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