Pay-Cuts, Paper-Cuts & The Tiniest of Violins

We get inspired.

We take out some paper and scissors and sit at the big glass table with all of our supplies and rip fabric into pieces and paint a piece of paper blue. We start downloading funny things to cut up into a tiny, secret, joke-related confetti to sprinkle onto this, our multi-media thing.

And it's working.

But then we walk away. We work for a while. We become all business like. We wear the other clothes. We say the other things. Those things we say only in business. And then, at four o-clock, at the big important meeting, they tell us about our 15% pay cut. And we had expected cupcakes.

Hours pass.

I come back home. On the train: And everyone, I mean everyone is wearing braids. We get home. We drink. We listen to the old music of yore. And, finally, we add the black grease crayon.

Finally.

To, this, the old blue and fabric thing. And It means something. No, we don't stop. Not until it's finished. And, at one point, we do get all righteous about it. We recall it like it was yesterday: The holding things up to mirrors just so that we could see them again. All the swearing. All the tears. All the money. All the vodka. All the cheetos. All the heavy scarves worn during summer months.

So, we started acting like this other person.

Add more black-grease wrought iron swirlything.

And more ink! Add more soap! Just simply breathe on it. It's what we do. We think of sky writing. Of people we've known. Of screens and faces and email and actual conversations: I told her a story this morning that made her keel over in painful laughter = I win.

(thinks)

You know, this dress is a clown's dress if you think about it.

I went home. Really home, that day.

I made a multi-media collage. And ate a wrap sandwich that did not stay wrapped and learned a couple of things: It's the ingredients that must, no matter what, be flat and skinny. It will not roll up otherwise.

Also: toothpicks. Toothpicks hold things together.

Seriously.

And make them the kind with the colorful flourish of plastic fantastic-ness on the decorative end.

Always.