Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 135

my own Everglades

Two days ago, Writer's Almanac quoted Marjory Stoneman Douglas, eulogizer of the Everglades, who said of them,

Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness . . . the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the blue heights of space . . . the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose . . . it is a river of grass.

(vast glittering openness
sweet massive winds
blue heights of space
a river of grass)

One day I'll see...

an afternoon and a morning

In a snatch of afternoon time yesterday I went food shopping, and on the way I radio channel surfed, and got caught by a song by Eminem, all raw the way his songs tend to be, forgiving his mother and also apologizing, and as a mom, it got to me. (Song is called "Headlights." )

Then I moved on, and got waylaid by a song on a country station, because in the song a guy is trying to sweet-talk a girl, and she totally interrupts him because her favorite song comes on the radio, and I could identify...

The Wind Rises

Some weeks ago, we went to see Hayao Miyazaki's recent film Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises)--coincidentally, just a few days after rushthatspeaks posted this thoughtful review of it. About it Rush writes,

It's an incredibly uncomfortable masterpiece working on many levels ... ninety percent of it is uplifting, soothing, and funny in the best of Ghibli tradition. It seems to have managed to have offend both the left wing and the right wing in Japan, which is entirely as it should be.

--Yes, given...

Flags from far away

I like checking up on the petition to save IRIN, the Nairobi-based news network I mentioned a few entries back, because I like seeing the many, many nations represented by those who sign:














If you haven't already, please consider signing and spreading the word.
Save IRIN petition

wearing wind chimes like perfume

I heard wind chimes today on my walk, but saw nothing but a sugar maple and a house with flaking paint. The wind was up, and I thought,

Somewhere there's a woman who wears wind chimes dangling from her ears and wrists and maybe from each twisting braid, if she has braids. A spirit wind surrounds her all the time, so the chimes are ringing all the time. She changes them all the time--some days silvery tones, some days heavy porcelain ones--they have colors and create an aura, just like perfume....

active and contemplative

Things have been keeping me from putting up this entry, but I really must, because it's already the first of the month in Australia, where my new LJ friend heliopausa is starting her fast. I'll join her when it becomes April first here.

We're fasting for a day in support of Irom Sharmila and her plea to the government of India to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

I told someone close to me about Sharmila, how she'd been fasting for over a decade. The person I told was perplexe...

a foray elsewhere

Not yet a green and gentle land. Instead a land where cold iron imitates living things. It curls and clings and twines, like a vine:





Like flesh, it bruises:



In the ice, a still life, a portrait of a past season and one to come:

Meet IRIN, an award-winning, Nairobi-based regional news network

After the Rwandan genocide, in its paroxysms of self-reproach and desire to never let such a situation arise again, the United Nations established the Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) , headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. The idea was to establish local news bureaus, staffed mainly by local reporters, who could get the word out on humanitarian topics. Nearly twenty years later, IRIN has regional offices in Johannesburg, Dakar, Dubai, and Bangkok, and its 20 reporters and 80 stringer...

shadow messages

"We
Gon"
the leaves say
(the leaves can't spell)
and underneath that
many flights of birds
wings extended
every which way
going, going, gon

another sketch of Em and Kaya

I'm not an artist, so my own efforts to draw my characters don't satisfy me as much as Kelsey Soderstrom's did, but all the same, I was glad to turn the doodle I did of Em and Kaya into an actual drawing. It's little stiff, a little cartoony, and Kaya looks more diffident than she is in real life ( . . . um), but--here they are.