Tuesday, January 22, 2013

the whimsical and strange

I have to say that I really, really like the backs of the Dreaming Way tarot. That particular shade of green is one of my favorites, and the aesthetic of it as a whole...it has this vintage, 60's or 70's kind of vibe in my mind, a touch of gaudiness that just...very much appeals.

A gaudy kind of whimsy. I admit to having rather unusual tastes in some many ways. Sometimes in old houses with walls painted in white or pastel tones you can find areas where the paint has chipped off and beneath some kind of older, bright colored wallpaper with a flower design - it looks vaguely ridiculous by today's standards and I very much wish the whole of the house was still like that. As a kid I slept on sheets that came with the house my parents had bought - bright blue with bright yellow and white and green colored flowers, quite nicely drawn. It was a disappointment, later shopping for sheets in stores, to realize that such designs simply aren't sold anymore. Tacky, people might call them. So I settle for black, an all-black contrast to any room because I need that sense of the visually vivid in some form.

I would wallpaper a room with the design on the backs of these cards. I would hang such curtains in my windows.

Just about everyone who spends any amount of time with me in person, and around whom I feel comfortable enough to act like 'myself' rather than carefully work on the facade of being what you want to see, ie. 'appropriate adult', sooner or later tells me that I am strange, odd, bizarre.

Whimsy. I especially like the whimsy shown in this particular Page of Cups. It fleshes out the idea of the fish in the cup, takes it further - this cup has polka dots and she wears a tea pot on her head and the fish are swimming through the air and why not, all of this? Why not?

Whimsy. If not for the presidential inauguration making bus tickets to expensive, I would have gone to visit friends in New York for the weekend just passed. I had a brilliant idea of going to a bakery and having them decorate us a Martin Luther King day cake, and roping everyone into an impromptu MLK day party - because why not celebrate a federal holiday as you would other holidays, with cake? Why not feast on processed sugar to commemorate the accomplishments of that great civil rights pioneer?

I hate the idea of driving a car and hope I never have to, but if I did and if money was not an issue, I would totally choose to drive something odd: a tiny, clunky Eastern European car from the 1960's painted, perhaps in burgundy or a nice blue, for extra effect. I want to adopt rats and give them funny names when I move again, somewhere that allows pets. I want to one day have at least two cats, and have one of them be a hairless sphynx because they look so bizarre and it makes me squee in delight to see them. Phone conversations with closest friends tend to take very particular turns, often stemming from some random subjects I have recently used the vast power of the internet to learn about in detail: the life of bearded ladies, the unassisted childbirth movement, the process of draining abscesses, a particularly 'yucky' but highly effective treatment for chronic anti-biotic resistant bowel infections, the history of counterfeiting in the United States...

And, after all, why not?

5 comments:

thesycamoretree said...

I always feel more at ease with people who are odd and quirky than with those who are straitlaced. :D

Carla said...

Each to his own, most definitely. I'm a 'why not' on most things. Though my 'why not' is usually phrased 'It doesn't matter' or 'Nobody cares.' Meant in the nicest way, of course. In the grand scheme of things (if there is a grand scheme, which I doubt), it doesn't matter -- drive what you like, paper your room with what you like, sleep on whatever sheets you like, talk about what you like. Nobody cares! Or as you put it, 'Why not?' I think we've got a similar attitude. :) Though I personally would rather have a fat little short-haired guinea pig than a rat, and a funny-looking mixed breed dog than a cat of any type. Not a cat person, me. :) I do love that teapot-on-the-head card, I remember it from Chloe's blog. And you may have noticed, I am warming to the Thoth's art. I can now actually look at all the cards without having a sense that there's something unwholesome going on in there somewhere. (Well...most of the time!)

MLF said...

I have recently used the vast power of the internet to learn about in detail: the life of bearded ladies, the unassisted childbirth movement, the process of draining abscesses, a particularly 'yucky' but highly effective treatment for chronic anti-biotic resistant bowel infections, the history of counterfeiting in the United States...

Funny - I thought I was the only person who liked to research about bizarre subjects. My last topics were: types of military hats, dominance and submission (erm... we are editing "Story of O" here at work), Anne Boleyn, ganglion cysts (and how to treat them by hitting them with heavy books)... yeah, these are the ones I can remember from this morning.

Sometimes people say we are quirky because we are the one of the species among them... but the fact is that there are a lot of strange people out there. Each one strange in their own way (which makes them less likely to ever form a group of strangelins, lol).

I'm sure you brighten your friends life. :) When we are strange, somehow we give other people the freedom to admit - or at least come in terms with - their own strangeness.

Inner Whispers said...

I love the backs of those cards, too :) And at one point I had a place wallpapered in French Rococo style wallpaper - all big flowers and curvy, geometrical shapes! As you say, why not? Even now, my living room is painted a sunny yellow, with a bright red sofa and blue throw pillows, and a papier mache giraffe with a glittery blue, yellow and pink waistcoat - lol.
Quirky and whimsical add some colour to life - and why not!

Carla said...

Well, for that matter, my living room is done up in shades of chicken tikka orange and brick red, and all the pictures on the wall are child-like art or souvenir postcards, with Pac-Man, Mouse Guard, Wall-E and Eva figures sitting on every surface, and a table piled with decks and decks of tarot cards. (Not to mention the rainbow of hexagonal dumbbells stacked in the corner by the TV). Kinda odd! And why not? :D

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