The Good Life

In order to have a good life one must have rice.
First you have to heat a skillet on the stove to medium with a bit of olive oil. Then you sprinkle in some fresh rosemary, snapping off the stems with your thumbnail so that your fingers smell like pine and the wild outdoors all day.
When the rosemary sizzles in the olive oil you know it's time to put in the chopped onion, and when that's all brown, the garlic goes in. And when all of that's all brown and sizzly, it hops out of the pan and sits in a bowl, waiting patiently for its turn again.
Into the hot pan goes a small puddle of chicken broth with more olive oil, sprinkled with the sunshine and lemon taste of coriander, grains of onion and garlic. That's when the rice comes in, stirred into the hot, oily pan until it sizzles and gets brown and crunchy on the bottom. The onions and garlic get stirred back in and it cooks a little more, until it is ready for a deep green bowl and your tongue.

A Hodge Podge Kind of Life

“The prospect of a proper tea had fetched the privy councillors out in greater numbers than had been anticipated: dinner would have been a chore whereas tea was a treat. There was such a crowd that chairs were in short supply, and there was a lot of running to and fro by the staff in order to get everybody seated, though this turned out to be part of the fun. Some were seated on the usual gilt party chairs, but others found themselves ensconced on a priceless Louis the XV bergere or a monogrammed hall chair brought in from the vestibule, with one former lord chancellor ending up perched on a little cork-topped stool brought down from a bathroom.”
- The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

Darkness

“Even now I thrive in darkness, like bacteria and Batman. That’s why I do radio.”
- Andrew Goldstein, This American Life TV show, S02E04

Demands Increasing

Strange knocks on the door
Tend to unfold into
Odd encounters with the postman
A glass of water, a postage stamp licked
He wants more than the mouse and his cookie
Ever did
Pushing his foot in the doors with pleas
For a glass of ice water in July,
A quart of motor oil
To send him on his way,
A piece of duct tape for his shoe
And by the time I have the checkbook out
Ready to sign my name in one hundred
Dollar script,
It is much too late
And I forget how to say no.

Of Course

Walter: How many do you want?
Peter: I'm not hungry. I don't need any crepes.
Walter: Oh, don't be ridiculous. You were abducted, of course you need crepes!

Afraid So

- Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Is it starting to rain?
Did the check bounce?
Are we out of coffee?
Is this going to hurt?
Could you lose your job?
Did the glass break?
Was the baggage misrouted?
Will this go on my record?
Are you missing much money?
Was anyone injured?
Is the traffic heavy?
Do I have to remove my clothes?
Will it leave a scar?
Must you go?
Will this be in the papers?
Is my time up already?
Are we seeing the understudy?
Will it affect my eyesight?
Did all the books burn?
Are you still smoking?
Is the bone broken?
Will I have to put him to sleep?
Was the car totaled?
Am I responsible for these charges?
Are you contagious?
Will we have to wait long?
Is the runway icy?
Was the gun loaded?
Could this cause side effects?
Do you know who betrayed you?
Is the wound infected?
Are we lost?
Will it get any worse?

Baptism

Your body is a church whose doors close to me
I’m waiting on your steps trying not to tremble
I don’t know any other place that I can go and pray inside of
And so I still when I’m close to you
Sometimes my skeleton shivers electric
And why sometimes I shudder heavy in this heavy coat called [mine/my?]
When I was a boy I heard this song of a God on my bedroom floor
Singing out from between hands clasped tight as a lock
Your memory carries a similar tune
For the ghost of your heart is a holy place and as most holy places are
When you hold me inside of it I feel like a child
We are plates of sorrow, polishing ourselves off
I have my mouth sitting open with nothing but this shaking
Shaking inside from being so close to your feathers that I know
Why the wind goes and comes back
And I know how awkward the weather vane feels in its iron throat
That all it can do to announce the footsteps of kings is to spin and spin and spin
In the blue of your eyes I feel small
I feel big enough to touch a myth
Your skin baptized me and I’ve been trying to find my way back to that river
I don’t know any other place to go and pray inside of

- Anise Mojgani

Empty

King Friday XIII: And now who is arriving at this castle? Will the guests never stop?

