Sunday, September 08, 2002

A couple weeks ago I

A couple weeks ago I was sitting around with some friends when someone needed a pipecleaner.  I reached into my sack and pulled out a packet of B.J. Longs that I’d bought on a whim six months earlier.  I’d barely touched them, they’d lain not forgotten but unused all this time.  I handed one over and put the rest of the bundle on the plank table, fuzzy orange-flecked spines rolled tight in a plain paper wrapper.  I don’t remember who went for them first, or what was the first thing they made.  I remember speck made a verb quite early on - present imperative: “do”.  Later there were sentences, animals, spirals and a general haze.  Megan cut her finger on the stiff orange scraperbristles - she pinched her finger for me, showed me her blood, sucked it clean and delicately sipped her Stella before returning to her pipecleaner.  I couldn’t help but notice that all this creativity was being unleased by something I’d bought, I’d brought, but that I’d totally ignored; what else was I carrying that I wasn’t using?  At one point g.b. and I were talking about one of the animals and one of the spirals, and I seemed to remember something about pig parts.  This was still pretty early in the evening, actually…