marks | Reading

Today's poem:

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

--Tony Hoagland

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Phillies on tv

pauraque

This is part 2 of my book club notes on The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories. [Part 1.]

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Tai Chi Mashed Taro" by Anna Wu (2016), tr. Carmen Yiling Yan

( A time-traveling meditation on the rise and fall of people and societies. )

"The Futures of Genders in Chinese Science Fiction" by Jing Tsu (2022) [essay]

( Discussion of the depiction and participation of people of marginalized genders in Chinese SF. )

"Baby, I Love You" by Zhao Haihong (2002), tr. Elizabeth Hanlon

( In the not-too-distant future, a programmer works on a holographic virtual baby while his real family life falls apart. )

"A Saccharophilic Earthworm" by BaiFanRuShang (2005), tr. Ru-Ping Chen

( After a disabling accident, a theater director believes she can teach flowers to dance. )

"The Alchemist of Lantian" by BaiFanRuShang (2005), tr. Ru-Ping Chen

( Every time a godlike being helps a human, their own exile in the mortal world is extended. )

musesfool

Monday miscellany:

- So what are the odds we get an antipope this time in addition to a pope?

- Sepinwall gave season 2 of Andor a good review (minor spoilers, I guess) - the first 3 episodes drop tomorrow and it sounds like they are doing 3 episodes a week for 4 weeks, as each one comprises a mini-arc. Trying not to get spoiled on the internet is sure to be a nightmare.

- I haven't done the AO3 stats meme regularly since 2018 because not much changes in my top 10. In 2021, however, I made note of some up-and-comers in the 11-20 slots, and it turns out that as of 4/20/25, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (i.e., the one where Dick convinces Jason to stop killing through the power of hugs) has crept into the top 10 by hits - it's number 9! (It looks like Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough) (the Steve/Bucky remix AU where Steve finds Bucky working as a barista) is the one that fell out of the top 10.)

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc also made inroads into the top 10 by kudos, landing at number 5! Additionally, 2 Star Wars stories also found their way into the top 10 by kudos: There's Still Time to Change the Road You're On (in which Anakin time travels to the post-RotJ era and meets his kids) at 6, and deep as a secret nobody knows (AU where Leia tells Vader she's Padme's daughter and it changes everything) at number 8!

The 3 Avengers stories that dropped are again, Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough), plus Even a Miracle Needs a Hand (Clint/Darcy fake Christmas boyfriend), and with the lights out, it's less dangerous (Steve/Bucky, then and now).

According to these posts, I did not previously do the full list by comments, but I will note the appearance of deep as a secret nobody knows at number 3 on the comments list, and another Vader-and-Leia AU, Just a Little Bit of History Repeating, at number 10, with the VMars/Avengers crossover we travel without seatbelts on sitting pretty at number 7.

So I guess given enough time, these things CAN change.

- Today's poem:

Nothing Will Warn You
by Stephen Dunn

Nothing will warn you,
not even the promise of severe weather
or the threats of neighbors muttered
under their breath, unheard by the sonar

in you that no longer functions.
You'll be expecting blue skies, perhaps
a picnic at which you'll be anticipating
a reward for being the best handler

of raw meat in a county known
for its per capita cases of salmonella.
You'll have no memory of those women
with old grievances nor will you guess

that small bulge in one of their purses
could be a derringer. You'll be opening
a cold one, thinking this is the life,
this is the very life I've always wanted.

Nothing will warn you,
no one will blurt out that this picnic
is no picnic, the clouds in the west
will be darkly billowing toward you,

and you will not hear your neighbors'
conspiratorial whispers. You'll be
readying yourself to tell the joke
no one has ever laughed at, the joke

someone would have told you by now
is only funny if told on yourself, but no one
has ever liked you enough to say so.
Even your wife never warned you.

***

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Good Times, Bad Times = Led Zeppelin

resonant

For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin

May this house be full of kitchen smells
and shadows and toys and nests of mice
and roars of rage and waterfalls of tears
and deep sexual silences and sounds
of mysterious origin never explained
and troves and keepsakes and a lot of junk
and a flowing like a warm wind only slower
blowing the leaves of trees and books and the fish-years
of a child’s life silvery flickering
quick, quick, in the slow incessant gust
that billows out the curtains for a moment
all those years from now, ago.
May the sills and doorframes
be in blessing blest at every passing.
May the roof but not the rooms know rain.
May the windows know clearly
the branch and flower of the apple tree.
And may you be in this house
as the music is in the instrument.

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

umadoshi

Reading: Still working my way through The Spear Cuts Through Water--somewhere past the halfway point now.

Watching: I finished my Guardian rewatch!

scruloose and I finished season 1 of Kingdom and did indeed opt to hold off on season 2 until after we finish season 2 of The Last of Us. (Is Kingdom complete at two seasons? Anyone know offhand? Fear of spoilers makes me not want to search up the info.) We also saw the season premiere of TLoU and the first episode of The Pitt.

Playing: Because the evil 368chickens game keeps track and springs the number on you when you beat it, I know that when I finally rescued 368 chickens a few days ago it was after 454 tries. And for reasons that are not clear to me, the victory screen (at least in the browser version) also informs you that you can't play anymore and is all that shows if you reload. (There are ways around it, of course--incognito tabs, simply using a different browser, whatever--but it just seems weird to me. I have thus far avoided going back to it, but that just means returning to my default couple of games that I play endlessly when my brain is completely incapable of focus but needs to be doing something. >.<)

Adulting: Mid-week,

scruloose and I took the day off for my birthday and both dropped off our tax documents with our tax guy (bless our tax guy) and voted in the federal election at the Elections Canada office. I'm glad we got the voting taken care of so early--sounds like lineups for advance polls have been unusually lengthy this weekend (and here's hoping that's a good sign for the outcome!).

