i am, et cetera

tfios

2012-01-09T21:51:00.002-05:00

fantastic, meretricious, and a happy new year

2011-12-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I am flying to my beloved Washington! What should I read on my 6 hour flight? This, this, or this?

I should perhaps mention that I already feel weird about being seen with The Whisperer in Darkness on the subway, so maybe reading it on a plane is a bad idea? I mean, just look at this cover:

No one sane would read a book with that cover. Mind, I would prefer a gripping yarn to drown out the inevitable wailing child or irritating buffoon. Lovecraft has been called a great many things but "gripping" is not one of them. Also I would like to temper the suffocating tedium of long flights. Sometimes I feel suffocated by the tedium of just reading one of Lovecraft's endless, meandering sentences. Par example, this gem of a paragraph:

"Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and decay to excite jaded sensibilities. It was a secret room, far, far underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the lines of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Through these pipes came at will the odours our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the kingly dead, and sometimes--how I shudder to recall it!--the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the uncovered grave."

Do you think you have crammed enough adjectives in there, eh Howard?

Also, Lovecraft is not precisely the thing to read when you would like to stifle irrational fears. I am scared of many things, including:

1. Flight itself. WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?? Science blah blah but it still feels viscerally wrong to me. Especially landing. I hate landing. The stomach-ripped-through-your-throat feeling.

2. The possibility that someone will have a rare and virulent strain of tuberculosis and infect us all and thus the world descends into some sort of vaguely apocalyptic scenario.

3. The less likely but equally horrifying X-Files scenario wherein aliens attempt to intercept our plane, which in turn either leads us all to (a) being abducted and subjected to gruesome experimentation or (b) death by plane crash, which the government will try to conceal, the only evidence of our strange encounter the few minutes' discrepancy on our watches that infallibly point to the LOST TIME associated with UFO interference. (Another thing I don't understand: SPACETIME.)

I probably should have planned ahead and picked up some popular science work (that maybe explains flight or spacetime). Or Death Comes to Pemberley or something. Sigh.

Also, I have approximately a BAZILLION cookies left over from holiday cookie swaps, etc, and I realized that I should probably eat them all before I leave. COOKIE EATING EXTRAVAGANZA. By myself. P.S. They are stale. I may or may not have just stuffed five gingerbread cookies down my gullet in the last two minutes alone. I AM A PROPER ADULT.

Quality post, this.

sawdust & diamonds

2011-12-21T11:08:00.000-05:00

would have changed everything

2011-12-18T11:23:00.001-05:00

This is, as JK Rowling herself says, a “Very early page of Philosopher’s Stone written around 1991 and showing plot-line that was abandoned. Would have changed everything!”

2011-12-16T08:47:00.000-05:00

by Sylvia Plath

thursday micellany

2011-12-15T11:57:00.001-05:00

Remember when I used to compile these "miscellany" posts where I gathered together random things I found interesting? And most likely no one cared about any of it? WELL I'M BRINGING THEM BACK. Because what's more fun than sharing things you love with people you love?

I. The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe. After the heartbreak of the last season, I long for a hopeful Christmas episode.

II. Theodora Goss--author of In The Forest of Forgetting, an obscure but very, very enjoyable collection of stories--recently wrote about her experience reading China Miéville's wonderful, hilariously erudite essay "M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and and/or or?" Not being in school any more, I found that reading both the blog and the original essay was like feasting upon a scrumptious selection of pastries. Both are writers and academics, frightfully brilliant and engaging. If you like fairy tales, you should check out Theodora Goss. If you're into HP Lovecraft, check out China Miéville. Or if, like me, you like to bridge many interests, be brave and have a gander at both. (There are a fair few interviews with Miéville on YouTube that are interesting. And Goss's blog is rather good. And her stories are extraordinary, especially "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm.")

III. Speaking of smart people, the Guardian has an interview with Umberto Eco. He talks about conspiracies, Berlusconi, his new book, and the lingering success of his most famous book. FASCINATING!

"I have always had a narrative impulse," he says. "I wrote stories and beginnings of novels at the age of 10 or 12. I then satisfied my taste for narrative by writing essays. All my researches have the structure of a whodunit." One of his professors pointed out that even his doctoral thesis on Thomas Aquinas had that structure, with the conclusion teasingly arrived at after a long process of divination. "I recognised he was right, and that I was right, and that research must be done this way. I satisfied my narrative impulse when my kids were small by telling them stories, and then when they were grown up I felt the need to write fiction. It happened to me as it happens to people when they fall in love. 'Why did you fall in love that day, that month, with that person? Are you crazy? Why?' You don't know. It happens."

IV. And for something that requires no brain effort at all... Rainymood.com provides welcome white noise for the rain-bereft Washingtonian in exile. Genius.

thunder of the drums

2011-12-14T09:05:00.000-05:00

turn it pure

2011-12-13T11:14:00.001-05:00

"The Exhibit" by Lisel Mueller

Mueller's poems are exquisite and hopeful yet so terribly sad. I might just have to post more of them because I finished reading her collection Alive Together and I don't want it to be over.

claustrophobia

2011-12-12T11:34:00.003-05:00

Belatedly, a link! Go read this, an excellent post about the application of Freud's theory of the uncanny to Mark Z. Danielewski's weird, extraordinary novel House of Leaves. Two things that I love and you should love, too.

"I am really surprised that such an over-elaborate 'meta po-po-pomo novel or whatever' can actually succeed in being so fucking scary. The structural/textual/narratorial experimentation is actually making it like 100 times more claustrophobic and horrible than if it were just a straight novel. I’ve already had a couple nightmares about it."

YES. I remember reading House of Leaves while alone in someone else's house. I had become utterly absorbed in the tale, until, at one point, I heard a noise, looked up, and realized that night had fallen. I was just sitting there in the dark in a strange house, hearing strange noises. I was terrified. It's remarkable when a work of fiction can weave such a spell.

