Tonight, now that the weather has begun to turn, I will again begin to sleep upstairs, having latterly slept, in this strange, disquieting, unseasonal heat, on the futon bed in the guest room. In a mood of enchantment brought on by Murasaki Shikibu and Kenneth Rexroth's anthology of Japanese women poets, how can I not think of this as a counterpart to one of the Emperor's ritualized moves from palace to palace? I am lacking only--well, I am lacking layered multicolored robes, palanquins of hidden beauties, Shinto rites, fawning courtiers, flowering trees--and an Empire.
This morning, to my dismay, I was selected for a brief criminal trial. My prior experience has been that I have precisely the sort of education that makes one, in a lawyer's eyes, uppity--but I was not spared this time, or rather, I was honored with the privilege to serve. I was foreman for the six-person jury, and it was not difficult for us to arrive at a unanimous verdict in our little larceny case.
Last night, I confronted a wasp at my back door, hovering in what appeared to be a state of meditation near the top of the back door window. No Buddhist, I swatted at her with the bit of cloth I had in my hand, and she fell, as far as I could ascertain, to the mudroom rug. I went out on my errand, but as I grasped the inner knob to close the door again, I felt a sharp pain, like the entry of a pin, into my right thumb: my first wasp sting. My remarks on the wasp's character and morals do not bear repeating: suffice it to say that she fell at once to the ground, and is now stinging with the angels.
Since this was my first venture with Aculeata, I was curious to learn how I might react. "Well, " I reasoned, if I die in the next twenty minutes, I'm allergic." I went upstairs, washed, applied rubbing alcohol, and then a little witches' brew of antibiotic and analgesic ointments, wrapped in two bandaids. So far, so good.
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