( under the cut: fruit and meat consumption (separately) )

Current Mood: okay

musesfool

I made these confetti cookies from Smitten Kitchen this afternoon (pic), but unfortunately, they are way too sweet for me. They are really easy to put together though, especially with the food processor, since you don't need to soften the butter and cream cheese before you get started, and there's no need to chill them before baking.

In other news, I watched the 3 available episodes of season 3 of Leverage: Redemption and enjoyed them, though there was some cognitive dissonance in seeing Noah Wyle as Harry Wilson after 15 intense episodes of The Pitt. Aldis Hodge gets more handsome every time I see him, and the gloves have come off in terms of the writing - they are not even playing anymore about how stuff that is legal still isn't right. Plus, there have been some fun guest stars: ( casting spoilers ) I look forward to the rest of the season!

***

I haven't posted any Neruda in a while, so here's today's poem:

Sonnet XLVI

Of all the stars I admired, drenched
in various rivers and mists,
I chose only the one I love.
Since then I sleep with the night.

Of all the waves, one wave and another wave,
green sea, green chill, branchings of green,
I chose only the one wave,
the indivisible wave of your body.

All the waterdrops, all the roots,
all the threads of light gathered to me here;
they came to me sooner or later.

I wanted your hair, all for myself.
From all the graces my homeland offered
I chose only your savage heart.

-Pablo Neruda
(Trans. ???)

***

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Mets vs Cards on tv

thawrecka

Hello!

I'm

thawrecka, and I'm excited to read whatever you write. If you want to see more about what I like about these canons, you can also check out the rest of this blog, or my tumblr.

I also welcome treats.

( 白月梵星 | Moonlight Mystique (TV) )

( 涂山小红娘月红篇 | Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red-Moon Pact (TV) )

( 四海重明 | Love's Rebellion (TV) )

( 스위트홈 | Sweet Home (TV) )

( General likes )

( General dislikes )

thawrecka

How's your day going? Today I managed to break a plate by dropping it on my foot.

musesfool

I decided to make the King Arthur pretzel rolls again today (well, half the recipe to make 4 hero-shaped buns) - they only require a first rise of 1 hour and a second of 15 minutes so I could start them at 3 pm and be eating by 5:30. I proofed the dough in this nice bowl I have that has its own lid, and I did it in the unheated oven with the oven light on (I've never done it like that before but I've seen it recommended a few places), and about 50 minutes in, there was a loud popping sound, and it turned out that the carbon dioxide produced by the rising dough popped the lid right off! That had never happened to me before! I figured if that was happening, the dough was proved and it was. They turned out delicious. Definitely recommended.

Here's today's poem:

Singe

I read the tops of the poems, ten or twenty lines down.

In the beginning of the book, a man is leaving his wife
for a lover. By the end, the lover is tired of the man, who wonders
if he made a mistake. The book has the quality of a diary,
the beginnings of poems imply the ends of other poems, other days,
this is a man to know in the morning.

It's raining here, where the book lives for now, and the mood
of fog fits the sadness of the book, I hold it out the window,
bring it back and dry it off with my shirt.

I know a woman who knows the poet. I call her and ask
which tops of poems are true. She wants to know why I don't
finish the poems. I tell her I dreamed last night
I work inside a steam shovel, that the tops of the poems
are my sky, my white clouds. It's impossible to talk
to just one poet, and I'll feel the ears
of people I don't know floating behind me for a week.

There are two children in the book. They must be in college by now,
married or incapable of marriage. I believe the poet was honest
about their names, I consider finding and e-mailing them,
asking if they felt betrayed or like rock stars, some other kind
of celebrity, I suddenly want to know if they play tennis
or like Pop Tarts, if either drove up to see their father
and threw the book at his head, the stab marks on the cover
making him break down and apologize for the hurt, not the poems.

Calvino had an idea for a book that appeared to have been pulled
from a fire. What wasn't there would be as much of the story
as the little bells, the indentations of eye teeth in a pencil,
the shape of wind against a sheet. The bottom of this book
is on fire, is where the lies have fallen, where someone
tells someone they were never loved, where a body is rhapsodized
as the font of renewal, and eight pages later, deplored as snare.

I devise solace for the book: we should count birds, I tell it,
should ride a horse, you and I. Some other time I'll read
the bottom only, read this life and turn each page
with both hands, carry the words in the basket of my flesh,
carry them over, carry them safe, some other time, nor was it ever
too late.

—Bob Hicok

***

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Mets vs Cards on tv

pauraque

In this light-hearted point-and-click adventure from Italian studio imaginarylab, nerdy teenager Willy Morgan receives a cryptic letter from his father, an archaeologist who mysteriously disappeared ten years earlier while researching the pirate lore of nearby Bone Town. Now Willy has to take over where his dad left off, searching for clues among the locals (who all seem to be descended from famous pirates) and learning the truth about his father's fate and the lost treasure he sought.

a chemist asks willy to retrieve a certain plant

a chemist asks willy to retrieve a certain plant

I liked the look and feel of this game. It has a fun, quirky atmosphere, and the interface is polished and intuitive. The puzzles kept me interested but I never got stuck; I think it's intended to be more chill than challenging. However, there are some pretty big writing and plotting probems that got in the way of my enjoyment of the game.

( Read more... )

Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town is available on Steam and GOG for $19.99 USD, which is way too much. It's a light adventure that you'll finish in an evening, probably not something that'll stick with you or that you'll want to replay. I got it on sale for a couple bucks, and that's about right. There's also a free demo.

musesfool

Today's poem:

The Game
by Lorna Crozier

So many conversations between
the tall grass and the wind.
A child hides in that sound,
hunched small
as a rabbit, knees tucked
to her chest, head on her knees,
yet she's not asleep.

