FIRED

Pepperidge Farm, I suppose if you want to make a cookie with gooey chocolate in it, rather than solid, and call it "Milano Melts", that's fine; but you are DEAD TO ME for having the bags printed with the words, and I quote from my television just now, dark classic créme.

That is all.

ink jewelry

I've been thinking for aaages about getting another tattoo - I'm not a much-decorated person, but I do have a Celtic knot on the outside of my right ankle, which I got on my 21st birthday when studying in Scotland (as well as six earrings, though I'm done piercing) - but I've never done it for the extremely good reason that I've never been able to decide what I wanted, or where.

But the past few days I can't get out of my head that what I want for the new tattoo is text, in an anklet - around my left ankle, I should think, because I don't want it to collide with the knot, which is about an inch across and lives about an inch above the anklebone, so it would be hard to get text all the way around that ankle without running into it. So the left ankle it is.

As for what text - I've been thinking about various things ("and all manner of thing shall be well"; "everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt"; "if you do not bring me a bouquet of these flowers in three days' time, I shall turn you to stone"), but what I keep coming back to is a poem by George Herbert, "A Wreath", which we sang a setting of in my chorus five years ago and which I love, love, love:

A wreathed garland of deserved praise,
Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,
I give to thee, who knowest all my wayes,
My crooked winding wayes, wherein I live,
Wherein I die, not live : for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,
To thee, who art more farre above deceit,
Then deceit seems above simplicitie.
Give me simplicitie, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know thy wayes,
Know them and practise them : then shall I give
For this poore wreath, give thee a crown of praise.

And I've seen it printed in a wreath, see? Like this -


- which is how I would get it around my ankle in a circle. If I could work out how to do it. I think if I had the lines angled from bottom to top (or top to bottom), then the end of the last line could come in "before" the beginning of the first line ... couldn't it? I'm not doing well thinking of this thing in three dimensions. Maybe tomorrow I'll print out the lines and practice taping them to my leg to see if it works.