Dear Enthusiasts,
Things are in disrepair. They usually are, but the first problem to tackle is the decision of what to fix and what to give up on. It's clear from reading other pages here, and even from the words I used to write the previous sentence, that I am always sorry to have to give up on things. I love repaired things; damaged things, even.
The old rocking chair on the porch has a split cane seat woven in a complex pattern. The stuff must be soaked, and then woven, and the oak of the armrests and the rockers is worn out of shape, and there are checks and splinters aplenty. Repairing the seat and back will only be a temporary stay against utter uselessness as a chair.
Still, I thought we might try a webbing seat instead of the split cane, and so I consulted the Ashley Book of Knots. With any luck, you have a copy already, because it is a really wonderful book, with beautiful illustrations and fascinating names and purposes for the many knots and plaits.
Whenever I look up a knot in this book, I also read the inside back flap of the crumbling dust jacket. I look at this flap because it's where I begin straightening the paper tatters when I open or close the book. I always look at dashing Clifford W. Ashley, and I read this sentence:
Clifford W. Ashley had two ruling passions all his life: marine painting and knot tying.
I know you will love this sentence as I do, and so perhaps you will want to stop reading here now, and go forth into the future with your unique relationship to this arrangement of words. I don't really think you need me to tell you how I feel about these words, after all. If you did, though, wonder, after considering what they say to you first, I could tell you that I like to imagine my picture there, on the flap, and to think of what my life under two ruling passions might read like, to consider what the 620 pages would be filled with. I never get too far imagining this before I find that two passions isn't anything like enough passions. But then I allow as how these are not just any two passions, these, are the Sovereign Passions, and so maybe I really ought to be able to select two to be my Queen and King and to serve under them happily?