She is waiting with a patience
I had long forgotten,
hair wild with grass seeds,
skin silvery with dust.

It was my brother's game.
He was the one who counted,
and I, seven years younger,
the one who hid.

When I ran from the yard,
he found his gang of friends
and played kick-the-can
or caught soft spotted frogs
at the creek so summer-slow.

As darkness fell,
from the kitchen door
someone always called my name.
He was there before me
at the supper table;
milk in his glass
and along his upper lip
glowing like moonlight.
You're so good at that, he'd say,
I couldn't find you.

Now I wade through
hip-high bearded grass
to where she sits so still,
lay my larger hand
upon her shoulder.

Above the wind I say,
You're it,
then kneel beside her
and with the patience
that has lived so long in this body,
clean the dirt from her nose and mouth,
separate the golden speargrass from her hair.

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Homewrecked - Empires

delphi

✓

kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Free Space - Indigenous Author

A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louisa Plummer is a 2016 autobiography that covers writer/activist/artist Ma-Nee Chacaby's life from 1950 to 2014, from her birth in a tuberculosis sanatorium, to her childhood in Ombabika, through her adulthood in Thunder Bay where she's become a community elder and helped lead the city's first Pride parade.

This was the fifth of this year's Canada Reads nominees that I've read, and I saved it for last, feeling like it was a sure thing in terms of something I'd want to read. I wasn't wrong, and I was happy to see it win in the debates, championed by Shayla Stonechild.

The book is very candid, frank, and factually self-reflective, with a conversational tone that feels like sitting in on the friendly interviews that brought these stories forward. The author has lived through a lot of violence, as well as discrimination, addiction, disability and economic hardship. She is also someone who loves truly and deeply, gathers family, and builds community in a way that I really needed to read about right now.

I also really appreciated the book's afterword, which provides a lot of transparency on the writing process, which was assisted by social scientist and friend Mary Louisa Plummer due to Ma-Nee Chacaby being low-vision and speaking English as a fourth language.

( An Excerpt )

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

In eyeball, Against the Tide of Years by S. M. Stirling, the second "Nantucket Trilogy" book. I liked the exploration and expansion of the map, but I really wished there was an actual map in the book, because I only had a vague idea, if any, as to where these various historical/archaic places actually were, and where they were in relation to each other. Even in the exploration across the American continent it wasn't clear where they were, because Stirling used native names (I guess?) for places. (And one of my big beefs with this book is that the exploration across the American continent had pretty much nothing to do with the rest of the book, and it didn't really have a point or a resolution. I assume it will be important next book, but in that case I wish it had been mostly left for the next book.)

I did like the new characters introduced in this one, and most especially I grinned when we met Odikweos son of Laertes of Ithaka, and also Alaksandrus of Wiulusiya, or Vilios, or Ilios. I always love seeing real historical characters show up in historical fiction! (Also I was extremely tickled when Ian quoted Monty Python, hee!)

In audio, Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I got from the library because it was one of the fantasy books recommended by Shannon Chakraborty in a NYT article last month. Casiopea Tun is a Cinderella in 1927 Mexico, a poor relation housemaid for her wealthy and unpleasant relatives. She snoops where she shouldn't and, oops, accidentally releases the Mayan death god Hun-Kamé, who was "killed" and imprisoned by his brother Vucub-Kamé. But before the god can take his revenge on his brother and regain his throne, he has to go on a hero's journey to find the missing parts of his body that his brother has scattered across Mexico, and of course Casiopea has to come with him.

I always enjoy stories of asshole gods and the mortals who help them out, and I really enjoyed having a story about gods and mythological traditions I wasn't familiar with. The writing's lovely, and it worked well as an audiobook, although either the reader's voice or the fidelity of the recording didn't play well with my running headphones, and of course I know only some Spanish and no ancient Mayan, so I felt like I missed a lot of names of people and places. I liked Casiopea's defensive sassiness, her desire for adventure finally unleashed, and Hun-Kamé's duality, his godly nature tainted by the vitality he drains from Casiopea to sustain his existence in the "Middle World". And the ending was great - I won't spoil it, but I was worried it would end up in typical YA land, and it did not.

musesfool

I was doing so good with reading books again but alas, I have had the 2nd Finlay Donovan book open in the same spot for a week and instead have been reading fic or watching tv. So have some quick thoughts on TV I have watched:

Silo: I enjoyed this - the first season is better, but the second season has its moments! Unfortunately, Steve Zahn is like a BEC for me, so that put a damper on parts of season 2. Like, he's a decent actor or whatever but he makes me want to turn off my TV every time I hear his voice.

The Residence: I enjoyed this a lot and I hope they make as many seasons of it as Uzo Aduba wants, perhaps in really fancy buildings every time, though I hope they are slightly tighter in terms of story telling - 8 episodes was slightly too much imo.

Abbott Elementary: this season has been a lot of fun and I will be watching the finale tonight!

Elsbeth: still enjoying this also, though I've been doling out the episodes more slowly now that I'm like only 1 behind the current episode.

Severance: I have avoided saying much about this show since for me it's a very mixed bag (great acting, beautiful cinematography, wonky pacing, questionable writing) and I know a lot of people love it, but I hope Tramell Tillman has a long, highly decorated career as a leading man in action movies, musicals, rom-coms, and whatever else his heart desires. I am also always happy to see Dichen Lachman on screen!

Wheel of Time: I have been enjoying this as well, though 8 episodes feels too short given everything that they are covering (note: I haven't read the books and currently don't plan to). ( spoilers ) Let them all sing more! The singing has been GREAT.

