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Never cut the wool

 

The Virgo male is cautious; bound by the astrological sign of earth, his rationality and steadfastness of spirit are undercut by often debilitating neuroses. His analytical nature and ability to determine the underlying motives of those he meets make him an ideal policeman or detective, but his inability to see past minor details and focus on the bigger picture inhibit his progress.

Take this scene for example: two men, sanguine with the type of confidence only a bristling mustache can provide, stand taut in front of a gold depository, their clenched fists slid into the meager pockets of identical chestnut colored felt waistcoats.

Large smoldering craters are visible near the entrance and ingots lie strewn across the asphalt like gassed locusts, the glinting flaxen spectrum culminating in an unmistakable pile at the feet of one of the men.

Detective Virgo, hunched double in the rear end of his police issue cruiser, cautiously studies the scene, seemingly motionless, caught in a marmoreal gaze.

He examines their beards from a safe distance, using steel rimmed binoculars to scan for the unmistakable remnant of breakfast: stray matted barbs of congealed egg. His eyes move purposely as he searches for coffee stains on their starched cuffs and checks the tips of their shoes for wayward yogurt. With a tentative ingress he arrives at the scene.

Fully ensconced, he attempts to deduce the type of weave used in their flocculent rib sheaths, using the back of a wooden spoon or palette knife (I haven’t decided yet) to tease the fibers, occasionally stopping to mold the wet felt in his hands, creating frilly edges and complex patterns. He uses a 40 triangle needle to meticulously weave the fine wispy layers together and ultimately produces simple but striking shapes that are tight enough to hold but loose enough to wear comfortably.

He agonizes over the finished product, but, dissatisfied, returns to the teasing process, ultimately overworking the fabric until it becomes tangled and dense.

His head, filled wide and heavy with the peat of a thousand stagnant investigations wheezes, and whilst his pale sinewy fingers, gummed together with black glutinous blobs of overly felted wool fumble, the two men, their midriffs long and bare, steal away into the night.

 

Scott Patterson

 

 

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