- Mister Roger's Neighborhood

Secret Doors

“We had never known her. They had brought us here to find that out.”
- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

Joy

Nirrimi Joy Akanson

You shall no longer take things second or third hand... nor look through the eyes of the dead... nor feed on spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

- Walt Whitman, Song Of Myself

Death

“You know, there is no one alive now who was grown-up when I was a child. So I, as a child, am dead. Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead—when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that old person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Who whose death will make me truly dead?”
- Love’s Executioner: “Three Unopened letters,” Dr. Irvin D. Yalom

Talking Back

Your voice in the house
That used to be empty
Silent walls when I would
Call
Now there are lost echoes
From you

Raines

EMILY: It’s your head, Detective. Just stop thinking about me.
RAINES: If you haven’t noticed I don’t exactly have complete control over my delightful imagination.
EMILY: You should talk to someone about that.
RAINES: Yeah, thanks.
- Raines, S01E06, “Inner Child”

The Humming of Bees

"When you do things like that, when you stand there and shut your mind until all you can hear is the humming of bees, people think you don’t have any feelings. They think what they see is what you feel deep inside.”

- Alice Hoffman, Blue Diary

Mad Butler

“I automatically started thinking about what I’d do if I had to prove I was sane. I’d like to think that just being my regular sane self would be evidence enough, but I’d probably behave in such an overly polite and competent manner that I’d come across like a mad butler with panic in his eyes. Plus it turns out that when I’m placed in an insane situation, I tend to get crazier.”
- Jon Ronson, This American Life podcast,Pro Se: Act One “Psychobabble”

At Home With Pliney and Violet

Pliney: (Watching Violet spoon boiling water out of an over-full pot of potatoes) Are we not set up for housekeeping?
Violet: We are... we just blunder sometimes.


Rotting carcass on rug - put in tub.

Freezer left open - check the meat. (ALL of it.)

Left breakfast on roof of car - go back for the pieces.

Tornado results in loss of power - buy ice.


Violet: What time are you guys thinking of coming back home?
Father: Oh in about twenty minutes.
Violet: (Silence. Hangs up phone)

Shadow Pool

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves."
- Francois de la Rochefoucauld

We Don't Want You Around Here

Someplace to be Flying

The Blues

"Fairbanks" - Shawn McNulty

“The blues make a rough blanket, like the ones they give you in the orphanage. But they keep out the cold. I shoved a cassette into the tape player without looking, waiting for the dark streets to take hold of me and pull me in, waiting to get back to myself.”
- Strega, Andrew Vachss

Not everything, of course

"The Ectasy of St Martin" - Sekator, Flickr

“I told Renny about Lazarus, not everything, of course, not the way I felt inside, just how I arose from bed at odd hours, compelled to drive out there. I revealed the corners of what was happening. Yet I said too much. Be careful whom you tell your story to.”
- The Ice Queen, Alice Hoffman

The Third Angel

“Michael resembled a dog in many ways: He could smell danger and he could smell wealth, he could stalk and quarry. He lived in the moment, for the here and now. He had gone through life without questioning much. The only time he ever felt connected was when he saw stray dogs. It happened in abandoned villages in France and in New York City, down by the docks. It was a weird, visceral connection, like seeing yourself in the mirror and recognizing yourself even though you’d looked different from how you’d imagined, all fangs and fur and fear.”
- The Third Angel

Wild Things

"Cody doesn't say a word. Just looks at her, then he snaps his cue in two, tosses the pieces onto the table. Picks up his hat and walks out. I see something in his eyes as he leaves, something in the shadows under that low brim. The desert's in there and the timberlands. All the lonely, wild places where he roams--not because anyone makes him, but because he claims he wants to."
- Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint

Dark Dreams

One of the best and most surprising dreams I've had in a long time.


