the desire to float in a bubble

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: "I'll go take a hot bath."

I meditate in the bath. The water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in it. Then you lower yourself, inch by inch, till the water's up to your neck.

I remember the ceiling over every bathtub I've stretched out in. I remember the texture of the ceilings and the cracks and the colors and the damp spots and the light fixtures. I remember the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs, and the fancy pink marble tubs overlooking indoor lily ponds, and I remember the shapes and sizes of the water taps and the different sorts of soap holders.

I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.

taken from: The Bell Jar, by: Sylvia Plath

oh what a tangled tapestry we weave

Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, ... If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?
--Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49, Chapter 1

Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.
-- Thomas Pynchon's Proverbs for Paranoids: Collected from Gravity's Rainbow, V237, 241, 251, 262, & 292

Pictured: The Lady and the Unicorn, tapestry, ca: 1490
Worthy of mention: Unicorn Mythology with regard to maidens

six impossible things, an introduction

“Only it is so very lonely here!” Alice said in a meloncholy voice, and at the thought of her lonliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh don’t go on like that!” cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. “Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come today. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. “Can you keep from crying by considering things?” She asked.

“That’s the way it’s done,” the Queen said with great decision: “nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let’s consider your age to begin with - how old are you?”

“I’m seven and a half exactly.”

“You needn’t say ‘exactually’,” the Queen remarked: “I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” THe Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use in trying,” she said: “One can’t believe in impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast…”

-Lewis Carrol: Through the Looking Glass