(no subject)

The problem with being irritable is that irritability leads, along a variety of paths, to rather inevitable loneliness, and somehow I end up sitting mostly alone in a cold house with a tiny green-bound Bible, about the width of my palm, which I stole from Emmet to write my essay. It's a remarkable fun essay to write, because I know precisely what this teacher wants to hear, and the words come quite smoothly, with none of the indecision that never leaves me lonely.

I have to laugh at myself. "Irrational irritation," is an aesthetically appealing phrase.

The other night I was reminded of a book which I had quite forgotten. It's odd, how deeply child-things are embedded into a person's thoughts. This book, although I regret not being able to find a picture of the cover of the copy my grandma gave me for my eighth birthday. The stories in that book were delicious to my eight-year-old imagination, and I can hardly believe how completely I can remember each one, just by scanning the titles in the contents list Amazon gives me. "The King and the K" was the one that I knew the other night, but some of the others... "The King Who Was Fried," and "Kate Crackernuts," but most of all, "The House of Colored Windows."

The last was the story of a girl who, one boring afternoon, visited her neighbor's house. Her neighbor was a wizard, and had the most wonderful house. It had a thousand windows, each a different color. From the outside they looked just like windows, colorful (shiny), but only windows. But from the inside, as the girl discovered, they were much more fantastic. Each window looked into a different world, each one exotic and amazing and Interesting. She begged the wizard to send her to one, and after much persuading he agreed.

So she ran through the house, looking through each of the windows. One was red, and through it she saw a desert city of silk tents and camels--but no, it would be far too warm there. Another was blue, and she saw an ice queen with her sled of beautiful, bell-adorned reindeer, but it was too cold a place to choose to live. And so it was with all the windows. A pink one showed a land of cotton candy clouds--too airy, she would fall through! And another was a world of an endless circus, always exciting and interesting, but she imagined that even she could get tired of a circus that went on forever. A jungle, a spaceship, a palace, a meadow village--none were quite what she wanted. Because, as the wizard had warned her, once she picked one, she could never change her mind.

Eventually, when she had peered through each and every window and had still not found the perfect one, she confronted the wizard. "None of these are right!" she complained, and the wizard sadly protested that she had seen every window in the house. "Impossible." And then, hesitantly, he mentioned that there was one more window, but she wouldn't be interested in seeing it, oh no, it was quite dull.

But she insisted, and resignedly the wizard led her to the window, drew back its shabby gray curtain, and revealed a single window that was perfectly clear and colorless. And the girl saw a street, with plain trees and houses, and the nicest looking woman in the world, with a rather worried expression on her face, and this woman was calling her daughter to dinner.

"It's perfect! Why didn't you show it to me earlier?" said the girl, and without another word she hugged the wizard and ran out. And he could only shake his head wonderingly as she went home to her mother, her dinner, and her street.

I still love the story--all of them, really. Does this prove I've always been eight years old inside?

I need more cocoa.