And, as you will know if you've been with me for a while, I am quite fond of Freud (ashamedly), and his essay on the Uncanny especially. (Also, what a GREAT cover. Though I usually can't stand the surrealists, Max Ernst's bird-lady paintings are amazing.)

GalleyCat recently reported that Mark Z. Danielewski landed a book deal for another serialized novel. If you remember, House of Leaves was originally published online in serial form, to great and wondrous effect. Now, of course, you can purchase the printed copy, which is well worth your $20.

with the hunger of lions

2011-12-11T10:53:00.000-05:00

Dear ---------,

Time to resuscitate this damn thing.

First, let me give you an update on my life. The past few months have been tumultuous, agonizing, dispiriting, and heart-rending. I moved to New York. I signed a lease. I have a job. It looks like I'll be staying here for a while.

It breaks my heart to be on the wrong coast in a grimy, loud, hive-like, monstrous city. Far from family and friends and the landscape of my soul. I cannot see my beloved evergreens, the purple mountains. I miss the rain.

After months of moving about, staying in dorms, subletting in a horror of an apartment, couch surfing, we finally found a place to call our own. We have no furniture except a small bookshelf, a card table, and a few fold-up metal chairs, and we sleep on $15 air mattresses, but we are young and there is a roof over our heads and the radiator works like a beast. I have a job. I have a salary and a place to go every day. With paychecks, I can stop living off beans and lentils and actually buy fancy cheeses again, teas and chocolate, nuts and yogurts, blissful foods that do my soul good.

The long and the short of it is, my life is stabilizing again. I was not prepared for the upheaval that was this summer. I'm feeling more like myself. My energy isn't going solely into figuring out how to wedge myself into this new life, like a square peg in a round hole. So I think I might finally be in a place where I can share again. If there's anyone still out there listening?

I am yours &c,
Katie Bear

so that's that

2011-10-26T08:56:00.000-04:00

I think that I'm going to let this blog hibernate for a while.

calling all whovians

2011-09-14T08:46:00.000-04:00

cake

2011-09-08T21:59:00.003-04:00

via

the innocents

2011-09-06T08:19:00.000-04:00

lord snot

2011-09-05T08:07:00.000-04:00

how do I despise thee?

2011-09-04T08:25:00.002-04:00

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.

or

An almost comprehensive list of the stunning attributes of my current living situation and why this apartment SUCKS THE SOUL like a dementor but worse and more slowly (and chocolate won't help):

three people sharing a one bedroom apartment
people drunkenly holding forth loud conversations outside the window until 4 in the AM
waking up to construction noises at 7 in the AM
the fridge that doesn't work and the freezer that we use as a refrigerator
the freezer that is half-full with the Real Tenant's booze
the oven that doesn't work
the stove that has only two functioning burners
the doctored-with-duct-tape blinds on the windows
the duct-taped mouse hole (GOBLIN HOLE)
the grimy paint peeling off the walls and ceiling
the stupid door that I can never lock/unlock properly
the extreme slant of the floor
the hot, humid, stagnant air
the broken window in the bathroom
the strange gnome figurines in the medicine cabinet
the mystery substance in the mystery canister by the sink
the MICE
the sink that leaks all over the counter
the bathroom that likes to attract the mold
the BUGS
not having trash pickup (and the Real Tenant's advice to venture out into the street at night and deposit our trash discretely into our neighbor's trash bins because that's not sketchy AT ALL)
the mysterious smells emanating from corners
lights and lamps that don't work
the bathroom door that hardly closes
the exorbitant rent
the witch-lady that roots about in the trash bins outside the window
how you have to push the window panes back into the tracks every time you open or close them
the closet that is not deep enough to fit proper-sized hangers

We have one week left. Thank heavens for small mercies.

tales from the city

2011-09-03T08:22:00.001-04:00

The other day whilst riding the subway, I was wedged in between a fellow reading Dickens and another marking up a galley. I think that I must be in the right city.

with you on a journey

2011-09-02T20:12:00.000-04:00

'If you take a book with you on a journey... an odd thing happens: the book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice-cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypapers. Memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.'

from Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

home is where the books are

2011-08-30T10:04:00.001-04:00

This is the best bookshop I've yet found in New York! (And being someone who has a chronic book buying habit, I've been to a few since moving here.) Alabaster Books is located just a block from the famous Strand bookshop, which is too big and sprawling and clean for my personal taste. But Alabaster is small and cramped and full of crotchety old men that line up to complain to the nice clerk with the ironic mustache. You can hang out in the dimly-lit Shakespeare corner and can find 40 year old paperbacks that have hideous covers and sad dedications from long-ago holidays. I like old things that bear the marks of previous owners.

I need to stop buying books.

2011-08-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

lion hearted girl

2011-08-28T22:40:00.001-04:00

What a crazy week. I celebrated my 23rd birthday. There was that earthquake that freaked everyone out in New York. I got a job. And to put the proverbial frosting on the cake, I lived through my first hurricane.

I never ever want to do that again. Ever.

As far as hurricanes go, apparently it was nothing much. It was stormy, yes, and the destruction wasn't as severe as anyone expected. The worst part was not being able to look out at the street, the rain and the quaking trees. That, and worrying that the windows were going to be bashed in, and that the street was going to flood and gross grimy water would seep into our apartment and ruin all of our things, and that the power was going to be out for weeks, and that we could be stranded on the island. And the not sleeping for all the worry in my brain, and the huddling in the uncomfortable dank corner of the apartment chanting Hail Mary's for hours and hours.

But we survived.

And this morning folks were creeping outside our windows like normal, rooting through the garbage cans and stubbornly brandishing their umbrellas despite the occasional topical-storm gale.

Oh New York, what are you doing to my life?

inclement weather

2011-08-26T22:10:00.001-04:00

Preparing for the hurricane. Unfortunately, I'm not used to dealing with these things, and most New Yorkers aren't either. Spent the day tromping around the city gathering supplies for the long haul. Keep calm, and so on. Go, go Gryffindor.

