Of Clouds And Lollipops

Happy Easter to those who are celebrating! Happy Passover to those who are celebrating that! And Happy Sunday if you are not celebrating anything!

I got up this morning and made a blueberry cobbler and some whipped cream (pics) and then I ate some for breakfast and it was delicious.

I currently have a ginormous ham in the oven, because when I ordered it, I thought L might be coming for Easter dinner, but she wasn't feeling up to it, so I have a 10lb spiral ham (I thought I was getting something that was 6 or 7 lbs, so you can imagine my surprise when this behemoth showed up) and I guess I'll be eating it for lunch all week in sandwiches, and with eggs and in fried rice and I'm sure I'll figure out a couple other ways to eat it. *hands*

Yesterday, I made that peasant bread again and one I left plain - I'll use that for the above ham sandwiches - and the other I added in half a stick of butter mixed with 1 1/2 tablespoons of minced garlic, 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese, and a sprinkle of basil and oregano (pics). I ate it last night for dinner with some fresh mozzarella and it was delicious.

I've actually been writing this weekend, which hadn't happened in a while. Not on any of my wsip of course, but what are you gonna do? Hopefully I'll be able to finish it. I've got three sections left to go.

Anyway, here's today's poem:

Between Going and Staying
by Octavio Paz

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Translated by Eliot Weinberger.

***

Anniversary
by Cecilia Woloch

Didn’t I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I’d never go back?
And hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other’s hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

*

So I woke up on Tuesday morning and I thought, I could take Thursday off and have a FIVE DAY weekend. And so that is what I did, and now i am home gloriously doing nothing today, except maybe laundry later. Tomorrow, someone is coming to hang my mirrors, and Saturday I have the cleaning service, so I will have to be up early, but today I slept in until 9! It was amazing!

Last night, I met L for dinner and then we went back to where she is apartment sitting for DG and chatted for a couple of hours, and I didn't get home until about midnight, but it was great just to hang out and talk. Dinner was good too, and there were two for one drinks, so she had some kind of blood orange cocktail and I had one two that had passion fruit and peach in it, and it was delicious.

Yesterday was full of surprising good things. I had my review, which went exceptionally well and better than I expected, given what happened last year. But boss3 said that not only had I risen to the occasion of having more and more work piled onto my plate, but she noticed that I had taken her advice from last year seriously and also seemed more engaged and interested in the work than I had been previously. So that was great.

Because of how the day was scheduled, I wasn't going to be able to eat lunch until 3:30, unless I ate at 12 noon, which I normally don't like doing, but I ran out and bought a bagel and scarfed it down, but after my review, it turned out that I did not have to cover reception, and in fact the receptionist had made me up a plate of food from a retirement party that had happened at lunchtime, and left it on my desk! So I ate a little bit of that (it was about 2:30 by that time, so my usual lunch hour), and then one of the other assistants guided me to where they were keeping the leftover cake, so I also got a piece of cake out of it.

That seemed like a good note to go out on for the week, so I'm glad I am off today, since yesterday could probably not be topped, unless they decided to give me a raise. Which sadly they did not, as there is no increase attached to the performance review process.

Now I need to find something to eat because I've just been drinking coffee all morning and it's starting to make me shaky.

*

Today's poem:

How to Write a Story
by Cyn Kitchen

1.

here, we join Ted
a man in a tree.
how he got there
you decide.
scuttling branch to branch,
lowered by chopper, launched
from trebuchet, a beginning.
here he sits, whistling, whittling.
above, birds flit among leaves
below, pasture green & rolling.
Ted is in the tree, you put him there
but make no mistake it was under
his own power.
 
2.
 
throw rocks at Ted.
start small,
bean him with pebbles.
muster strength to heave
stones fist-big,
boulders round & smooth as a heart.
observe. take notes.
consider more rocks.
let exhilaration blow through you
as you throw, observe, repeat.
do not go easy.
watch him in the tree, tattered
bleeding, wide-eyed
as an empty house.
writers never pity. 
this mess is of his own making.
 