And lastly, here's today's poem:

Object Permanence
by Hala Alya

This neighborhood was mine first. I walked each block twice:
drunk, then sober. I lived every day with legs and headphones.
It had snowed the night I ran down Lorimer and swore I'd stop
at nothing. My love, he had died. What was I supposed to do?
I regret nothing. Sometimes I feel washed up as paper. You're
three years away. But then I dance down Graham and
the trees are the color of champagne and I remember -
There are things I like about heartbreak, too, how it needs
a good soundtrack. The way I catch a man's gaze on the L
and don't look away first. Losing something is just revising it.
After this love there will be more love. My body rising from a nest
of sheets to pick up a stranger's MetroCard. I regret nothing.
Not the bar across the street from my apartment; I was still late.
Not the shared bathroom in Barcelona, not the red-eyes, not
the songs about black coats and Omaha. I lie about everything
but not this. You were every streetlamp that winter. You held
the crown of my head and for once I won't show you what
I've made. I regret nothing. Your mother and your Maine.
Your wet hair in my lap after that first shower. The clinic
and how I cried for a week afterwards. How we never chose
the language we spoke. You wrote me a single poem and in it
you were the dog and I the fire. Remember the courthouse?
The anniversary song. Those goddamn Kmart towels. I loved them,
when did we throw them away? Tomorrow I'll write down
everything we've done to each other and fill the bathtub
with water. I'll burn each piece of paper down to silt.
And if it doesn't work, I'll do it again. And again and again and -

***

Current Mood: thoughtful

pauraque

[This is a revision of a review I first posted to 50books_poc on March 10th, 2011. It has been edited for clarity.]

This is a teaching grammar of the language which is now more properly called Tohono O'odham. (It appears that later editions of the book are indeed called A Tohono O'odham Grammar. The edition I have is from 1997.) It's the language of the Tohono O'odham people, of what is now called Arizona and northern Mexico. In 2007 the language was reported to have 14,000 speakers, including the mutually intelligible Pima O'odham dialect, and revitalization efforts are ongoing.

Ofelia Zepeda is a native speaker and a linguist. She wrote this book to be used in the classroom, both for O'odham who lack full fluency, and for interested outsiders. The material is in the form of lessons, with discussion of the grammar, vocabulary lists, dialogues, and exercises. There are special advanced exercises for native speakers, challenging them to analyze their own speech and describe why certain constructions sound right and others do not, which is a cool addition and really drives home that the primary audience is the O'odham community itself.

The presentation is linguistically informed, but technical terms are largely avoided. There is nothing more exotic than the sorts of words you'd find in a high school language class. But the book doesn't stand on its own as a Teach Yourself; it's obviously supposed to be a textbook for a class. The answers to the exercises are not provided. The phonology section is extremely sparse and vague, which is fine if you have people to hear and talk to, but not if you're trying to learn alone. Many of the finer points are under-explained (if you don't already know the difference between perfective and imperfective, I don't think you'll really know after reading this book either), and they're the kind of things your teacher would go over with you.

While I wouldn't rely on this book to teach you the language, it does cover quite a bit of ground for not being very long, so if you're the kind of person (like me) who reads about a language not because you're planning to speak it but simply because languages are awesome, it may well appeal to you. American Indian grammars written by native speakers aren't exactly a dime a dozen, so I was pleased to get my hands on this one.

musesfool

I'm pretty sure I'm going to stay home for Easter this year, so now I need to decide what I'm going to cook. I thought about making the fancy French chicken, or maybe a traditional ham, or I could make crepes for breakfast and then manicotti for dinner (though that seems like a lot of work). I also want to bake something but what? A strawberry galette? Some other strawberry tart type thing (using frozen strawberries)? Strawberry sticky buns? Clearly my brain has focused in on something strawberry but it doesn't have to be! Small batch cheesecake? Confetti cookies? or maybe I will bake some more bread? I'm off both Friday and Monday, so there's time to do several different things, but I just need to decide what and then tailor my shopping list accordingly.

Work continues to be super busy thanks to the search committee stuff on top of all our other work, but aside from some scheduling that is going to be a nightmare, we should have a couple of weeks off from dealing with meetings with them.

Here's today's poem:

Water on Mars
by Clare McDonnell

for Susan

Mars has the memory of water
carved into her parched rock.

Does she remember rivers;
their silkiness, their languid drawl,
their flux and gush, their roar,
clots of frogspawn, green weeds waving?
Did she understand the pebble talk of water,
delight in the twinkle of sun and shade
and the sudden shimmer of fish?

Was there once someone there
who saw a lake as flat as a polished table,
the surface so tense that insects hardly
dented it, darting between lily pads?
Did he notice how wrinkles halo out when
a swallow dips for flies, or how the breeze
strews handfuls of sparkle over the water?

Was there an enormous ocean there
whose curled tongue was shredded on rocks?
Did it suck the sand from beneath a poet's feet
leaving him in unsteady wonder?
Did his child cup handfuls of spilled sun
from its surface, let it seep through her fingers
to become water again, licking her ankles?

In winter, did rain slap him with glass hands?
In summer, did it finger his face softly,
bring back aromas to dryness,
plump up the wall's cushion of moss?
And when it stopped, did each lupin leaf
hold a diamond between its fingers,
was the fissure a stream, did the red rock steam?

***

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Mets vs Twins on tv

resonant

If you sometimes have blood in your urine, even just a bit, even just now and then, and you test negative for a urinary tract infection, ask your doctor if you need to see a urologist. If it happens twice (especially if you smoke), TELL your doctor you need to see a urologist.

I've just had my follow-up appointment from having a small cancerous growth removed from my bladder. I'm fine! I feel fine! My prognosis is fine! But I'm glad we caught it early and wish I had gone to a specialist even earlier.