I'm about to nerd all over this post

2011-08-24T23:29:00.001-04:00

via Harry Potter Humor, the greatest website in the world

I'm not sure if any of you have registered for Pottermore yet...?

I for one just about peed my pants when I found the magic quill. It was surely a glorious day. I am OakWitch97, which was the least horrendous username they had available.

But every time anyone tweets about Pottermore sending out more welcome emails, I frantically check my inbox, and every time it is devoid of that precious, precious thing, my heart breaks into a million pieces.

Also, apparently there are more Ravenclaws registered in the beta version than students of other houses. Surprise? I think not. Nerds for the win.

three helpings of dessert

2011-08-24T07:50:00.001-04:00

"My future stepmother didn’t eat much dinner, but she had three helpings of dessert. This is when I first became suspicious that she was magic—a witch, or else under an enchantment. Witches and people under spells, magic people, always have sweet tooths."

from Swans by Kelly Link

and behold! it was a winged creature

2011-08-23T16:29:00.000-04:00

Um. So I've been really wanting to read LOTR again. And Lindsay put on the soundtrack for the movies. And I just couldn't resist posting this, one of my favorite descriptions from all the books. There is nothing more terrifying than the Witch-king on his fell beast. It is the stuff of nightmares:

The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. And the Dark Lord took it, and nursed it with fell meats, until it grew beyond the measure of all other things that fly; and he gave it to his servant to be his steed. Down, down it came, and then, folding its fingered webs, it gave a croaking cry, and settled upon the body of Snowmane, digging in its claws, stooping its long naked neck.

Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening. A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of the Nazgûl. To the air he had returned, summoning his steed ere the darkness failed, and now he was come again, bringing ruin, turning hope to despair and victory to death.

Anyone who poo-poos Tolkien should read this and weep.

tidbits

2011-08-23T10:31:00.005-04:00

The oven here doesn't work and it breaks my heart. No cakes, breads, muffins, cookies.

the sky was lit

2011-08-22T22:28:00.000-04:00

It seriously creeps me out that you can't see the stars here. The moon, yes. The same luminous moon that I saw on the other coast. But stars? None.

here: updates

2011-08-14T17:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we moved into the tiniest apartment in the East Village, a grimy place that is suitable only for a month-long stint. It's been raining since last night, and with the windows open, it almost feels like home. There's a great cafe around the corner where one can sip foamy lattes and eat the most delicious strawberry pancakes. Days like this, I am glad to be here.

Sylt II

2011-08-08T10:45:00.000-04:00

The wind that makes your hair grow faster
opens a child’s mouth full of strawberry and sand.
Slow and sure
on the scales of the ocean
the child’s head outweighs the sun.

Inside of the wind—
a blister of a church,
its walls thicker than the space from wall to wall
where the wind shifts shade and light
like two rival chess pieces
or two unmatched pieces of furniture.
Inside of the church—such a stillness
that when a feather floats down in a fist of dust
it becomes a rock by the time it hits the ground.

Organ pipes glint like a cold radiator,
contained in a case of a carved tree, its branches
tied up with a snake.
Organ pedals, golden and plump, are the tree’s only fruit.

It is all about the release of weight:
the player crushes the pedals like grapes underneath his feet.
My body, like an inaccurate cashier, adds your weight to itself.
Your name, called into the wind,
slows the wind down.

When a body is ripe, it falls and rots from the softest spot.

Only when a child slips and drops off a tree,
the tree suddenly learns that it is barren.

by Valzhyna Mort
from Poetry magazine, July/Aug 2011

rain

2011-07-13T19:27:00.000-04:00

Every time it rains it makes me think of home.

I miss the evergreen trees, too.

reasons why I can't wait for the autumn

2011-07-11T07:46:00.001-04:00

New Alan Hollinghurst novel!
A million exclamation points cannot express how excited I am about this.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt... Be still, my heart.

Pottermore!

Mark Gatiss and Hounds for Sherlock series 2.

Hopefully getting a job.
(Or completely running out of money.)

bizarro world

2011-07-10T11:44:00.000-04:00

Do you remember when I used to post things on here? Like ridiculously pompous book reviews? AHAHAHA

Now I just wallow in the impending HP implosion and talk about cats.

I'm pretty sure this is not what "industry professionals" mean when they suggest I keep a blog.

Hogwarts Hogwarts

2011-07-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

I may or may not have teared up yesterday while watching the speeches at the Deathly Hallows premiere. I may or may not have teared up in class today when Barbara Marcus came into class and talked about when the first HP book was purchased in the US. I may or may not have teared up while eating lunch in Subway when Lindsay and I talked about how we may or may not have teared up for all the aforementioned events. Uh.

books books books

2011-06-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

I haven't had the chance to read any book for the past two weeks. And now when I have the chance, my Nook is being cranky and won't connect to the wireless in my dorm. URGH.

it all ends here

2011-06-17T17:51:00.000-04:00

July 15 may just be the exact date of the end of my childhood.

woolworth

2011-06-12T09:02:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned before that this is where my classes are held? Unbelievable. Every day I walk around in a sort of daze. Meeting amazing people, going to ridiculously iconic places. Just thought I'd brag for a minute.

just a quick note

2011-06-06T22:22:00.000-04:00

Dear Reader,

Yep. I'm in New York right now taking crazy intense classes with no down time. There will be no sad excuse for blogging for the next several weeks. (Sad face.) I will miss you, sweet, sweet internet.

I am, &c.
Katie Bear

oh youth

2011-06-01T22:07:00.000-04:00

Gorey and cat and unfortunate comb-over.

kittens, etc

2011-05-31T00:32:00.000-04:00

Clean. Sort. Pack. Homework. Clean. Sort. Pack. Homework. Rush to the library to sit in the parking lot after hours to do homework and look at pictures of kittens. Clean. Sort. Pack. Have a minor emotional breakdown. Scarf down lots of chocolate chip cookies without hardly breathing. Look through guidebooks. Think about kittens. Continue cleaning and packing and not doing homework.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERING:

1. How many nail polishes are too many for a six week jaunt?

2. Should I bring my stuffed unicorn Rumble Roar?

3. Which tea pot should I bring? Blue or red?

they're taking the hobbits to isengard

2011-05-26T11:14:00.000-04:00

O cruel fates, why dost thou conspire to make my life miserable?

