Patrick Doud's Blog, page 3
May 5, 2012
June blooms, Fernwood Lake
The last post—aboutwanting to crawl into flowers like a bug—focused on some of the flowers that were then in bloom onthebig rock beside my house. I had planned to follow that with another June flower post,this time dealing with Fernwood, a small lake in the woods to the north.
So, to bridge the gap between the last post and the next: Here are some of the pictures that would have gone with the piece I was planning to write, backbeforethe neglect set in.
On the land bridge that crosses a corner o...
July 1, 2011
Blooms of June at Blackberry Rock
Drawn to flowers, I imagine what it would be like if I were able, in terms of scale, to switch with them. I am thinking of a flower so much larger than myself that its colors, textures, and smell encompass my senses; a flower big enough to make my immediate surroundings, like a room or a hillside; a flower that's a place where my whole body can go.
Near the beginning of Ogin, when Elwood tastes the food of Ehm for the first time, his spirit leaves his body. In "a desert of white rock" he...
June 26, 2011
More on war
Trouble discussed briefly in a recent post on the The Mornith War has me thinking about an unfinished poem of mine from around 2004. I looked at it again this morning for the first time in years, wondered why I never thought of it while writing Mornith, and decided to share some (maybe a quarter of it) with you. Except for one section (the last one included here), none of it was published. ("The passages of the day" appeared in Underutilized Species, a 2005 mini-anthology out of Gloucester...
June 21, 2011
Midsummer mountain laurel
… he followed the bear's trail to … a dense stand of mountain laurel.
The mountain laurel is blooming in the woods, putting out scads of white and pale pink flowers.
In Ogin, a ritual hunt ends at a place where the mountain laurel is tall and wide enough for a bear to hide in. None of the mountain laurel bushes I have seen in Ravenswood are anything like that big, but during this time of flower-clusters there is a lot more to them.
The open flower like a candy umbrella o...
June 13, 2011
This record is magic
It has been an especially fine Spring. The return of the green life, being with the ones I love, having a new book out—I have probably never enjoyed and appreciated all of these more than I have this Spring.
And though the older I get the more rarely this happens, a particular piece of music has come along and become the sound of this era. Of my life, anyway. For the last three weeks or so I have listened to Marissa Nadler's new album more than all other music put together. (Its release is...
June 5, 2011
The Mornith War
The Bookstore of Gloucester is very kindly throwing a release party for the new book today. After the cover image, one or two notes on The Mornith War.
Some thoughts about having the word "war" in the title of my book. "War" is not a word I want to use without care. I never want to gain from maiming, killing, and misery; I never want to exploit anyone's fancy to see others suffer and die—even in a story. (Yet I have read of the brutal fights in the tunnels in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the...
June 4, 2011
Who is building part 2
Yesterday I stopped and talked with the owner of the excavation company at the bottom of the street, and my questions of the previous post were answered.
The place on the hill is being cleared for a wedding reception!
There will be no big house up there—just a tent for the celebration, a high place in the woods with a view of the earth going down to the sea. On the day there will be music and dancing, and candles and torches as it gets dark. Maybe the moon will even join in… if the weather...
June 2, 2011
Who is building what and why are they building it now
Something I saw out my study window this morning startled me deeply. On top of the wooded hill west of the house, craning its neck above the trees, was a huge yellow excavator. It was so visually dramatic, so monster-like, one of my first thoughts was to take a picture. Raising the window wide, though, brought in a gust of wind that blew a stack of papers across the study and into the hall. I quickly closed the window, and the excavator was quickly out of sight behind the trees. In the...
