girl number twenty: Be Afraid

Monday, 14 January 2008

Be Afraid

Yesterday, sitting on the couch, sick, Mr. S. and Safiya out for a walk, I watched for the first time "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". I think it worsened my condition. The acting is brutally good, but what toxic characters. So now I'm recovering, trying to get George and Martha out of my mind.

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Welcome!

This is my hopefully simpler, make-do, make-more, dirt-under-the-nails life. We've relocated from our little house in the middle of big Toronto to a slightly larger house in the smaller (but equally excellent) city of Hamilton, with many adventures on the way. Feel free to poke around, start a conversation, borrow ideas, and share ideas.

Please note that tutorials are not intended as patterns for commercial use. Also, do not copy content or photographs without my permission, but feel free to contact me if you wish to do so.

Thanks,
Marnie Saskin

*and hence, the name

'Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?'

There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir!' was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes; among them Sissy Jupe.

'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.

Sissy blushed, and stood up.

'So you would carpet your room -- or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband -- with representations of flowers, would you,' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'

'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.

'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?'

'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy --'

'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never to fancy.'

'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to do anything of that kind.'

- from "Hard Times" (chapter two) by Charles Dickens