Mother Dear recently went through the cupboards frantically purging everything that wasn't in an airtight container because she thought there were bugs breeding somewhere. Or something. But now there's no instant cocoa powder anywhere in house and all I really want to do is hide inside and drink peppermint cocoa and watch all 12 hours or whatever of LOTR for the bazillionth time OH AGONY.

a tale only slightly related to odysseus, the blackguard, and his hyacinthine curls

2011-05-25T11:42:00.000-04:00

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!

Iris Murdoch in The Sea, The Sea uses "hyacinthine" (which may or may not be the most purple adjective in the English language) to describe a character's hair. She joins such company as Edith Wharton (as I believe I noted somewhere on this infernal blog many, many months ago) and Homer, as in the epic poet variety. And yes, I do keep tabs on these sorts of things. And no, I am not so enthusiastic as someone I might mention who had the gobsmackingly ludicrous idea to tape real hyacinths to her hair as a sort of "costume."

safe return doubtful

2011-05-24T11:07:00.000-04:00

so picturesque

2011-05-23T11:56:00.000-04:00

"English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look--Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires."

from Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, the most hilarious thing I've read in a while, and now it is on my list of plays to see when I live in a place that has Culture enough spilling out its ears. I am so glad that all that money I put down for a liberal arts degree finally paid off in that I can understand this play! Thank heavens I had that one history class where my professor was oddly enthusiastic about Capability Brown and those strange features of country estates known as ha-has. (Also, as I now feel the need to point out on every such occasion, there are gentle jibes at Ann Radcliffe... and Lord Byron is integral to the plot. Honestly, what other endorsement does one need?)

if I were to write a memoir everyone would die of boredom which is why I keep a blog?

2011-05-22T11:49:00.000-04:00

Oh, the life I lead, that the scurrying of a woolly caterpillar across my tea saucer constitutes the most exciting event of the day.

fantasists and liars

2011-05-21T10:50:00.000-04:00

"I will have to assume that I had a childhood, but I cannot assume to have had the one I remember. Everyone remembers things which never happened. And it is common knowledge that people often forget things which did. Either we are all fantasists and liars or the past has nothing definite in it. I have heard people say we are shaped by our childhood. But which one?"

from Sexing the Cherry, a very strange, beautiful and hilarious book by the inimitable Jeanette Winterson; a book about memory and voyages which I found unexpectedly poignant in the light of my impending move away from this place where I grew up.

maths

2011-05-20T14:50:00.000-04:00

The lilac will soon bloom. I can see it framed by the window when I lie on my bed.

Yesterday was the warmest day in seven months, though I do not think it cracked 65 degrees.

In less than two weeks I will have moved to New York City.

I need to stop putting books on hold at the library.

I know I should be working on homework but

2011-05-19T14:10:00.000-04:00

Writers and Kitties.

simon

2011-05-10T16:15:00.000-04:00

15 hours of Simon Schama romping about the British countryside being adorably melodramatic... what else could a girl want?

on the brink

2011-05-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

Can you imagine going up to the tallest tower and gazing out across the sea? I'd make noises like a foghorn and call out to the seagulls and then run to the library to look at pictures of plains and forests and gently sloping hills.

bagshot row

2011-05-03T15:04:00.000-04:00

Can I just go and stay in Hobbiton, please?

the last road

2011-05-01T17:11:00.000-04:00

"It was on May the First the the two came back at last to the brink of the valley of Rivendell, where stood the Last (or the First) Homely House. Again it was evening, their ponies were tired, especially the one that carried the baggage; and they all felt in need of rest. As they rode down the steep path, Bilbo heard the elves still singing in the trees, as if they had not stopped since he left; and as soon as their riders came down into the lower glades of the wood they burst into a song of much the same kind as before."

Today I shall sit in the sun reading The Hobbit and eating no less than a half dozen honey-drenched rhubarb muffins still hot from the oven.

wormholes, toast, etc.

2011-04-28T17:39:00.000-04:00

Dear concerned reader:

You may or may not have noticed the infrequent posting of pretty pictures and blather about nonsensical, non-important things (namely, my love of toast). Though I remain unconvinced of your existence, Dear Reader, I thought I should make a gesture to reassure any unfortunate sorts that might have stumbled upon this thing. I AM STILL ALIVE. And kicking! (And by "kicking" I mean "sitting about eating toast and watching Sherlock over and over again and snorting inelegantly every time Mark Gatiss appears." Yussss.)

LITTLE DID YOU KNOW that I was gobbled up by a stray wormhole and I only now managed to pop out into earth time. (That pesky wormhole also known as Lent.) My particular wormhole involved eating lots of toast and trimming ferns and and making strawberry rhubarb pies and complaining about the coldest April on record in western Washington.