The doctor compared this procedure to removing a malignant mole from your arm or a polyp they find during a colonoscopy, so as procedures go this was a pretty simple one.

I now have to have a cytoscopy to watch for regrowth, and after four years the frequency will go down but I'll have to have them annually for the rest of my life, just another annual thing like a Pap or a mammogram.

I would have pursued more healthcare if I hadn't been scared. So if you're scared the way I was, I'll put some details below the cut; if you're squeamish, maybe don't click that arrow.

( cut for gross stuff )

musesfool

Today's poem:

The Five Stages of Grief
by Linda Pastan

The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief.
Go that way, they said,
it's easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
carefully setting the table
for two. I passed you the toast—
you sat there. I passed
you the paper—you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
and so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles of sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was my uncle's middle name,
he died of it. After a year I am still climbing,
though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
green in a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
towards: Acceptance,
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
Acceptance,
its name in lights.
I struggle on,
waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
all the landscapes I've ever known
or dreamed of. Below
a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally
reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.

***

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Twins on tv

pauraque

[This is a revision of a review I posted to 50books_poc on October 7th, 2010. It was, in fact, the first review I posted there—I have a vivid memory of finding out about the community and getting so excited that I immediately started casting about the room and grabbed the first book by an author of color that I saw. Alert readers will note that "my 7-year-old" is now in their 20s.]

My 7-year-old loves the Bad Kitty series of books, which are about—get this—the travails of a disobedient cat named Kitty. We just read this latest book together, in which the family goes out of town and leaves Kitty with the hapless Uncle Murray. Like previous entries in the series, it's a heavily illustrated chapter book. This one is 150 pages, and many are all pictures, some are all text, and lots are a mix. (Some of the text pages got long for said 7-year-old to read; they wanted to get back to the pictures.)

kitty has exaggerated reactions to learning her family is going out of town but that they're bringing her back a surprise

kitty has exaggerated reactions to learning her family is going out of town but that they're bringing her back a surprise

Author-illustrator Nick Bruel really has a handle on how cats think. Anyone who knows cats will greet Kitty's behavior and thought processes with laughter and groans of recognition. In this one there are also some non-fiction asides discussing why cats behave the way they do—why they fear strangers and loud noises and so on—which are lightly-handled and not too long.

The art makes these books. Bruel's style is loose and expressive, effortlessly nailing the facial expressions of animals and people on every page. He is fluent in the language of comics, and can make you giggle with just the turn of a line. My kid just about dies laughing when they see some of these drawings.

Seven seems like a good age for these books, though a slightly older reader would be able to get through more of the text without help. Recommended if you have kids around that age.

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

musesfool

I have not yet been able to gather my thoughts about The Pitt's season finale, but

serrico has some great thoughts here and

siria has some here.

I also have a bunch of links (spoilers everywhere!):

+ The Pitt’s Noah Wyle & Co. Talk Taking Robby to the Very Edge in Finale and ‘Getting Mentally Healthy’ in Season 2

+ The Pitt’s Shawn Hatosy Loved Abbot at First Sight

+ ‘She Just Needs Therapy and a Hug.’ The Pitt’s Isa Briones doesn’t need you to like Dr. Santos but hopes you can empathize with her.

+ The Pitt Season 2 Premise [spoiler] and Premiere Month Confirmed

+ ‘We Try to Keep the Sensationalism to a Dull Roar’ As The Pitt shuts down season one, the next shift is taking shape for creator R. Scott Gemmill.

+ The Pitt’s Next Shift

I really need to get some icons for this show.

***

And today's poem:

Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild

after Matthew Olzmann

Oh button, don't go thinking we loved pianos
more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.

We loved honey, just loved it, and went into stores
to smell the sweet perfume of unworn leather shoes.

Did you know, on the coast of Africa, the Sea Rose
and Carpenter Bee used to depend on each other?

The petals only opened for the Middle C their wings
beat, so in the end, we protested with tuning forks.

You must think we hated the stars, the empty ladles,
because they conjured thirst. We didn't. We thanked

them and called them lucky, we even bought the rights
to name them for our sweethearts. Believe it or not,

most people kept plants like pets and hired kids
like you to water them, whenever they went away.

And ice! Can you imagine? We put it in our coffee
and dumped it out at traffic lights, when it plugged up

our drinking straws. I had a dog once, a real dog,
who ate venison and golden yams from a plastic dish.

He was stubborn, but I taught him to dance and play
dead with a bucket full of chicken livers. And we danced

too, you know, at weddings and wakes, in basements
and churches, even when the war was on. Our cars

we mostly named for animals, and sometimes we drove
just to drive, to clear our heads of everything but wind.

--JP Grasser

***

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Mets vs A's on tv

umadoshi

Cooking/Baking: Biweekly banana bread-making yesterday, with a few dollops of applesauce to make up for being a banana short of the eight we usually use. I've also been experimenting with a bit of xanthan gum, which Kas and Ginny suggested a little while back when we mentioned how low the loaves are. The height is, to be fair, largely due to how little flour there actually is--about three and a half cups of oat flour for four loaves--but I think the xanthan gum is helping them rise a bit more.

And today there's a batch of black beans (starting from a pound or so of dried, soaked overnight) on the stove, following the ingredient suggestions

genarti posted for me on Mastodon a while back.

When placing a grocery order yesterday, we took a stab at meal planning for the week for the first time in...um...a while. Beans and rice tonight (and then beans in lunches, probably), and hopefully Chinese BBQ in a couple of days (which is dinner for two nights), and I think we settled on doing a pork shoulder at some point. Maybe we'll manage to dig through the freezer usefully and cook some things from it over the upcoming four-day weekend.

