lwa talk, in a manner of sorts
Oct. 29th, 2003 03:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thejunipertreeI had decided to go to bed early tonight, as I wasn't feeling up to par. Instead, I drowsed aimlessly and uneasily until I got up and paced around the apartment.
Last night, I took a bath. I don't usually use the bathtub, as opposed to the shower, because the tub in this apartment is so goddamn unsatisfying. I cranked the hot water up high enough to boil a pound of crawdads and washed my hair using a plastic cup. A tricky manuver, when you've hair as long and unruly as I do.
The water turned a strange blue colour, from the dye I use to change dirty blonde to black. Cupping it in my hands, I brought it close to my face and watched the play of the overhead light filter through the shower curtain onto the surface of the water.
Drained the blue water out, then ran more hot water in. Clean and clear, no trace of the blue tinge. Some weeks ago, I had bought these fizzy bath things. Three of them in all, of varying scents. The one I threw in the water now was vanilla sugar, a scent that makes me remember childhood. My maternal grandmother's kitchen, which strangely smelled of vanilla at all times despite the fact that the woman never baked anything. I was perpetually amazed that it didn't reek of vodka and Rolling Rock in that house, as that was pretty much all she ever ingested.
The water level rose to dangerous levels before I finally turned it off and I leaned back into it, until the back of my head rested against the cold and uncomfortable ledge. For about the millionth time in my life, I desperately missed the tubs I encountered in Britain. Now those were absolutely gorgeous. I could lie completely prone in one of them, stretch out full length. At 5'3", that's really not all that much to stretch out. But, the tubs in the States were apparently built for dwarves to luxuriate in. I remember lying in the bath in a hotel room in Scotland years ago, wondering how I could smuggle it back onto the airplane. One of these days, I'm going to save up the money for a session in one of those sensory deprivation tanks. Just for the pure and simple reason of being able to stretch out and float properly.
I slid down in my unsatisfactory tub, in my pink bathroom which has been jokingly described as 'palatial', until my hair fanned out in the water all around me. My knees bumped up against the faucet as I stared up at old waterstains on the ceiling. Closing my eyes, I drifted with water muting my ears. Nothing but the sound of my heartbeat and the rain falling outside of my oubliette of a window, remembering how when I was a kid we lived in an apartment complex with a pool. And I would spend hour upon hour just floating face up in it, staring at the sky. My skin ripened to the darkest its ever been in my entire life and the chlorine tinted my hair green. For months afterward, I had water blisters on my hands.
Despite having been born under an air sign, and not especially believing in all of that sort of stuff anyway, I am a creature of the water. There is nothing I like better then being surrounded by it. The ocean. Streams. The cedar water of the nearby Pine Barrens. Rain.
All of it.
And for this, before I go back to bed, I'll light a candle for La Sirene.
Last night, I took a bath. I don't usually use the bathtub, as opposed to the shower, because the tub in this apartment is so goddamn unsatisfying. I cranked the hot water up high enough to boil a pound of crawdads and washed my hair using a plastic cup. A tricky manuver, when you've hair as long and unruly as I do.
The water turned a strange blue colour, from the dye I use to change dirty blonde to black. Cupping it in my hands, I brought it close to my face and watched the play of the overhead light filter through the shower curtain onto the surface of the water.
Drained the blue water out, then ran more hot water in. Clean and clear, no trace of the blue tinge. Some weeks ago, I had bought these fizzy bath things. Three of them in all, of varying scents. The one I threw in the water now was vanilla sugar, a scent that makes me remember childhood. My maternal grandmother's kitchen, which strangely smelled of vanilla at all times despite the fact that the woman never baked anything. I was perpetually amazed that it didn't reek of vodka and Rolling Rock in that house, as that was pretty much all she ever ingested.
The water level rose to dangerous levels before I finally turned it off and I leaned back into it, until the back of my head rested against the cold and uncomfortable ledge. For about the millionth time in my life, I desperately missed the tubs I encountered in Britain. Now those were absolutely gorgeous. I could lie completely prone in one of them, stretch out full length. At 5'3", that's really not all that much to stretch out. But, the tubs in the States were apparently built for dwarves to luxuriate in. I remember lying in the bath in a hotel room in Scotland years ago, wondering how I could smuggle it back onto the airplane. One of these days, I'm going to save up the money for a session in one of those sensory deprivation tanks. Just for the pure and simple reason of being able to stretch out and float properly.
I slid down in my unsatisfactory tub, in my pink bathroom which has been jokingly described as 'palatial', until my hair fanned out in the water all around me. My knees bumped up against the faucet as I stared up at old waterstains on the ceiling. Closing my eyes, I drifted with water muting my ears. Nothing but the sound of my heartbeat and the rain falling outside of my oubliette of a window, remembering how when I was a kid we lived in an apartment complex with a pool. And I would spend hour upon hour just floating face up in it, staring at the sky. My skin ripened to the darkest its ever been in my entire life and the chlorine tinted my hair green. For months afterward, I had water blisters on my hands.
Despite having been born under an air sign, and not especially believing in all of that sort of stuff anyway, I am a creature of the water. There is nothing I like better then being surrounded by it. The ocean. Streams. The cedar water of the nearby Pine Barrens. Rain.
All of it.
And for this, before I go back to bed, I'll light a candle for La Sirene.
