Les Semaines
99.08.29
what I'm thinking and doing § what I'm listening to § what I'm reading
what I'm writing § retrospective: The Phonosnout
what I'm thinking and doing § what I'm listening to § what I'm reading
what I'm writing § retrospective: The Phonosnout
I remember this cold-toed feeling from when I was a child and came upstairs from my basement bedroom to the family room on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and I would resist putting socks on because getting dressed felt so non-Saturday (come to think of it, I still have Sundays when I delay getting dressed as long as humanly possible--last week I hate to race to throw something on when our friend stopped by), and I'd sit there watching trying not to give in but my toes kept complaining. And my nose. This is how it feels right now. I refuse to admit I'm cold.
I'm not cold, dammit.
I'd turn on the furnace, but I think Jim would kill me.
My mother was always reluctant to turn up the heat, too. We lived in a big house with lots of windows--most of them facing the view which was mostly trees (dogwoods, cedars, alders) but a distant view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and San Juan Island and Mount Baker on clear days. My parents designed that house themselves, and my mother did all the painting and all of us did miscellaneous work on it. I remember scratching and scratching from "helping" put up the pink cottonbatten insulation in the walls. I was 10 when my parents were building the house. We owned part of the forest below the house, all the way down to the road at the bottom of the ravine. Not much, really, but enough for me to feel like I was a part of the woods. Two houses we'd lived in before had woods for me to play in, too. I think that has a lot to do with how my first collection of poems was very much about the forest and living near it. And the beach--we were only about a ten-minute walk downhill to the beach. (More like twenty coming back--it was pretty steep).
When they designed the house, my sister and I were given the choice of small rooms upstairs or larger ones down, and we both chose to be downstairs, which was actually first floor on that side of the house. Big windows looking out onto the forest.
Nowadays I don't get to the forest nearly often enough--I hate having to drive to them, though there are two parks that aren't that far away. Carkeek Park and Discovery Park. I should just go and hang out there. Both of them are on the water, too. I could use a touch of beach.
I've been listening to some discs I haven't played for a while trying to decide whether to keep them or not as we're running out of space again in the cd rack (well, we always are, despite using vinyl sleeves instead of keeping all the jewel boxes). Anyway, we have a lot of music that I can admire intellectually but that doesn't really call me to play them. There are also a lot where I love one or two songs but can't be bothered with the rest so I never play them. I'd like to get a CD-R so I can put those songs together on a disc where I will actually listen to them.
Turned instead to Orson Scott Card's new one, Enchantment. Actually, he's a writer I haven't read in a long time since getting bored with the Alvin series. However, I enjoyed this take on the Sleeping Beauty story immensely. It's a fun time travel novel, too, with interesting takes on relationships and Baba Yaga. Entertaining, even when I was picky.
Also read James Long's Ferney, which I found interesting because he does some things related to themes that I'm working on my novel. It's a fantasy about two lovers who keep being reborn and having to find each other again. This time around the woman is married to someone else and is haunted by all kinds of phobias that she can't explain until she meets the old man Ferney, her lover in previous lives. It's interesting how it all works out, but I found myself more interested in it than engaged. I never did get caught up in the story. Perhaps I was reading it too analytically, trying to figure out how like/unlike it was to what I'm doing.
Another book, Mercedes Lackey's The Black Swan. I'm not a big Lackey fan, but I was intrigued enough that the novel was based on the Swan Lake ballet that I wanted to read it. It was fairly entertaining. Not by any stretch a wonderful book, but enjoyable enough.
Today I inhaled Kage Baker's Sky Coyote, which was quite amusing. The sardonic, trickstery voice of the main character was fun. Not deep, but fun. A little too silly in its portrayal of the native group that the main character is sent to convince to move into the future (doesn't that sound convoluted?). Anyway, another book I enjoyed reading well enough but it all feels like candy. I want a novel that does to my head what poetry does. Cracks it open and shows me some of the possibilities of the world. That's rare of course, even in poetry.
He looked up but was not startled by the Figure that stood silently in front of him.
"You've come!" He said softly.
"Yes," the Figure answered.
"It is well. I'm weary and look to rest."
The Figure held out His Hand and the tired man too it.
It was morning when they found him and there was a smile on his face.
For the first time in a long time he did not look tired.
No one called his name.
He had departed...
He had gone home.
Freedom had been but a breath away.
(God bless and rescue the tired?)
2. Nice to know some things never change.
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