Two men in a forest, one with a darkness, the other without. The darker one asks the other if he can read the roots, the lighter one says he can. The forest is dark, with wet, damp earth underfoot and huge trees. The lighter one picks up a small tree root, pulling it out of the ground (roots like the Mystic’s hair in The Fall), saying that he can read it. The Darker one picks up a thicker, heavier root and pulls it out of the ground. He tells the lighter man that he cannot read this root, but once the darker man is done with him will be able to.
Cut to a cinematic shot, zooming out of the forest like the camera is in a helicopter. Flying over the trees, seeing the border between the forest and the city. The city, with tall buildings built close together, skyscrapers and shining glass. Flying fast over the tops of the buildings and twisting around, like a rollercoaster. Past the buildings, skimming over the edge of the water that the city borders on. Forest, city, water. It’s the perfect blue of CG, with small choppy ripples for waves. The lighter man is flying along, unwillingly, with this panning view and he is screaming.
Back in the forest, in a different part or possibly somewhere else just as dark and wild and wet. The lighter man is made to kneel in the dirt. Now he will learn. His hands are wet and his fingers rest on a shock plate. In the dream it is black and rectangular, about half an inch thick. The lighter man is crying, explaining the rules of physics and electricity. His fingers drip with water. The darker man, no more than a disembodied voice and a presence by now, tells the lighter one that when he is done he will be able to read the tree roots. Other dark men mill around, men with the same darkness about them but with less power. The servants of the dark one.
The man still begs, but she shocks still come and he doesn’t die. Instead it makes him into exactly what he wants.

Books I Must Have

Slowly, I have been in the process of acquiring everything on my Books I Must Have on My Shelf list. These are books that either affected me in some way or were just simply that good. There are very few books on this list (Five total), mostly because I have found myself becoming an exceedingly picky reader, so, by necessity, all of these books have been good enough to just get me in some way. Whether it was a character that I identified with or the plot just sucks you in, these are the five books that I have to have on my shelf. The entire list is Misfortune by Wesley Stace, Blood Memory by Greg Iles, The Black Jewels Trilogy (published as one book) by Anne Bishop, and Like Being Killed by Ellen Miller.
A couple of weeks ago I finally got The Black Jewels trilogy in the mail, having bought it with the money from returning a Christmas gift. (I know, that sounds terrible, but it's the truth.) I started to read it and realized that I had forgotten how much I loved this book. This book was to me their first time I read it a year ago what Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith was to me when I was thirteen. Normally when you have a book where the author who creates a large cast of characters, it can get a bit burdensome. Keeping track of all the characters, who they are, where they are, what they want, can be a little tricky and suddenly the book doesn't seem all that worth it anymore. A lot of times you can also get stock or really stereotyped characters that rely too heavily on one feature or personality trait, or all of the characters can start to seem the same. The only two exceptions I have found are Charles de Lint's books and The Black Jewels Trilogy.
The characters that Bishop creates are perfect. I love her sense of humor and the way she weaves it into the book (although it can be a little much at times), and the characters interact with each other well and have their own distinct personalities. The only times when the characters start to seem a little lackluster is when you have a large group of them all together and interacting in the same space, and the rather challenging prospect of bringing a fully formed character of a seven-year-old girl into the future where she is now a twenty-five-year-old young woman. Aside from that, this book has some of my most favorite characters in it period, which is high praise for me. The depth of the characters also keeps my interest (and keeps me from never actually finishing the book, as with de Lint's) through the whole "Must save the world as we know it!" epic battle.
All in all, one of my very favorite books, and one that I am so glad to have on my shelf.

John Jude Palencar

"Insomnia Sleeper"

"Someplace To Be Flying"

"Onion Girl"

"Postgraduate Medicine Heart"

via Johnjudepalencar.com

Witness

When I'm Old and Gray

Snow Day

classes cancelled, a fire in the fireplace, a cuddly puppy dog. Life is good.

Subdued

To be lonely is a habit

Like smoking or taking drugs

And I've quit them both

But man, was it rough

- Jenny Lewis

Jane Eyre

“That’s what happens when you bewitch a man’s horse—a lot of pain and cursing.”
- Mr. Rochester, Masterpiece: Jane Eyre

Morning Light

The chocolates are almost gone and I ran the dishwasher for the first time in three days

We started talking about panties and ended up talking about orgasmic childbirth. Oh the things Pliney and I get up to when we haven't seen each other in several days. Also a dog that eats its own poo and LL Bean also made their way into the conversation...