I hope to reappear more frequently in the very near future. Until then, I am yours, &c

Katie Bear

PS. My mom is taking the day off work tomorrow so we can stay up late and watch THE ROYAL WEDDING live on television. It's rather a silly thing to do, but how many times in my life will this happen? LIVING LIFE ON THE EDGE yus yus.

deerlings

2011-04-19T15:26:00.000-04:00

to employ a magician

2011-04-14T10:46:00.000-04:00

"The King's Ministers had long treasured a plan to send the enemies of Britain bad dreams. The Foreign Secretary had first proposed it in January 1808 and for over a year Mr Norrell had industriously sent the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte a bad dream each night, as a result of which nothing had happened. Buonaparte's empire had not foundered and Buonaparte himself had ridden into battle as cooly as ever. And so eventually Mr Norrell was instructed to leave off. Privately Sir Walter and Mr Canning thought that the plan had failed because Mr Norrell had no talent for creating horrors. Mr Canning complained that the nightmares Mr Norrell had sent the Emperor (which chiefly concerned a captain of Dragoons hiding in Buonapart's wardrobe) would scarcely frighten his children's governess let alone the conqueror of half of Europe. For a while he had tried to persuade the other Ministers that they should commission Mr Beckford, Mr Lewis and Mrs Radcliffe to create dreams of vivid horror that Mr Norrell could then pop into Buonaparte's head. But the other Ministers considered that to employ a magician was one thing, novelists were quite another and they would not stoop to it."

from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (which, by the way, Neil Gaiman dubs "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years.") I wonder if it will always be fashionable to lovingly poke fun at Ann Radcliffe; there is quite a storied tradition of doing so. Ugh, is there nothing more abominable than the Female Novelist?

in defense of pink

2011-04-13T14:41:00.000-04:00

Last week, I read an article in which a father was complaining that his three-year-old daughter was going through a pink period. You know: the pink tutus, pink sneakers, pink jammies, pink fairies with the brushable long pink hair. Lovingly, if a little condescendingly, he wrote that he was waiting for her to grow out of it.

Grow out of it? Grow out of pink? How do you grow out of pink?! Who would want to?

And suddenly it struck me that, possibly, deep in my dignified brain, a three-year-old sits. Giggling.

Oh, I know I'm kid-ish sometimes. Silly, even. But in the fullest flush of my adulthood-- in the overfull flush, actually--at an aesthetic juncture when we all dress in black (it's New York, after all), paint with Linen White, eat wholesome and virtuous green, could my pink thing be... immature? Could it be that I--proud owner of pink sheets, a pink cell-phone cover, pink closet interiors, pink leather gloves, a pink mouse pad, and, yes, pink drinking and reading glasses--just really ought to get over it?

I've been thoughtfully examining this issue, looking long and hard into my innermost, colorful soul. And I'm proud to say: Heck, no!

from "Confessions of a Born-Again Pinkster" by Carol Prisant in House Beautiful, March 2011

I've gotten behind on my magazines this year. I have this gigantic stack of them that keeps on building. This week I've decided to take matters in hand and finally catch up. So, in the spirit of things, I've been flipping though the March issue of House Beautiful--an issue wholly devoted to the color pink. Sweet secretary's hat, HOW DID I MISS THIS?

Apparently, according to The Wall Street Journal (which I don't read, in case you were worried I finally went off the deep end), honeysuckle pink is the 2011 Color of the Year. In my opinion, however, pink is a perennial winner. Of course, I am a fan of just about any hue on the red-pink-purple side of the spectrum.

If you can lay your hands on a copy of the March issue, I strongly recommend it. Here's a spread that someone else scanned, below. Unfortunately, the full-throtle pink of the issue has been tempered (that's putting it mildly) by swathes of lovely, breezy, heavenly white.

P.S. The view out the window is of an unmown field, which I suppose is almost suitably picturesque. As we all know, A Room With A View is a prime necessity for any woman with a romantic disposition.

a dance for one

2011-04-03T10:21:00.000-04:00

A Dance For One on Vimeo.

grey weather

2011-04-02T15:42:00.000-04:00

This week the weather has been perfectly dismal. Rain in all its variations, the house swaddled in thick white fogs, puddles puddles puddles everywhere.

So I've been going through my books and choosing things to read again. I rushed through half of John Green's oeuvre last weekend. Then ghost stories in the afternoons whilst listening to piano sonatas, drinking pot after pot of tea. Yesterday I sat curled up with Sorcery and Cecelia (still delightful), and now I'm working on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

...A quiet rainy Saturday morning spent nestled in a cozy armchair in the library is one of my favorite things in the world.

in the name of the bee

2011-03-25T14:56:00.000-04:00

In the name of the Bee—
And of the Butterfly—
And of the Breeze— Amen!

Emily Dickinson

OMG Spring.

Springtime always makes me think of dear Emily.

A few years ago, I took a class about Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson. It was winter quarter, and we were just finishing up this time of year.* I remember reciting Emily Dickinson poems to myself as I inspected Indian plums, their funny cascades of white blossoms. I remember picking bouquets of forget-me-nots. I remember watching as bees started to emerge from their long winter hibernations. I remember standing at the edge of a lake, looking at the mists and the trees and the hills and saying amen amen amen.

The other day I was sitting in the yard, soaking up as much sunshine as I could, trying my darndest to get into yet another vampire book, but I was so distracted by all the stuff happening in the world.

Butterflies! Little white fluttering things bobbing about. They kept trying to land on me (yes, my pink shirt is wonderful, thank you very much). When they got close enough, you could see their wings were outlined in black. Like paper turning to ash.

And bumble bees! A stellar's jay with iridescent blue plumage. Cherry blossoms! A daffodil just starting to open its petals. Timid blossoms on the forsythia bush. Grass growing patchily in-between tufts of moss, like the untrimed hair of graves (no wait, that's a bit of a morbid image, right? I just re-read Paper Towns; you can't blame me.)

So many little miracles. Amen Amen Amen.

And again.

*FYI: I didn't used to like Emily Dickinson. And then I read Emily Dickinson's Gothic: Goblin with a Gauge. And I then had a proper nerding-out session. Did you know that Emily LOVED the Brontes? And she named her dog after St John's pointer in Jane Eyre? I ended up writing this HUGE paper about her Gothic tendencies and her really dark, dark, dark poems. Definitely not springtime reading, though. Better stick to her joyous flowery stuff. Or her sexy poems. Those are rather good, too.

shelmerdine

2011-03-24T15:43:00.000-04:00

Shelmerdine: You're hurt, ma'am.
Orlando: I'm dead, sir.
Shelmerdine: Dead. That's serious. Can I help?
Orlando: Will you marry me?
Shelmerdine: Ma'am, I would gladly, but I fear my ankle is twisted.

