14: not building any fairy houses

On the rare days when we actually get together before eleven PM, my sole in-town friend and I like to go hang out in the few interesting stores and look at shiny things. We haven't got a proper bookstore in town, just a Hastings, where the book section is an afterthought to the movies and music and video games, but it has enough of a selection to keep us amused. (If by some miracle we are both up, dressed, and fed before 5 in the evening, we also like to go to the library together.)

Once we found an arts'n'crafts book featuring photos by someone who builds tiny, meticulous, perfectly in scale fairy houses. They are like doll houses, except made of rocks and acorns and flowers and leaves and shit. Impressive, beautifully photographed, but also very depressing to two people who consider the day a success if they make it outside before sunset. Can you imagine the work, the creativity, and the insanity that goes into building little houses out of perishable materials that will be sad and wilted come the next day?? Yeah, it's art, performance art of a sort, and art is always allowed to be improbable and useless and impossible. But we both consider ourselves to be creative people, and at that moment we were silenced by how comparatively feeble our artistic attempts are. "Not building any fairy houses" became instant euphemism for "all I did this week was sprawl in bed with the cats, drooling at the ceiling and admiring the play of light across the walls."

I just woke up and have not yet gotten out of bed. I am not building any fairy houses these days.