Meat-puppetry (and Cat Herding): I opted to sign up for the provincial health portal to access my records, and my recent A1C result is 5.9--the absolute highest it can be without crossing into (according to Canada) the ~prediabetic~ range, and up from the 5.8 I had in December. I was afraid it would be higher, so this is still a relief, but I need to renew my efforts at increasing how much moving around I do. Hopefully the end of winter will help a bit.

Yesterday the blues were scrapping and came tearing around the corner and under my feet as I was mid-step, and suddenly I was on the extremely hard kitchen floor (and scared that I'd actually stepped on Yona, but it seems like I didn't; both blues seem entirely unhurt). I'm mostly unscathed, thankfully--I took most of the brunt on my shin, not a knee, and didn't bash my head on the edge of the counter, so I'm counting myself very lucky. It's just a bit sore today.

The blues were both understandably spooked--poor Sinha's tail went all bottle-brush for a bit!--but Jinksy immediately hopped out of the box he'd been in and ran over to inspect me and make sure I was okay. There were many headbumps and much sniffing and some little licks. He's such a ridiculously good cat. (He doesn't really like being around Sinha--understandably, given what a terror baby!Sinha was to him and how much Sinha pesters him to this day--but if our high-strung little dragon is freaked out or distressed, most times Jinksy will still run over and check him out and be comforting.)

Planning: We both booked my birthday off, more just to not have to work on it than to do anything terribly exciting. But we reserved a car so we can do some erranding ranging from (hopefully) advance voting and dropping off our taxes info to picking up the aforementioned Chinese BBQ and cake. (Theoretically, a couple slices of different flavors. We'll see what the bakery I have in mind has on offer.)

Current Mood: hungry

umadoshi

Fangirling: Last week was Feed's fifteenth anniversary (!), which reminded me that I keep vaguely meaning to post what there is of my unfinished post-Feed(-but-spoilery-for-Deadline) AU.

Reading: Let's see! I finished Ann Aguirre's Strange Love and enjoyed it, although I don't feel a burning need to seek out the book(s) that follow it. I followed that with KJ Charles' Spectred Isle, and I'll probably keep an eye out for its sequel; Charles' books are always a good time.

Now I'm (I think) maybe a sixth of the way into The Spear Cuts Through Water (Simon Jimenez), and I think I'm basically following what's going on. (?) It's beautifully written and layered in ways that I'm not finding the easiest to follow so far.

Watching: Only four episodes left of my Guardian rewatch! So close to finished!

scruloose and I are three or four episodes into Kingdom now; I'm not sure if we're going to keep going once we finish season 1 and watch it concurrently with The Last of Us or put it on hold and come back for season 2 after season 2 of TLoU. So many zombies.

(Between The Last of Us and all the talk I've been seeing about The Pitt, I might opt to reactivate our Crave membership for a month or two. [If "reactivate" is the right word when it's "we got a six-month trial for it at some point, so we have an account already, but I'm not sure we ever actually watched anything on it." I sifted through their catalogue a few days ago, and there are quite a few things that are on my to-watch list, but the overall size of the collection seems way smaller than Netflix Canada's, which is unfortunate.)

And in the name of trying something lighter with shorter episodes, we also watched ep. 1 of Superstore, which completely failed to grab me. But it's the pilot episode of a sitcom, and I haven't actually heard much about the show, so I have no idea how representative it is. (Sometimes I think about season 1 of Parks and Recreation and how there would have been no chance in hell that I'd keep watching after even its first episode if I hadn't heard repeatedly that it wasn't representative. And even then, the only reason I didn't skip ahead to season 2--and I am not exactly prone to skipping things--was that season 1 was so mercifully shot.)

Playing: I saw 368 Chickens mentioned repeatedly on Bluesky the other day, so I tried it, and have since lost...I don't know how much time to it, because calculating the amount of time I lose to idle games when my brain needs to be doing something but isn't actually up to anything is a horrifying prospect. But it's a change of pace from my usual online Boggle game or the Tents and Trees (or is it the other way around?) app, even if I'm not very good at it. I think my best so far is only just below 200.

Current Mood: busy

thawrecka

What have I done this last week? Well, I watched Time Raiders (2016), yet another entry in the dmbj franchise. It was incredibly dumb. No regrets. Everything about that climactic scene with the snake princess was hilarious. I didn't need that one shot with the car window perfectly framing Sandra Ma's boobs, though, it was a very stupid way of committing to the male gaze.

I watched Cunk on Life (2024). At first I was underwhelmed by it somehow built as it went on, so by the time of "Is it harder to enter the kingdom of heaven since brexit?" I was about dying with laughter.

Also, I watched The Fall Guy (2024). I had to keep reminding myself it ran on Hollywood logic, not real life Australia logic (which shouldn't have been hard, because this is very much a movie about movies, but I think setting it mostly in Sydney, a place I have actually stepped foot in, meant my brain kept defaulting to judging it by real world logic instead). Anyway, it's slickly made with a lot of very good stunts, and Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt certainly are charming in it.

I got further into watching A Moment But Forever, but then I had to pause because I was about to run out regular subscription episodes, at the same time as premium VIP users were getting all of them, and idk, I might just not finish it. It has some good things going for it, but it also has the worst performance I've seen Wang Hongyi give and so much clunky exposition and character philosophy infodumps. At some point the villains are chatting and one of them infodumps their backstory and the other straight up says 'I already know all that', it's so clunky.

I also watched The Warrior From Sky (2021), an iQiyi streaming movie packed with too much plot that doesn't quite rise to the level of mediocre. Ci Sha has been a lot better in other things.

I attempted to watch Joy Ride (2023), but I didn't find it funny enough, and then I felt the need to look up if the twist was going to be exactly what I thought it would be, and it was.