This may be the most ridiculous dialogue ever recorded on film. But that didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying Orlando (whilst cackling madly throughout).

swans and muses, gods and angels

2011-03-23T13:34:00.000-04:00

"Swans and muses, gods and angels! Everywhere you looked in an opera house, Helle said, you should be confronted by the sight of creatures whose proper element was the heavenly ether, reminding you that your purpose in being there was not routine entertainment but transport. Opera houses should be designed with the sole intention of transforming you--to transform your sense of scale, to reduce you, finally, to nothing more than a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a wildly beating heart."

Yesterday I finished rereading Kathryn Davis's masterly operatic novel The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, reaffirming my suspicion that is is truly the most excellent book I've ever read. Though it really made me miss being a season ticket holder for Seattle Opera. Sigh. If ever I were to be trapped on a desert island with one choice book, I'd choose The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf. Hands-down, no hesitation.

2011-03-19T11:37:00.000-04:00

kingdom up for sale

2011-03-18T11:17:00.000-04:00

EIGHT MINUTES of pure Stevie. For a while now, I've just been sitting on a pink sofa, eating this insanely pink strawberry yogurt, and watching Stevie videos. THERE IS NOTHING BETTER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

a small list of things

2011-03-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

I have been craving:

plums
butterscotch
crème brûlée

black forest

2011-03-17T15:38:00.000-04:00

Another dark house in the woods. I would plant rambles of roses, sit in my tower and gaze upon them.

it's in the trees

2011-03-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

the universe and everything

2011-03-16T23:17:00.000-04:00

Life update! I'm in Idaho right now visiting my BFF, thus the infrequent blog updates.

god's open wound

2011-03-16T00:03:00.000-04:00

Facts: the Italian stigmatist Padre Pio carried wounds that penetrated both hands and feet medially throughout his lifetime. The Umbrian St. Veronica Giuliani presented with wounds in both hands and feet, as well as in her side, which wounds were observed to open and close on command. The eighteenth-century holy woman Giovanna Solimani permitted pilgrims to insert special keys in her hands’ wounds and to turn them, reportedly facilitating the pilgrims’ own recovery from rationalist despair.

According to both St. Bonaventura and Tomás de Celano, St. Francis of Assisi’s manual stigmata included baculiform masses of what presented as hardened black flesh extrudent from both volar planes. If and when pressure was applied to a palm’s so-called “nail,” a rod of flesh would immediately protrude from the back of the hand, exactly as if a real so-called “nail” were passing through the hand.

And yet (fact): Hands lack the anatomical mass required to support the weight of an adult human. Both Roman legal texts and modern examinations of a first-century skeleton confirm that classical crucifixion required nails to be driven through the subject’s wrists, not his hands. Hence the, quote, “necessarily simultaneous truth and falsity of the stigmata” that the existential theologist E. M. Cioran explicates in his 1937 “Lacrimi si Sfinti,” the same monograph in which he refers to the human heart as “God’s open wound.”

from "Backbone" by David Foster Wallace (read it here), a story that honestly gave me the heeby-jeebies

boots all summer long

2011-03-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

Jane Austen, ever the sage.

2011-03-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid."

noir

2011-03-08T10:53:00.000-05:00

Late at night,
One of us sometimes has said,
Watching a movie in black and white,
Of the vivid figures quick upon the screen,
"Surely by now all of them are dead"—
The yapping, wire-haired terrier, of course—
And the patient horse
Soaked in an illusion of London rain,
The Scotland Yard inspector at the scene,
The extras—faces in the crowd, the sailors;
The bungling blackmailers,
The kidnapped girl's parents, reunited again
With their one and only joy, lisping in tones antique
As that style of pouting Cupid's bow
Or those plucked eyebrows, arched to the height of chic.

Ignorant of so many things we know,
How they seem innocent, and yet they too
Possess a knowledge that they cannot give,
The grainy screen a kind of sieve
That holds some things, but lets some things slip through
With the current's rush and swirl.
We wonder briefly only about the girl—
How old—seven, twelve—it isn't clear—
Perhaps she's still alive
Watching this somewhere at eighty-five,
The only one who knows, though we might guess,
What the kidnapper whispers in her ear,
Or the color of her dress.

by A. E. Stallings

bernard black

2011-03-07T10:11:00.000-05:00

starward spires

2011-03-06T10:55:00.000-05:00

niiiiiice

2011-03-05T15:11:00.000-05:00

Oh, that moment when you're in a public place and start choking because you're trying not to laugh hysterically at a gif someone posted. Smooth.

out on the wiley windy moors

2011-03-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

Noel Fielding dances to Kate Bush. In costume.

blah blah blah

2011-03-05T10:23:00.000-05:00

The wind knocked the power out this morning, as it does maybe once a week. It's a maddening affair really, as the water goes out with the electricity and the rooms turn cold remarkably quick. When we've no lights, I'm forced to muddle up and down the stairs in the dark like a drunkard, which is irritating as well as unsafe.

So I've been sitting in the semi-dark, bunting back and forth between The Line of Beauty--which I'll savor slowly this time--and Disquiet, a slim volume positively reeking of some past library patron's cigarette smoke.
Oh, my life is hard.

