Rosemary Kirstein

I tried to get to the local store that might have a chance of carrying Wind Horse flags… but the whole town was blacked out all week from the storm.

So, Amazon to the rescue.

Wind Horse

There’s a whole Variety Pack, to cover all your Wind Horse needs.

We hung the big ones outside.

The tiny ones are good for putting in your office.

Now, let’s review:

Yes, I am an atheist.

No, I do not think that the Wind Horse will magically, mystically help me through my hard times. That would be religion. Which I don’t have.

But, like the people who put up the Wind Horse before climbing Mount Everest, I’m embarking on an extremely difficult task. I need all the determination I can muster.

By flying the Wind Horse, I’m declaring to myself that I intend to prevail. And I’m reminding myself of that commitment.

It is far too easy to allow a bad situation to become the norm, and to simply plod through your days, enduring. It becomes second nature — and then first nature.

I need to prevent that happening, and keep my focus on the goal (Take action to sort out the insane situation at work; continue to be creative even while it’s going on).

And that’s why the Wind Horse. It’s a declaration, and a reminder. It stands out from the white-noise visual background of my surroundings as something new, remarkable, and significant.

And I also have to admit (as a full-grown adult woman who used to be a twelve-year-old girl, just like every other twelve-year-old girl), that a part of me is going:

Did you say, HORSE?
Did you say, wait — WIND horse? As in, horse that FLIES?

OMG!

I told you that I had a set of Wind Horse flags somewhere at home, and that I was going to put them up in symbolic acknowledgement of the difficulty of the task before me and declaration of my determination to persevere. However:

Worst. Wind Horse. Ever.

I do know that the idea is to leave the flags up until they become weathered and tattered and faded with age. However. It’s cheating to have them start out that way.

I know it looks like they’re printed on taffeta (already a bad idea), but no self-respecting taffeta looks like this!

They are obviously printed on the sort of material called “interfacing“, which garment makers use to stiffen up cloth in clothing. And particularly cheap interfacing at that. I remember in the dim and dusty days of my youth when I actually went through a phase of making my own clothing as a way of saving money. At the fabric store, there were several levels of quality available for your interfacing. In those days, not understanding the concept of “You get what you pay for”, I’d sometimes opt for bottom of the line. Which was so badly woven that as soon as you ran it through the sewing machine, it would immediately unweave itself around the stitches, and simply flop to the ground, possibly in an attempt to escape.

And clearly, the factory workers responsible for these flags had the same problem, as they’ve done multiple fold-overs, and run some of the flags through their machine several times in an attempt to get the so-called cloth to stay attached to the string.

c. unacceptable

Hmpf, say I.

I shall acquire a better-quality set of Wind Horse flags in my copious spare time. I think I know where to get some locally…

(Daily scarf still to come. It’s too early. Note bed-head above.)