So, remember that Beanie Baby armadillo I mentioned owning, my very first one? The one I snipped the tag off of, and gave to my cats for a cat toy? It's worth $55 in mint condition. And remember Velvet, the black cat that turned out to be a panther? I left the tag on that one and kept it out of the way of the cats. It's just been discontinued, which insures it is now collectible.
Sigh. Whatever happened to toys for toys' sake?
Cane thumping aside, I find myself wanting to do something I haven't done since I was a child: I want to build a diorama. I want to make an elaborate display case for some of my stuffed animals just to amuse myself. I used to build really cool cardboard box stables for my collection of plastic molded horses. Gosh, I wonder what happened to those? Anyway, I used bits of fabric for decoration, and drew on the cardboard, and glued partitions, and just generally had a grand old time. This was the same era when I was staying up after my bedtime ruining my eyes by reading in the moonlight. Of course, this was also the same era of being bullied after school and suffering deeply over the impenetrable mysteries of algebra. Ah, halcyon days of youth.
Building a diorama would be amusing, though I'm not sure what kind of environment I'd need to house a bat, a panther, an emporer penguin, a pig, a beaver, a rhino, a dog, and an armadillo. I guess I'm in the mood to be creative in a tactile way. So much of what I do these days is written or computer manipulated imagery. It's occured to me that I've given up a lot of the activities I once found vital to my peace of mind. Drawing, painting, making little houses for my animals, singing, dancing. When did I stop using my body? Seems like all my creativity has gone upstairs now, and my body just sits for hours while my mind works away. It seems odd when I think about the contrast, that's all. I don't understand why the flip-flop occured, and I like to know why when my behavior changes so radically without a conscious effort.
I have a free weekend, free of social obligations, that is, coming up. I think I'll make two dioramas, a jungle (rhino, bat, panther, armadillo, and penguin -- think South Africa) and a woodsy homestead. I'll coax my old habit out again and lose myself in the pleasures of making something by hand. Then I'll give in to the current habit by taking a photo of it with my new Epson digital camera and post it for your viewing pleasure. I'll just have to hope my dioramas don't turn into collectibles.