Also, for those of you that don't care for my rambles about old lady television ooops I mean Masterpiece Theatre, just stop reading now. But for those of you that might care (i.e. Esme)... I finally worked up the courage to watch The Line of Beauty--the BBC rendition from a few years back. I've been dreading it, afraid that they would have butchered it, but also terribly scared that they wouldn't bungle the thing--that it would turn out to be a brilliant adaptation and would eclipse the original. But take heart! It wasn't half bad, and I am even getting a little fond of Dan Stevens (whom I was warmly ambivalent toward as Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey, but didn't like at all as as Edward Ferrars or Arthur Holmwood--more to do with the writing than the acting, to be fair). Mostly, though, it was entirely forgettable, which I take as a good sign, as Hollinghurst's vision is in no danger of being usurped by inferior images. Huzzah!

friction, airfoils, air flow

2011-03-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

"May Earhart sat in front of her Windmaster fan, mouth open, letting the air move into her like a long leg into a stocking. For hours she would sit in front of the propeller blades, which she propped up on a bookshelf by the window so she could watch the clouds flirt and exchange vapor. She daydreamed of ailerons and elevators, fuselages, rudders and leading-edge flaps, friction, airfoils, air flow, air pressure, columns of heated and cooled air, thrust, and lift. She walked herself to the hospital when it was time, arms spread out at her sides, palms cupped, collecting wind like sails."

from "Cravings" by Jonathan Safron Foer, go read the rest at Conjunctions

the art of golden joinery

2011-03-03T10:46:00.000-05:00

Somehow or another, I began to use "heartbreaking" as a synonym for "beautiful." And it strikes me as a little repulsive, a little disgusting, but also true.

Like beautiful things are things with cracks in them. Like somehow we practice a kind of kintsugi for our hearts. It's not the breaking that is beautiful, but the mending. Over and over we repair our hearts with gold, make ourselves whole again. We are ourselves etched with beautiful, zigzagging lines--traceable, magical, beautiful.

like walking past a mirror

2011-03-02T10:14:00.000-05:00

"So, you’re waiting, even if you don’t quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don’t hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you - of how you were brought into this world and why - and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it’s a cold moment. It’s like walking past a mirror you’ve walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange."

from Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishirguo. As a reader, I tend to think I favor the blaring and the operatic, but ever since reading The Remains of the Day two autumns ago, I harbor great admiration for Kazuo Ishiguro, though I must say I consistently underestimate him. After a series of baffling mishaps at the library, I finally got my hands on a copy of Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro has this way of leading you quietly along with his elegant, simple prose--melancholy but never crude, overwrought, or overwhelming--and then he quietly wedges a knife right in your heart, and it is all you can do to breathe. I don't know how he does it.

mirror

2011-03-01T10:36:00.000-05:00

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

by Sylvia Plath

letty fox

2011-02-28T10:49:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up with the absurd feeling that yesterday I accomplished something significant. And then I remembered that mostly I just sat around watching depressing murder shows, thinking about snow, and flipping through National Geographic. And making breakfast for dinner.

In the March edition of NG there is an article about domesticating animals (that is to say, FOXES!!) which I sort of bothered to find online for you all but couldn't, maybe because it isn't actually March yet. Besides the fact that I am an awful pet parent, I think it would be very nice to snuggle up to a lovely silver fox. Though I would just pretend it was my daemon, to be honest. AM I RIGHT?

THRUMPPPPF

2011-02-27T10:26:00.000-05:00

When it is not windy and you haven't noticed the obnoxious hell-raising racket of a chainsaw, yet you hear the almighty THRUMPPPPF of a tree falling, you can surely blame it on the neighbors who have apparently moved from Arizona and want to fell all the lovely trees and transform their lot into a sad, bald golf course.

Why would you move into the woods if you just want to chop down all the trees? Why would you live on a hill if you only want to see boring flat neon-green vistas?

But they do have a pretty amazing gate. Unbelievably pretentious, yes, but awesome. Seriously, on the columns on either side of the wrought-iron, there's a pair of stone griffins arching their wings. Majestic griffins for the win.

good story

2011-02-26T18:47:00.000-05:00

For some reason, it is still snowing. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, CRAZY WORLD?

I'm not complaining.

Let me tell you about my day. This morning I lazed about in my pajamas, expecting the snow to turn into rain at any moment, and admired my pair of black brogues that arrived in the mail yesterday (the UPS man drove up when I was making a Banana-Apple-Cranberry Indecision Loaf and he eyed my halloween skeleton apron rather skeptically-- I KNOW YOU'RE JEALOUS, UPS DELIVERY MAN).

By afternoon, I had basked in the glory of my new shoes enough and had gotten thoroughly depressed by the ending of Swamplandia!, so I tugged on my thickest knitted socks and went sledding (the best cure for any sort of sadness). I pretended that I was on a slow winterland rollercoaster, complete with daring, death-defying, last-second serves around obstacles (i.e. clumps of snowy salal).

And when my hands nearly froze solid, I came inside to drink peppermint cocoa and bask in the warmth of the internet. Nearly perfect day. Yay!

That was a good story, wasn't it?

decline of the english murder

2011-02-26T10:26:00.000-05:00

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?

Naturally, about a murder.

George Orwell is spot on. Read his "Decline of the English Murder," available online.

a cub or two

2011-02-25T10:39:00.000-05:00

I've been watching documentaries about polar bears and the imminent dangers of melting arctic ice. The possibility of the great bears extinction pretty much ruins my life.

turnips

2011-02-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

Me: No no no! Of course he's not the boy's father! Look at the turn-ups on his jeans!

Phil: Turnips?

Me: *facepalm*

the spiritist's telegraph

2011-02-23T11:29:00.000-05:00

I'd suffer this terrible side pain that Kiwi said was probably an ulcer and Ossie diagnosed as lovesickness. Or rather a nausea produced by the 'black fruit' of love--a terror that sprouted out of your love for someone like rotting oranges on a tree branch. Osceola knew all about this black fruit, she said, because she'd grown it for our mother, our father, Grandpa Sawtooth, even me and Kiwi. Loving a ghost was different, she explained--that kind of love was a bare branch. I pictured this branch curving inside my sister: something leafless and complete, elephantine, like a white tusk. No rot, she way saying, no fruit. You couldn't lose a ghost to death.

She showed me a diagram in The Spiritist's Telegraph, part of a chapter entitled 'The Corporeal Orchard.' I've never forgotten it. It had a punctilious, surgical level of detail, like one of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical sketches--only in this drawing the aortas and ventricles of a human heart burst into flowering trees.

