Sitting at my desk now, covered head to toe in glitter (it is medicinal, and if anybody asks I was "making Christmas decorations") I have a sudden urge to procrastocraft.
Today for the first time in six months my hands felt empty when I stepped onto my morning train, and I spent the journey to work gazing out of the window and thinking of Tita, my procrastocrafting hero.
I only made the connection today, but Tita is a procrastocrafter par excellence. In the film Like Water for Chocolate, Tita - the youngest daughter who shall never marry - must watch her beloved marry her older sister and fulfil his duty to God to produce a child. Tita is a passionate woman, whereas her sister is cold, and her unfulfilled desire is sublimated and expressed through her incredible cooking. Whatever she cooks is infused with the emotion she is currently experiencing, and reduces her family by turns to despair or passionate folly.
I will always be in love with the idea that a heartfelt emotion can be somehow captured and expressed through something material - it is afterall the main principle of magic. Why Tita came to mind today is because during the sleepless nights while her sister and her beloved are together, she knits. It becomes a compulsion, and her blanket grows until she is at last taken away by Dr John Brown in a carriage, with her voluminous blanket trailing behind the gig.
I feel a little like Tita today. I want to lose myself in the rhythm of my work; I want to channel my emotion into a material object that can be packed up and put away, or consumed, or used to envelop me. I have doused myself in glitter on a work day because I want to play.
If I were at home I would spin or brew but I am stuck here, stewing in
my juices.
I need to procrastocraft.