3.
 
it is not Ted's tree.
he does not live here; 
he was only visiting.
suddenly, a tornado
sweeping over the prairie.
there is no cover. this is
between Ted & the finger
of God that will flick him from
his branch. or
that hunter in boredom
will blow him off his high horse
double-ott buck,
send him in a high arc over
crest of hill.
perhaps the same chopper
could pluck him away.
a ladder? too easy.
nevertheless, get him down.
 
4.
 
Ted is in handcuffs. the story took off
on its own while you were looking
straight at it. not what you had planned
but there it is, undeniable.
you did all you could
still you ended up here,
struck like a match. keep taking notes,
follow at a safe distance.
up ahead, another tree.
how he gets there you don’t know.
fill your pockets with stones
caress them like old lovers.
the story has not ended.
the story does not end.
it keeps going whether you
are watching it or not. 

*

It is so cold in this office today. On the upside, it's keeping me awake?

What I'm reading Wednesday:

What I've just finished
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, which I thought was intriguing but the narrative structure was too distant for me to get emotionally involved with the characters. ( spoilers )

I thought everything about the gods was so interesting - do humans know this? does it affect the human story-telling tradition? the development of language? but the Hamlet rehash plotline was only okay because we were never in the other characters' feelings. And the ending is a bit abrupt and anticlimactic.

I also read these two articles which I recommend:

+ Lloyd Dobler is Cameron Crowe’s original manic pixie dream date #this movie is the best movie #formative influences

+ The Legend of Keanu Reeves #my lifelong keanu reeves situation continues

What I'm reading now
The last Amberlough book: Amnesty. I just started it this morning, so I don't have much to say except I think it was a questionable editorial choice to enclose a 'foreign' language in « » instead of regular quotation marks - I can't remember if the earlier books did this, but since I don't remember, I'm guessing they didn't. The words are still in English! This isn't a comic book where you might need the visual signal that a different language is being spoken. That's what narrative text is for. Idk. It jumped out at me this morning and not in a good way.

What I'm reading next
*hands*

***

Today's poem:

What I Mean By Ruin Is...

When there's only condiments left in the fridge
and you join a free online dating service
so men will buy you dinner.

When you've shucked the night with the dull blade
of indecision and gulped down everything,
even the pearls.

When some old, left-handed love has left
your guitar strung backwards
and you can't find any songs
for rain in its frets.

When you wake up next to the body
of your past and it looks ready
to wrinkle and bald.

When the last burn of summer is peeling
from your breasts and there's nothing to husk
the pale, raw of new flesh.

When the woman who wears her hair
in the old way quits mumbling about Jesus
on the street corner and takes her salvation
pamphlets to a pauper's grave.

When you're too ugly to pray,
but pray
              and the only voice
on the drunk subway wails
                         good grief.

~Stevie Edwards

***

Now I have to go to a meeting. Sigh.

***

That storm last night/early this morning woke me up and I had to run into the living room to close the window because so much water was coming in. Ugh.

Today's poem:

Geography IV
by Susan Rich

Of what is the earth's surface composed?
– Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III

The world is a little place – a feather, a pebble, a spoon;
it turns to the left and taps its foot, a soldier signaling

to the rest of its platoon. The world doesn't know
it's a little world, thinks it's Greta Garbo in her Paris debut.

Watch as the world decorates half-moons and cinnamon stars,
slips the Sound some islands to improve a stellar view.

Tonight the world wishes to sing what it means
to miss New Orleans; listens to drowned hymns

of the Tchoupotulas while waiting on help,
recompense, a cat with seventeen kittens. Now the globe

pulls round again, scattering meaning in gold
rings of ramekins; a wizard of chemical breathing.

When invited to a soiree by this parched world,
down the Pinot Grigio while your inner life implodes

knowing nothing is serene as it seems – the past
lit with menthol cigarettes, our futures just as unclean.

*

The Clone Wars season 7 trailer gave me A LOT of FEELINGS in re:

- ♥♥♥AHSOKA♥♥♥

- Snips and Skyguy reunited! Just break my heart all over again why don't you?

- REX

- Maul!

( spoilers I guess? )

Between this and Falcon & Winter Soldier, the Disney streaming service is certainly making a tempting case for itself.

