I�ve owned a few purses, but they left me cold, with their little pop buttons and ceremonial locks and cloth-muffled zippers. I could never connect with them as I could with a backpack (as now with my bags) slung over one shoulder�in fact without the comfort such slinging affords me I couldn�t connect at all. All my stuff, my kleenex, my notebook, my chapstick, my powder, my reading, my bottle of water�I have to have it, without it I�m only faking my presence, my appearance is only provisional. In fact, any occasion upon which I am able to leave the house without my bag is one I mark as an important step in my slow, slow march towards mental health.
Two year ago almost to this very day, I was attending the Westminster Dog Show with my mother when I happened to notice a stir of heads and lights over by the chow-chow judging ring. I remember that I had just come from the ladies room where I had checked the duct tape on my shoulder strap for wear and tear; it had been a couple of days during which the desirability of my acquiring a �nice new bag� had been emphasized repeatedly. I remember and I know that my bag and I were holding firm when I betook myself around the concrete walkway which rims the Madison Square Garden floor (leaving my mother to catch up? in a chair? where?�this I've forgotten) to get a closer look at the tall, golden-headed figure which was flashing like an ancient breastplate in the hand-held lights�to see, if possible, the golden, river-straddling face of Martha Stewart, and if I were blessed, to catch her eye.
Although it happened across a considerable distance, I was successful. Spotted, somehow, when she looked up and to her left�well before I was quite ready�I felt the bamboo skewer of her spotter mechanism mark me with a tiny check mark of rebuke, and then move on. I paused (as I recall, for breath) and raised my right hand to my shoulder strap, to rest it. To my extreme surprise, I found my shiny band of duct tape all burst open, and the two sides of the broken shoulder guard jutting up like the bridge over the Cape Cod Canal when the big ships pass through.