Also, I watched about fifteen minutes of The Great Wall (2016) on Netflix, thinking how bad can it be?? Terrible, it turns out, some of the most stale cliched dialogue known to man and a waste of every actor in it. But Andy Lau is hot in it, so I guess there's that visual bonus. I may or may not pick it up again on a later date when I'm looking for something to heckle.

musesfool

Today's poem:

NASA Video Transmission Picked Up By Baby Monitor

Instead of her little one nestled between the purple
elephant from Aunt Meg and the blanket knitted
by Tricia, the new mother glances up to see a space
station—tattooed by a meteorite—
now plummeting toward Hamtramck, Michigan.

Maybe she feels the same terror I felt when I sat
in a theater as a child. A man in a black tuxedo
staggered across the stage, removed his gloves
and tossed them into the audience, gloves as black
as piano keys that shrieked above us, became
two fuming ravens that flapped around the room
and circled the chandeliers. Plato says
we live in a cave and stare at a wall of shadows
cast by the light outside. We name the shapes
and believe them real. Turn around and the sun
blackens the pupil. I've known people, afraid of the sun,
who opened their eyes to God, but found only
a wine cellar lit by a guttering lamp. There's so much
to be afraid of, so much to gaze at and be wrong about.

How many shadows are left to name? Logophobia
is the fear of words. Keraunothnetophobia
is the fear of falling man-made satellites. Imagine
how a woman might walk out and look to heaven
for the sky lab plunging down on her—
wires everywhere, bolts loosening, metal body in flames.
But, she sees only blue, endless blue, the color
of a baby's new blanket, cloaking everything.

--Matthew Olzmann

***

As I may have mentioned, I love pretzel rolls, so I decided to take a stab at this recipe since her peasant bread recipe is so easy, and the rolls are good! (pics) But the timing is so weird. First of all, using cold water instead of warm is odd, and I guess contributes to the EIGHT TO TEN HOUR first prove. On the counter, not in the fridge. I mixed up the dough last night around 10 pm, and set my alarm for 8 am so I would be up in time to set it up for the second rise, which takes FOUR TO FIVE HOURS. (then I went back to bed for a couple of hours.)

I'm not sure why I think the timing is so weird - I guess a 12 hour/overnight proof in the fridge would make sense and also be fine timing-wise - you could do it at 9 pm and get up at 9 am without worrying, because the fridge is going to inhibit the rise enough that it won't overprove. But 8 to 10 hours means starting at 8 am means you don't start the second rise until 4pm and then they have to prove for another 4 hours at least? I guess it's meant for people who get up earlier than me. Idk.

Otherwise it was easy enough, except for getting the dough balls neatly out of the tray and into the water, so I couldn't keep them the nicely round shapes. Since they're just for me, and like the recipe author's kids, I can't be bothered to make sandwiches when I can eat them on their own or with butter, I don't really care, but it would be nice for once if something I made looked as good as it tasted. *hands* I'll probably go back to the King Arthur recipe I've used previously, though - it takes much less rising time.

One thing I will recommend, if you are someone who makes a lot of bread but doesn't always use a mixer, is a dough whisk. I'm not a huge fan of single-use kitchen gadgets, but I find this weird-looking thing really good for mixing up dough and getting it to come together without having to use the mixer or my hands.

***

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Mets vs A's on tv

delphi

xposted from

ourflagmeansgay

Kiss Fang Weekend (a challenge event with four days of prompts for shippy fanworks about Fang) is running on Bluesky this year!

The official prompts post is here and breaks down as follows:

Thursday, May 8th: Trope Thursday - Fang in an AU or trope of the creator's choice
Friday, May 9th: Captains (and First Mate) on Vacation - Fang/anyone but Ed, Stede, or Izzy
Saturday, May 10th: Time to Kiss Fang - a free space
Sunday, May 11th: Fang in the Middle - for Fang-centred threesomes

Official fills can be posted to the #kissfangweekend tag on Bluesky, but for folks who aren't on there, I think any archive or community will only be made better with some more Fang-kissing.

musesfool

Still processing the season finale of The Pitt (it was SO GOOD) so thoughts to come at some later date.

Here's today's poem:

Goodnight
by Li-Young Lee

You've stopped whispering
and are asleep. I go on listening

to apples drop in the grass
beyond the window. Earlier we tried to guess

each fall's moment, but neither kept up
that little game of hope

or fear for long. Now your weight
against me is like … I was about to say

like no other, unmistakably
human, my son's. But, truth is, you're simply

heft. Burden like, say, grain,
your body brings my body pain,

your shoulders, knees, elbows, hands,
lumpy like sacked fruit, and

whatever concord is
actual between us is

not easily meant,
but is so only by our diligence.

I recall a far
season of flowers

when, for love, I crept to the edge of a roof to reach
a petal-decked branch.

It snapped, I
dropped, screaming down sky

and flowering. My father yelled
my name, ran out to find me sprawled,

dazed, gripping his crushed gift, thrust
at him in my bloody fist.

He plunges below us now, as we
fall soundless toward him, our bodies

crowded on your narrow bed,
my arm and leg gone numb, your torso wedged

between the wall and me.
You sleep uncomfortably,

though comforted by my
presence, for which you cry

some nights, and which you, such nights, endure.
Where did you, so young, learn

such sacrifice? Now
I no longer hear the apples fall. But how

they go! Incessantly, though
with no noise, no

blunt announcements of their gravity.
See!

There is no bottom to the night, no end
to our descent.

We suffer each other to have each other a while.

***

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: Fever - Rita Moreno & Animal in a clip from the Muppet Show

isis

We have recently finished watching all three seasons of Warrior on Netflix!

