Presents from Max Vasilatos a couple days ago: a little brass dragon figurine (the dragon is my Chinese astrological animal), a box of Max-designed flower notecards (prominently including some pansies; I’m a well-known pansy), and Silver Bob, a Max-crafted face now joining his brother Wooden Bob, who’s lived at my place for about 30 years now, but provoking a certain amount of fraternal dispute in the Bob family about their respective merits and characters.
I will elaborate (but with few pictures, since I haven’t yet rediscovered how to upload pictures from my little camera to my computer; my life is currently way overfull).
The dragon. Call him Zrnold. He’s elegant, small (an inch and a half across), and snarling open-mouthed, presumably breathing lethal fire, as is the custom of dragons. As my friends and family have been known to warn people who are irritating me: don’t make him angry; you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
I’ve been unable to find a picture of Zrnold from the brass dragon sources on the net (Max doesn’t recall which company she got it from), so I’ll show you an incendiary plant instead. From Wikipedia:
(#1)
Dragon’s Breath is a chili pepper cultivar that unofficially tested at 2.48 million Scoville units.
The plant was developed in a collaboration between chili farmer Neal Price, NPK Technology, and Nottingham Trent University during a test of a special plant food and for its essential oil having potential as a skin anesthetic. The Dragon’s Breath plant was later cultivated by breeder Mike Smith of St Asaph, Denbighshire, Wales, who said that he had not planned to breed the chili for record heat, but rather was trying to grow an attractive pepper plant. Due to the nationality of the farmer who cultivated the pepper in Wales, it was named Dragon’s Breath after the Welsh dragon.
(#2) The Welsh flag, with the red dragon of Wales on it… The Dragon’s Breath chili was unofficially tested at 2.48 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU), making it a contender for the hottest chili pepper in the world
The pansies. Max’s mailing included a box of 5 notecards painted by Max: pansies, lilies of the valley, geraniums, tulips, and lilacs. Pansies for a pansy:
(#3)
See my 8/28/10 posting “Pansies”, on the flowers and the derogatory ‘male homosexual’ usage.
Silver Bob comes home. Previously on this blog, in my 8/6/24 posting “Silver Bob and Wooden Bob”:
Silver Bob. From Max Vasilatos Rasmussen on Facebook yesterday:
It’s lived as a piece of carved poplar at Arnold Zwicky’s house since the 1990s.
It’s taken a lot of years to get around to the cast piece.
Here is Bob in sterling silver, waiting to go to Arnold’s to complete the circle.
(#4)
Now that the Bob brothers are together, the differences between them — in temperament and the way they view and present themselves — have flared up into fraternal disputes.
W is older, solid, earnest, dependable, but also warm and empathetic; he’ll hold you in his arms if you’re sad or lonely. S is younger, wild, flashy, a star, but also changeable and inclined to be self-centered; when he’s focused on you, you’re flooded with intense pleasure, but then his attention might shift and you’ll vanish from his field of vision.
(I’m struggling to be fair here. I identify with W. On the other hand, I’ve had boyfriends, wonderful boyfriends, who were like S. To be even more fair: my man Jacques was like W, but I suspect that if you’d asked him whether I was like W or like S, he’d surely have said S, and he probably would have added that he found that adorable.)
S and W jockey competitively (but only half-seriously) with one another, the way brothers often do, but it’s tricky for them because they’ve been apart from one another, so their patience sometimes wears thin. W is inclined to think S is a shallow show-off; S is inclined to think W is stodgy and boring as hell. They call each other names, not intending to inflict real pain, but not just cracking jokes either.
They’re working on accommodating to one another, without realizing that that’s what they’re doing. Eventually I’ll be able to tell them they’re better together, and they’ll like that idea. Just not yet.
