KNIT MY HEART
by Philip Mason on Friday, April 15, 2011 at 6:03pm
Instead of paying attention to Piermaria Oddone's talk addressing the NOvA experiment while here at Fermilab, I wrote a "Knitting Romance" story, inspired by Susan Lein informing me that there existed romance novels based around knitting. Wrote this about half an hour ago. I'm still sitting here waiting to leave.
Gargandola was a knitter. She fucking loved to knit. She was pretty goddamn serious about it. If there was a shape that could be made with yarn, she could make that shape. There wasn’t a shape Gargandola had ever seen or dreamt of that she couldn’t knit. Knitting was her life and her only passion. When Gargandola was 13 years old she ran out of yarn for a day and almost died from brain cancer. The brain cancer was caused by a lack of yarn and knitting. FUCK!
On the other side of the planet, in a country called India, a young man named Hilfrest was just getting into knitting. His previous passions included building beds, touching plants, fermenting bean juice and making fine bean paste popsicles out of this stuff, and also dog walking. Currently, though, Hilfrest was falling in love with knitting. He knew of no greater pleasure in life than to knit a bit, to weave the yarn in and out, up and about, down and around, through and through, smoothly and nicely, delicately and lovingly. When Hilfrest had dreams he dreamt of knitting useful items for his friends. Friends were simply a figment of his dreamstate, as non-existent as the flavors of exotic frosting that lived only in his mind. Now a young man aged 31, Hilfrest lived his entire life without friends. As a result of this loneliness he had also never touched a woman. Not a beautiful woman, anyway. You know who was a beautiful woman? Gargandola. Also, Brook Shields was a beautiful woman who had become famous for her unparalleled acting talent and her bulldozer-like good looks. But Brook Shields was not a knitter, and as such, would be of no interest to Hilfrest.
Hilfrest, being a man of dreams and not so much a man of action, decided to move to America one day. He moved to America and loved it. What was unfortunate for the plot of this story is that Gargandola didn’t live in America, but in Canada, inside of a very big tree. What also happens to be unfortunate for this story is that Hilfrest was developing a new passion – a passion for lumberjacking. This passion for lumberjacking, though, which actually happens to be beneficial to the desired plot, allowed Hilfrest to move to Canada where he got a job cutting fucking trees down. As a fickle and indecisive man, Hilfrest’s passion for knitting was now long forgotten, having been replaced by a desire to lumberjack. Lumberjacks, for those not in the know, are men who cut the fuck out of trees without concern for the feelings of the trees. It is this irreverent behavior that made them ideal for sticking in the middle of cold forests with huge chainsaws and axes (huge chainsaws on the order of hundreds of feet in length).
In the coldest winter ever measured by human kind in the entire history of weather-measuring by man, Hilfrest was sent to the Great Northern Frostforest by the president of Canada, who said this was a special mission reserved for Indian-Canadian lumberjacks because they typically had the greatest balance of strength, stamina, agility, fashion sense, cuttin’ moves, and good work ethic.
I don’t need to explain to you, dear reader, what happened next. Hilfrest tried to cut down the tree in which Gargandola lived.
“OOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOHHOHOHOHHOHOHOO,” he yelled, when he saw a woman inside of the tree, knitting a pet bear.
“HELLO!” Gargandola exclaimed, shortly before shouting “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY HOME?”
Hilfrest couldn’t reply because his heart broke at the sight of this sad woman who reminded him of himself. She was lonely and tree-dwelling, kept alive only by her knitting and perhaps a warm heart.
When Hilfrest saw the beautiful shapes and objects and THINGS she had knitted over the decades, and compared this to the path of destruction and tree genocide that laid behind him, he recalled his old love of knitting and creating, and felt ashamed at the results of his new passion of lumberjacking and destroying. A sparkle appeared in his eye. In the other eye a tear appeared and fell to the ground. The tear froze before touching the snow, and somehow formed the shape of a heart. I know this sounds unbelievable but it’s true.
Gargandola had never witnessed a man so drastically change before her eyes. The dramatic transformation that took place before her, mostly invisible and within the guts and heart and soul of the man, was incredible. “I am very moved by your change of heart,” Gargandola told Hilfrest.
“Thanks, lady,” he replied. “I used to knit when I was younger. Now… now I cut down trees.”
“Do you ever think that you’ll stop cutting trees down?” she asked.
“I know I will. I’m gonna quit right now, because I’m tired of it and knitting is fucking awesome.”
“FUCK YEAH it is,” Gargandola screamed.
“The way you scream,” Hilfrest began, “gives me the wettest dream. The way the cold gives you pointy nips, makes me wanna put my lips against your lips. Then the way your hot breath appears as smoke in the cold, makes me do nasty things to you, nasty secrets and actions untold.”
Gargandola blushed, but also her face was just red because it was way, way, way, below zero outside and everything was frozen. But her blushing was caused by her mutual sexual attraction to Hilfrest, who now showed a kind heart and not the vicious, tree-hating heart he first introduced her to.
The coldness of the lands around them, and the legendary frigid frost of the forest were no match for the extreme heat caused by the two naked knitters rolling passionately in the snow in the throes of sexual conquest. The snow melted into a deep, beautiful lake, warmed by the sweat and friction of these two knitting knitters. As they made love, they both took a needle and knitted a magnificent, gigantic island on which they could lay and fornicate all day, all night, all week.
In a month’s time, the fiery passion of these lovebirds, brought together by the romantic nature of knitting, ignited the lands in which they lived, turning the frosted forest of the north into a tropical paradise of mild to temperate climate. When they were not making love or petting the animals, Hilfrest and Gargandola knitted complex structures and mastered architecture by way of the needle, creating a massive colony of purely yarn-based houses and skyscrapers. Animals from the forest lived in these homes and learned the English language, but also a little French because Gargandola was actually French-Canadian. The colony was named Yarntopia and each animal, despite its hooves, lack of thumbs, or other handicap, learned to knit and was able to contribute beauty to the land.
Hilfrest and Gargandola lived forever because knitting taught them to achieve immortality, and traveled the world in a cocoon they knitted together. Their love became the stuff of fairytales, and every child on earth was forced to read the story of how Hilfrest and Gargandola fell in love and changed the world through knitting.
THE END
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