When I got home from California, there was a nice cardboard package waiting for me with a crisp new (very new!) book inside. Swamplandia! by Karen Russel. I hardly ever buy new books, so it's always special and kind of strange to hold such a pristine thing in my hands. Oooh, the sound of the spine opening. Oooh, the smudgy marks of grime I'll leave on the cardboard cover when I thumb through it. Oooh, the classy Knopf borzoi colophon. (My heart may or may not have just palpitated.)

It's not quite the right book to read in this fluke snow shower we're having, but it'll do.

angel pillows

2011-02-22T13:18:00.000-05:00

Morning.

Apple pancakes with cinnamon butter, pine nuts, maple syrup, a glass of milk.

Outside, snow is falling soft and white like the angels had a pillow fight and burst one of god's prodigious down pillows. And to think, I'd about allowed myself to dream of spring, of hyacinths and the gentle blue of English bells. It's lovely, though, this quick frenzy of snow. Just unexpected.

never enough glitter

2011-02-22T12:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was searching for glitter. I have these fantastic all-purpose glitter gels that come in reasonable-size plastic pots. You can take your most gigantic paint brush and just slather the stuff about to your heart's content. It's called fairy dust or something equally ridiculous. One has a yellowish-pinkish tint that calls to mind bubblegum and rainbows and lemonade. The other is pure purplish-blue starshine wonder. However, when I unearthed the things and cracked them open, all that was left was a half-inch crust of glittery solid glob at the bottom of each. All attempts to rehydrate the things ended in failure. Epic failure! Heartbreak.

old ships sail like

2011-02-19T10:50:00.000-05:00

casaubon

2011-02-18T11:23:00.000-05:00

Rebecca Mead on George Eliot:

Once, when she was asked which real-life person had been the inspiration for Casaubon--a man whose "soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic; it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying"--she tapped her own breast.

espresso fail

2011-02-17T14:39:00.000-05:00

I'm very put out. The usual dour Washington weather rode on the wings of our plane down the coast. It is raining and windy and cold. What I wouldn't give for a foamy hazelnut latte right now in a nice white ceramic mug with elegant handles. But unfortunately, coffee shops in Oakland are worse than awful, as gleaned from past experience.

Yesterday, when it was not raining, we rode various forms of mass transit to the California Academy of Sciences. From the bus windows we rode up and down the crazy San Fransisco hills and I looked dreamily out at all the wonderful painted lady Victorian houses. When we got to the museum, we saw lots of really great amazing things, including a taxidermied polar bear. Imagine that!

2011-02-17T11:18:00.000-05:00

crazy cat lady

2011-02-16T12:50:00.000-05:00

Chinatown, San Francisco. Yesterday it took entirely too much effort to convince myself that I don't in fact need more ceramic bowls with cats on them. But oh goodness, they were adorable.

almost

2011-02-14T09:52:00.000-05:00

at the mountains of madness

2011-02-14T00:50:00.000-05:00

You know you're living the life when you spend FOUR HOURS straight listening to your computer read Lovecraft in its creepy robot-voice. (Note: computer cannot pronounce Cthulhu.)

day of wrath, day of anger

2011-02-11T10:51:00.000-05:00

It is a bit unnerving to wake up with Dies irae stuck in your head. ~~Especially if you are prone to invest great cosmological significance in random everyday occurrences.~~

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
teste David cum Sibylla.
Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!

blackberry stone

2011-02-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

blossom

2011-02-09T10:50:00.000-05:00

Isn't it lovely? What else is there to say?

ghost hearts

2011-02-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

So I was thinking. Just because I have internet that is so slow it feels like death, not everyone lives in some hellish backwater... so! VIDEO LINKS FOR SCIENCE!!!!

"Can We Live Forever?" is a Nova Science Now program that aired a week or so ago, but it has been HAUNTING MY BRAIN for days. I highly recommend you snuggle down with your computer for a while and prepare to have your mind blown. Just you wait until they actually dissolve all the cells of a heart to leave a freakish ghost-heart behind. Just you wait.

Or you can just watch that segment now without bothering with the full program. (But try not to be overwhelmed by memories of Repo: The Genetic Opera and how TERRIBLE that movie was. Or take a mental memo to NEVER see it. You can thank me later.)

the wonders of orange nutmeg muffins

2011-02-07T15:50:00.000-05:00

or:

Things I Did This Morning, A Not Very Interesting List

1. Was depressed about the weather. It was raining, again, and dark.

2. Put on slighty morose music.

3. Brewed some STRONG darjeeling for a marinade for the chicken paprikash I'm making for dinner. Like, insanely strong. Tried not to think about all the bacteria-infested raw chicken juices that would soon be an integral part of the darling darjeeling tea. Brewed a big pot of Paris tea for myself.

4. Had a minor emotional breakdown about the limp pile of green onions in the fridge that I'm not going to use until later in the week for potato soup.

5. Recovered.

6. Dissolved the cobwebs in my head with hot tea. Declared that I needed muffins STAT. (Muffins are MY food. Like, my signature food. When bored, make muffins. When depressed, make muffins. When ecstatic, make muffins. When you go to a potluck, make muffins. When you have a tea party, make muffins. When in doubt, make muffins.) Whipped up some orange nutmeg muffins, dense with oats and applesauce and chopped pecans. (FYI: orange nutmeg muffins, if you've never made them, smell like true perfection. If there were an ideal Baking Smell, orange nutmeg muffins with pecans would be that smell -- like the true Spice Cabinet Smell is garam masala.)

7. Wandered about the house. Watched the rain drip slowly off the roof.

8. Looked out our front window. Wondered when the garbage bin men were going to come. Saw a flower blossom--two of them!--low to the ground, a shocking magenta paired with an equally vivid yellow. OH MY GOD FLOWERS. Almost had a heart attack right then and there.

9. Darted immediately outside to verify. Confirmed.

10. Declared that today was going to be a good day.

11. Ate a muffin.