scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

19.3.04

when i was very small - not that this has stopped, but - my mother's flower garden, on either side of the front walk, grew gigantic yellow tulips. they were taller than i was, and i had to bend them over (or have them bent for me) to see the flowers. (i've seen them now that i'm a grown-up, and they're still fairly tall, and stocky, for tulips.) huge, potbellied, evil, yellow flowers, and red ones, and stripey ones. yellow ones were the biggest, though, and the worst. i think i thought i might fall in. Those bulging cheeks ...

i thought that the tulips were a cross between tigers (which i had seen in books) and bees (which happened in matter-of-fact everyday life, and people were afraid of), what with all the black and yellow stripiness and those evil-looking black toothy-stingers in the center. i thought, very specifically, that they would kidnap me, and bite me, and sting me, and that it would hurt a lot.

i did not think that i was in danger of actual death, i think, only because i didn't know what that was yet.

It probably didn't help that my dad thought it would be funny to teach me to pretend i was choking when nice people offered flowers for me to smell. But.

sylvia plath had a funny thing, too. and look - i'm not alone ... but if someone googles fear of tulips or toulipaphobia ... hi.

So getting stoned in Amsterdam was a little bit surreal, yes.

Labels: reflection

scrawled @ 22:05