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woolsrake commented on how, in NYC, the smearing of ashes on your forehead is a much bigger deal than anywhere else he's been.
My first experience of it was the first spring I was working on Wall St - I was living up in Westchester then and took a train into Grand Central and then the subway down to Wall St. I went in early so I didn't really notice anything until I went out for lunch and saw all these people with these black smears on their foreheads. I had a real paranoid thought that there was something bad about to happen and the people who were in on it had marked themselves and I got very close to getting some dirt out of the gutter and smearing it on my forehead just in case. I had *no* idea what was going on. The fact that some of them were actually in the sign of the cross made me even more paranoid since my fear of people with religious beliefs being able to adopt yet another wacko idea that could include causing me physical harm is unbounded.
Then, for some reason, I put it together. "Ash". "Wednesday". I knew there were lots of superstitious rites of spring that humans seem to like and that the christians took over from the previous cults, and I remember my aunt on my father's side having woven pieces of palm from "palm sunday" under a pretty little shrine to the BVM that inspired me to wrap myself in sheets and hobble around in my mother's heels as a small boy, and I know that Mardi Gras has something to do with the christian passover where you are supposed to give up something for some reason (I guess instead of sacrificing a lamb or your child) and Easter is coming up, I think, so I felt better that this was a "gabba gabba one of us! one of us!" thing for catholics and it didn't mean that I was going to be jumped upon like Montgomery Clift and torn apart and eaten. Plus there was no one with a tiny waist and very pointy tits watching.
It still spooks me, though. Yesterday I was talking to a co-worker and another one came up behind us and said something and I turned around and he had this big black smear on his forehead and I looked and involuntarily made a noise and stepped back. The only way I could explain it was "Sorry, I thought something bad had happened to your face" and then I turned around and went back to work.
Ernie called and we have tickets to see Rufus do Judy. I'm *so* excited. I have to start going to the gym immediately, plan on botox and filler injections, and start shopping for the full leather outfit I think would suit the evening best.
woolsrake commented on how, in NYC, the smearing of ashes on your forehead is a much bigger deal than anywhere else he's been.My first experience of it was the first spring I was working on Wall St - I was living up in Westchester then and took a train into Grand Central and then the subway down to Wall St. I went in early so I didn't really notice anything until I went out for lunch and saw all these people with these black smears on their foreheads. I had a real paranoid thought that there was something bad about to happen and the people who were in on it had marked themselves and I got very close to getting some dirt out of the gutter and smearing it on my forehead just in case. I had *no* idea what was going on. The fact that some of them were actually in the sign of the cross made me even more paranoid since my fear of people with religious beliefs being able to adopt yet another wacko idea that could include causing me physical harm is unbounded.
Then, for some reason, I put it together. "Ash". "Wednesday". I knew there were lots of superstitious rites of spring that humans seem to like and that the christians took over from the previous cults, and I remember my aunt on my father's side having woven pieces of palm from "palm sunday" under a pretty little shrine to the BVM that inspired me to wrap myself in sheets and hobble around in my mother's heels as a small boy, and I know that Mardi Gras has something to do with the christian passover where you are supposed to give up something for some reason (I guess instead of sacrificing a lamb or your child) and Easter is coming up, I think, so I felt better that this was a "gabba gabba one of us! one of us!" thing for catholics and it didn't mean that I was going to be jumped upon like Montgomery Clift and torn apart and eaten. Plus there was no one with a tiny waist and very pointy tits watching.
It still spooks me, though. Yesterday I was talking to a co-worker and another one came up behind us and said something and I turned around and he had this big black smear on his forehead and I looked and involuntarily made a noise and stepped back. The only way I could explain it was "Sorry, I thought something bad had happened to your face" and then I turned around and went back to work.
Ernie called and we have tickets to see Rufus do Judy. I'm *so* excited. I have to start going to the gym immediately, plan on botox and filler injections, and start shopping for the full leather outfit I think would suit the evening best.