Lastly, Matt Lanter & Hayden Christensen, or as I tagged it on tumblr, #same hat. (I amuse myself anyway.)

*

Today's poem:

Elegy
by Aracelis Girmay

What to do with this knowledge
that our living is not guaranteed?
Perhaps one day you touch the young branch
of something beautiful. & it grows & grows
despite your birthdays & the death certificate,
& it one day shades the heads of something beautiful
or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out
of your house, then, believing in this.
Nothing else matters.

All above us is the touching
of strangers & parrots,
some of them human,
some of them not human.

Listen to me. I am telling you
a true thing. This is the only kingdom.
The kingdom of touching;
the touches of the disappearing, things.

***

I'm having a fairly lazy Sunday, after a fairly lazy Saturday. Last night, I made the dough for cream cheese preserves cookies, and this morning I made the cookies, and they are delicious! but the dough is almost impossible to handle. I don't know what the problem is (not enough flour probably?) but my sister said they had the same problem with the recipe and so use a different recipe now.

( my grandmother's preserves cookie recipe )

I also made strawberry cream cheese ice cream, because I still have a bunch of strawberries, and it turned out excellent as it always does. I guess it was a weekend for baking with cream cheese?

Pics are here.

***

I'm still thinking about Episode IX and someone - gffa I think? - mentioned the callbacks and references to the OT, and how everyone (note: not me! I loved them! but I love variations on a theme) complained about them as laziness in TFA, but with this trailer, we see that, to quote another SF franchise (that was inspired by the OT), "all of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again." THEY ARE STILL FIGHTING THE SAME WAR. Which makes sense (I have this whole PT = WWI*, OT = WWII, ST = now-ish thing that I've never gotten around to writing up), especially with George Lucas's whole, "it doesn't repeat but it does rhyme" (QFM) thing.

*I mean, the PT is clearly influenced by Shrub-era politics, but I can make the case for a WWI parallel! trust me!

I just really hope that "the rise of Skywalker" isn't some bullshit redemption arc for Kyle. I hope instead it refers to Rey (or Finn, but as I've said before, so much of her styling and history etc. goes there and it's poor storytelling to waste that just to thwart expectations) either being a Skywalker or taking the name. Idk. I'm just glad to see the new trio + Rose having adventures together, I guess.

My deep dive back into DCU fandom has reminded me that in the end, for fannish purposes, canon is the clay we build stories with, and we can ignore a lot of the stuff we don't like. (And obviously what you do or don't take and what you leave is dependent on what you personally like and may not match up with what other fans like or leave behind.) So that is what I do these days; it makes being disappointed or enraged by the actual canon slightly easier. (I mean, obviously I am still both of those things sometimes, but less so than I used to be. *hands*)

***

poetry month has infiltrated my dreams, because this morning I woke up with lines of (non-existent) poetry in my head and thought, I have to post that one today! Except there is no such poem. The lines were:

My vocabulary does not contain the following:
disavow, good morning, potato
Please substitute:
promise, good night, my heart.

I don't know what my brain was doing. *hands* Have today's poem:

The River

This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we'd have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks

of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.

Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way

with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.

~John Glenday

With that said, let's talk fandom stuff:

First, in brief: Falcon & Winter Soldier is a go! Please be the odd couple superhero comedy I've been yearning for! And when I say "odd couple" I mean it - Sam as Felix and Bucky as Oscar! Or v.v., I'm not picky. I can already hear the old Odd Couple theme music in my head! (I guess this means neither Bucky nor Sam becomes Captain America after Endgame? Or will timeline shenanigans prevent that and this will be a whole new timeline?) I still have no plans to splash out for the Disney service, but angelgazing mentioned it might be bundled with Hulu, which I already get, and between this and the new Clone Wars season, I might be tempted...

And speaking of TCW, the trailer for Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker dropped yesterday and while I'm trying not to get my hopes up after TLJ made me ANGRY WITH RAGE (no, I don't want to rehash it now), there are some things that are EXCITING!!! in it:

( spoilers want you to DO IT )

Anyway, that was a lot and it gave me a lot of feels and I would really like for them not to fuck this up, because it should have been Leia's movie, and we've been robbed of that, and they really need to honor her properly here.

***