As I said in my pre-review, it's sort of Peaky Blinders set in the late 19th C San Francisco Chinatown Tong Wars, with a generous helping of Game of Thrones-ish nudity and sex; come to think of it, there is more Game of Thrones feel to it than just that, as a large part of the plot is the rivalry and fights for dominance between two tongs. Also the fight by the Irish immigrants to be hired as laborers, when the Chinese work much more cheaply. "Fight" is a literal term here - every episode has at least one (fistfight, or knife and axe fight, or swordfight, or gunfight - or more usually, someone bringing a gun to a fistfight and having it kicked out of his hands) and two or three is not uncommon. So much fighting! Sometimes gory, though fortunately usually not pushing my limit (though a few times it was UGGGHHH yuck).

I mostly liked it a lot, though I also felt ready to be finished with it as it wrapped up. Most recurring characters were interestingly complex with very mixed motivations, though there were some stock drama bad guys, and the wealthy white men were all terrible human beings. Probably my favorite characters were Ah Toy and Chao, the most mixed-motivation characters of all - Ah Toy is the perhaps mostly lesbian madam of the bordello where the Hop Wei hang out (also an accomplished swordswoman and crafty businesswoman), and Chao is the weapons dealer who is "friend to all" tongs (for a price) and the bland and obsequious face of Chinatown to the police. But there are so many cool characters!

There is both canon m/m and f/f (and plenty of het), but my favorite relationships were the prickly platonic ones, in particular between Father Jun and his son Young Jun, and between Ah Sam (the main character of the show) and his sister Mai Ling.

One thing I particularly liked about the show was the way they handled language. In the first episode there are a few bits where Chinese morphs into English as the camera shifts, so you know that the characters are speaking Chinese, even though they are speaking English. (I think Vikings did something similar.) Some of the Chinese characters speak perfect English, but others, you can tell when they are speaking "Chinese" (fluent and casual English) vs. "English" (accented, with simple grammar). And of course when there are English-speaking whites around, the Chinese characters who "don't speak English" speak Cantonese. (Apparently the actor playing Young Jun spoke fluent Cantonese, everyone else had to learn it, and Cantonese speakers can tell :-) I also liked the slang used by the Chinese, which - I don't know how accurate it is to actual Cantonese idiom, but it added a nice flavor - the white people are "ducks", the white section of San Francisco is "the pond", sex is "sticky" (as a noun), money is "chop", a fight is a "scrap".

Probably my favorite episode was the spaghetti western one in S1, though I also really liked the arc with Rosalita Vega in S2, and the S3 banger with Chao and Lee. Warnings for basically everything, though - violence, rape (mostly implied and attempted), nudity, drugs, racism, sexism, horrible white male politicians, hopeful dreams dashed against reality.

Now we are watching S3 of The Wheel of Time, which we are up to episode 3 tonight. I'm having the problem that I don't really remember S2 because I read the books between then and now, so I'm remembering book events and trying to figure out how they match up with show events. And of course there are the very big changes that have been made in the interest of bringing it to TV.

Oh, one more thing - I was going to post this yesterday but ran out of time writing it, because last night we went to see the Cirque Mechanics show "Pedal Punk", which was amazeballs! The group was founded by two former members of Cirque du Soleil, and the show is a spectacular display of core strength, flexibility, and hand-eye coordination, all framed in an entertaining comic mime play about a bicycle shop, using props that look like bicycle parts (juggling seatposts, a penny-farthing used as an aerial hoop, etc). It's stunning and if the show is near you you should definitely see it! (Looks like from here they are going to Chandler AZ, Albuquerque NM, Alexandria LA, and then Texarkana and Houston.)

delphi

Fandom 50 #12

Squish That Izzy by

lordess-dickery-doof
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationships: Izzy Hands & the rest of the Feral Five (Fang, Archie, Frenchie, and Jim)
Medium: Vid
Length: 0:23
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: humour, happy ending, h/c (emotional), animals, cuddling, friendship, touch, trauma, denial/repression
Audio: How to pick up a cat like a pro - Vet advice on cat handling by

HelpfulVancouverVet

Excerpt:

Squishing is your best friend when dealing with a cat.

Look, I'm a simple creature. Overlaying vet advice about how to safely pick up a cat on a scene where my fave is distraught and struggling against being hugged is always going to bring me an outsize amount of enjoyment. The editing on this is great, making the most of a short scene without overstaying the life of the bit, and I especially love the zoom in at the end. Squish. That. Cat.

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Page Summary

musesfool - in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha
pauraque - The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, ed. Yu Chen & Regina Kanyu Wang (2022) [part 2]
musesfool - this picnic is no picnic
resonant - Poetry month: For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin
delphi - Six Sentence Sunday
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: media, adulting, food
musesfool - the indivisible wave of your body
thawrecka - Recency Bias letter
thawrecka - (no subject)
musesfool - the shape of wind against a sheet
pauraque - Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town (2020)
musesfool - the patience that has lived so long in this body
delphi - What I'm Reading: A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby (2016)
isis - wednesday reads
musesfool - After this love there will be more love
pauraque - A Papago Grammar by Ofelia Zepeda (1983)
musesfool - their flux and gush, their roar
resonant - Today's medical tip
musesfool - in the suitcase were bandages for the eyes and bottles of sleep
pauraque - Bad Kitty vs. Uncle Murray by Nick Bruel (2010)
delphi - Six Sentence Sunday
musesfool - and sometimes we drove just to drive
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: other stuff
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life got long, so this is the media intake part
thawrecka - (no subject)
musesfool - How many shadows are left to name?
delphi - Kiss Fang Weekend (May 8th-11th)
musesfool - no blunt announcements of their gravity
isis - thursday things
delphi - REC: Squish That Izzy by lordess-dickery-doof (Our Flag Means Death, The Feral Five)

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