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Footnotes and Frankensteins
Footnotes are a funny thing. It seems like they'd add something to the story, and they sometimes do, but if you put them right after a story, usually they diminish the effect instead. It's like stepping on your own punchline.
So here, a safe distance later, are some comments about the story in the previous entry. Needless to say, you should read that first.
I didn't make this story up. It is an Iraqi folktale, retold in my words and at greater length and detail. Like most folktales, several themes in it have been around the block a few times. The merchant bringing gifts for his daughters is how most Beauty and the Beast tales start out. The advice overheard from the animals is a classic item from all sorts of other tales (but having to actually kill the animals to follow it is a touch I'd never seen before). And the "don't tell anyone what happens in our bedroom" theme is truly an old chestnut - it goes back to the Cupid and Psyche myth.
The pun on "pearl" is not mine. The original is called Leelu, pearls, and the gimmick is the same. I have, however, changed Pearl's gender (in the original, the eldest daughter does not tell her parents what she has seen). Now everyone who thought that Leelu was just a made-up name for Milla Jovovitch's character in The Fifth Element can amaze their friends with Iraqi trivia.
(Speaking of Milla, is anyone besides me interested in seeing her play Joan of Arc?)
The two lines at the beginning of the story are my very free interpretation of a traditional chant that is recited before beginning a story.
There's a traditional rhyme for the end, too, but as I said, I don't like stepping on my punchlines.
Out on the town this afternoon. I had my new coat on with the wide furry collar, a purple dress shirt, partially buttoned with a black T-shirt underneath, tight jeans, and some of my big shiny black shoes. I was clean-shaven and slightly made up, and my hair was freshly washed, conditioned, et cetera with a new shipment of substances from Lush.
(The new shampoo smells like lemons; the new conditioner smells like coconuts. After I came out of the bathroom, Nonelvis wanted to eat my hair.)
I was obviously having a girl day, because my needs overcame my trepidation enough that I wore this ensemble to the auto dealership to get my car out of ransom.
After that, riding the subway downtown, I looked at my reflection in the opposite window and I realized Sharyn was right. I am intimidating. I don't want to be, and I hate the fact that just because I'm tall and have poofy hair and wear unconventional clothes, people will find me intimidating. But they do, and that's that.
Today, I realized, I looked a little like the Casanova Frankenstein character that Geoffrey Rush plays in Mystery Men. Except with Keri Russell's hair. Her old hair, before she ruined it.
And you know, that's not entirely a bad thing. The glam-rock look wears well on me, so I'm told. So long as it doesn't devolve into the pimp look - I worry about crossing that line.
These things are so hard to judge sometimes.
© Columbine
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