Jana had little idea what to expect when she entered the Peculiarium on that strange Portland side street. The nine foot Sasquatch that greeted her and enveloped her intrepid companion in a Yettie embrace seemed like a fortuitous start. She hadn't know an hour earlier when she asked for a :Big Old Cup of Black Black Tea that it would arrive as requested and require two hands to quaff it. It was a surprise when the glass gallery featured extruded predators birds of prey, Strange Young Girls with heads of lambs and rabbits, and hyperbolic planes knit out of glass; and when the ladies in the back of the labyrinth Cargo store laughed when she asked if they might have any wish lanterns, because they had just finished pricing and tagging two thousand of them. By the time her "salad" arrived smash round and vertical she was getting less surprised, so it was no surprise at all when the waiter wrote a haiku in her journal.
Make today mysterious. Go seek tiny adventures. Look for clues. Ask lots of questions. Make friendly eye contact in foreign ports (even if it's that weird gas station you never go to). Travel far and wide to a strange land (Scio? Brownsville? Valley of the Giants?) and take your recording devices: camera, watercolors, reporter's notebook, a tape recorder. Gather evidence to add to those of fellow detectives, and we will see what alchemical product we can assemble.
This quest requires a sense of bravery, whimsey, non-judgment and perhaps a mindset borrowed from a foreign stranger. Collect souvenirs and report back.You know that you know what to do.
2 comments:
Jana, were you possibly a reader of Louise Fitzhugh's HARRIET THE SPY as a child? Harriet did exactly this. :0)
i had no idea that harriet also had encounters with sasquatch and heathman waiters who wrote haiku.
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i wore that book out, though.
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