A Funny Thing--Details

MY hair is falling out like a bastard maniac. It is everywhere, on my clothing , the furniture, the floor. The little rivets on my purse are perfect little hair harvesters, every time the sunlight catches it there is a silver penumbra of strands hovering about.
The Interferon is out of my system, but the effects are more lasting. I'm not really complaining, it is a fine thing to be free of the disgusting consequences of my young stupid innocence.

But that is not the funny thing itself.

 I got some bullshit fake manila from China/Ebay,  probably not even real Manila which is supposed to be made from Abaca Banana leaves, it smells stinky like creosote and it is rough as a cob, and I didn't want to use it for a bolt-rope, and why should I when I have learned myself how to make the real thing.

After all the processes were processed and the jacks were all back in their boxes I could see why the old-timers could spend hours and days and lifetimes handling hemp rope and the scraps and shreds of yarns. The stuff is beautiful.

This here hempen rope project is moving right along and reaching a stage of confidence and completion.
Hemp is a natural fiber, the European variety producing longer strands, which is what I have been using, but they start and stop throughout the length of the yarns, and when you look close the effect is a bit shaggy.

I am thoroughly hooked on the process as well as the product, but the closer you look, the drinker you smoke, and the player you get. Or something. I had to make myself stop and go to bed last night at one AM.

So last night I was putting the finishing touches on my new bolt-rope and terribly satisfied with the product, inordinately proud of myself,  when the light caught it just right and I saw where the hemp had, over the several days of working with the jig and the spacer in my apartment and dragging back and forth across the tile floor, the fibers of the rope had pretty effectively swept up about a metric dick-load of cast-off hairs and the entire length of hemp had a halo of silver hair radiating like accompanying angels.

This stuff feels like it is alive in your hand, soft and strong and cunning. A pass through a flame and it will be just right. Stinky, although I cannot recall a more agreeable stench.

But I have read the literature.

What the authorities say to do, if your rope has shaggy bits, is to singe them off like you do when you pluck the Christmas Goose. So that is what I did. Now my apartment stinks of burning hair, which is fine, I am overwhelmed with the stuff and you can't get rid of it so it might as well burn it, and burning hair does stink. .  And so does burning hemp.

1968, when this was taken, was one thing, but the following summer there was no pot to be had in San Francisco. I remember in particular one night out at Morningstar Ranch in upper outer Marin County stripping stems and smashing seeds and not getting high, not really, even though we thought we might, and we said we did,  a little anyway. I woke up with a very sore throat but I dropped acid anyway.

And Oh Lord that pungent smell takes me back. To the summer of '69, the great reefer drought, smoking the stems, when we all sat around and dug out the rolling box, and stripped all the skin off the stems left over, and the entire west coast stunk to  high heaven of burning marijuana sticks limbs and branches, the stink of it now in my apartment and I associate that sharp sour smell with panhandling for  gallon jugs of Red Mountain wine, and with the soul mystery of patchouli oil, and my god that was half a century ago. A peculiar smell will do that,  take you right back to the day, as if time had stood still..I had such hope then...I was so very young.

This is actually the waiting room at the free clinic but it reminds me of every crash pad in the Haight.