The chore to tessellate the floors, the walls, the ceilings
Tiling was what it was all about
-Mosaics were already as popular as trout
Whether it was polygonal semi-iregular
Or just some hyperbolic geometry
It needed to be done.
This act of reproducing patterns came well before
copy and pasting
And whether it was an act of addiction or
A way to find inner peace
A Spock would say "fascinating" with
One eyebrow raised.
A few thousand years later the jigsaw puzzle is invented A challenging learning device to learn maps, geography and history And ever since puzzles have run away! Today, puzzlephiles abound, spending hours, days on 2, 3 5000 piece puzzles that need to be assembled, then dissembled. And if you're a puzzle fiend then You've got a puzzle language to go: "I need a top negative green piece with a heavy grain of pasture divided by a horizontal line showing the head of a sheep but only with one eye and a lower positive round but fat round shape."
or, "this piece that fits into the water around Venice has to have an elongated top with a light green hue with downward jagged movements that are seemingly similar to another 300 pieces that make up the water..."
Fortunately you don't have to be a Galieo, a Marie Curie, a Decartes or a Freud To puzzle And if you dream you are Tripping over gondolas, cows or the nose of La Gioconda
Then your life is a wandering puzzle log Looking to fit from the inside to the outside.
Just when you thought Jane Austin's Marianne Dashwood reflected the ultimate in unrequited love, in Soapless City, by Jamesola Langola, we witness Nigel, an ambitious dry cleaner in the south of London, who has fallen for Mary, a voluptuous marketing assistant at Clive Christian perfumes. With heart-rending tension from the families who oppose each other for political beliefs (Mary is out and Nigel in) this sexually charged novel is peppered by Brexit: with all european trade deals gone bonkers neither Nigel nor Mary (nor any Brit for the record) can wash themselves. Mary qualifies her fiancé as a "stinking mule" but she falls in her own trap because she starts to stink too. Can they both go on stinking and hating each other? Who can save this relationship? Questions and mysteries abound and the ice becomes constantly thinner between the protagonists as time goes on.
Yet somewhere in a dark basement in Sussex a certain Tony, a scientist with a big ambition and even a bigger mouth, is working frantically to produce a new soap. A soap that does all. A soap that washes all. A soap so powerful it calls itself "Powerbull".
Still, will this soap get on the shelves of the Icelandic frozen food chain before Mary and Nigel separate? And what about the English national football team? What about it? As Brexit turns London and other metropolises into "Soapless Cities" and tense battling fields, Mary and Nigel's egg-breaking relationship is just a detail like a painting of Bruegel's. Langola's writing courses like a river, sometimes black with mud, sludge and stains, sometimes bright with moon bleach. Danger of love is omnipresent, even after combat recedes; nature careless and the lack of soap is monumental. "This is the novel of the century" offering hallucinations caused by privation, be it physical detergent or hunger or erotic yearning of the soul they are unapologetically evoked in this masterpiece.Langola exploits Brexits aftershocks in the sumptuous futuristic dystopian novel that one loves as an allergy loves a sneeze. Not since Tale of Two Cities has literature reached such a level. A Booker Prize runner up. The Gardian.
I want to have an ironing party All my friends will be invited to Bring one shirt No short sleeves We shall compete in the basement around My grandmother's ironing board We shall use cotton and Steam settings No starch allowed if You're under 18 Judges will award points for Speed, creaselessness and eloquence Ramming into a button and tearing it off Is not acceptable but A rhythmic song, an ode to
Beautiful, pleated clothes That complements the rising puffs of steam May earn you a medal.
Like Magellum, a good ironer requires a brute
sensibility to Navigate over creases
that ressemble a cotton moving glacier One needs to predict how the textile landscape is going to React By intuiting how a crease behaves on the flip side of the Breast pocket and Pulling with delicate fingers the fabric till it's taught At my party
You can iron if you're left or right handed You can iron even if you forget those little Plastic ice cream collar sticks And you can iron if you have a muddled understanding of how Heated polymers can allow a fabric To take on a new shape to the benefit of all. At my party just knowing the patent number of the First electric flatiron iron Made on June 6th, l882 (Patent number 259,054 -the 054 being the same last 3 digits of My social security number) May just be distracting trivia But if you can spew out the settings for Spandex (135 C) Wool (l48 C) and Linnen (230 to 240 C) Refuse to wear Permanent Press articles then You are welcome to my party anytime!
