making jokes about the way things are

I’ve been reading Scottish fairy tales. They’re a bit odd. Then I looked up the way other languages start and end such stories. Some of the translations made me laugh. So ours is: ‘Once upon a time... and they lived happily ever after.’

Or, in German: Es war einmal... 'Once there was...'...und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute. '...and if they haven't died yet, they are still living today.'

Or, in Georgian: "Iko da ara iko ra, iko..." 'There was, and there was not, there was...'

Or, Spanish: Érase/Había una vez... 'There was, once...' Common ending: ... y vivieron felices para siempre/y comieron perdices. '...and they lived happy forever/and ate partridges.'

Or, Turkish: Bir varmış, bir yokmuş. Evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde... 'Once there was, once there wasn't. In the old times, the sieve in a stack of hay...'

Amusement. Partridges and sieves in stacks of hay. People who, if they haven’t died, are alive.

Contrastingly, I’ve had Ani Difranco on a constant loop in my mind for the last few days, mainly ‘You had time’, or ‘light of some kind’. It’s funny having her voice in my head, because she’s really different from me in so many ways, but kind of similar in others. I guess mainly I just like the lack of certainty, the lyrics, the ambiguity, the fragile confidence.

Sometimes, I agree that people are 90% metaphor. Sometimes I realise that there are things in life which make me sad. Sometimes I pull apart stranger’s fences.

I’m ridiculously excited about someone posting my something. My entire day has been made by the texts of this morning. I felt like rolling over and going back to sleep after them because the day couldn’t possibly get better. And then I tasted the pillow with my grin and realised I couldn’t hide from myself for ever.

Yay for shirts belonging to other people and Alice blowing beer breath at me in the middle of the night. Yay for baked beans and crisps wraps at 1am. Yay for making out next to Mein Kampf, or in the bath tub. Yay for being just a leeetle bit drunk. Not so much yay for having to wake up at 7, and then crawling back to bed only to be woken up by mothers ranting about why whiskey is bad. She is wrong. Whiskey makes the world go round (at least, vision wise it does).