Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 15

Three great short stories

I bought issue 296 of Interzone magazine because I wanted to read "999 Swords" by Marie Brennan, a Yoshitsune-and-Benkei story, and wow, wow, wow, it completely rewarded all my hopes and expectations. Benkei's narration of his childhood is very funny:

“I explained to [the monk] that I needed charity, since not only had my parents abandoned me but so had the monks of Hieizan. Therefore, he ought to give me his robes. To my great astonishment, he refused! I ask you – what kind of Buddhist doesn’t s...

Holy Family statue, repainted

The tall one had acquired a Holy Family statue from somewhere. It had seen better days: the paint on it was peeling horribly; Mary and Jesus looked like they had terrible skin conditions, and Joseph looked even more beaten down than he often does. More than a year ago, I asked him if I could repaint it, and he said yes ... and then it took me more than a year to do it.

Putting aside issues of oppressive evangelization, I really love localized madonna-and-child representations--from Vietnam, Ethi...

interpret THIS

Dreamed that I was making grilled-cheese sandwiches, only they weren't sandwiches, they were paperback books. I was cooking up paperback books in a frying pan. Butter on both sides, medium heat, flipping them over ... watching for whether the covers were getting nice and golden brown.

Oh oops! I tried to grill a hardback! So frustrated with myself: the crust will be much too tough and the heat will probably not penetrate to the center. Maybe I can cut off the spine at least....

The dream didn't ge...

Jiji studies Tikuna

A couple of times recently, I played Jiji cat tv on Youtube--videos of mice and squirrels and birds moving about. He was *fascinated*. Since then, he's been very interested in whatever's going on on my screen. If I'm just typing (as I am now, writing this entry), he will paw at the moving cursor.

I'm slowly working my way through the Tikuna lessons that Mayra Ricardo Zuluaga linked me to, the ones in Spanish and French. So yesterday, I was listening to/watching one, and Jiji hopped up onto the de...

Benjamin Zephaniah

Sometimes I feel fond of a person based solely on one acquaintance. That's how it is for me with Benjamin Zephaniah: I knew him solely for his "Tam Lyn Retold," which he created with Eliza Carthy as part of The Imagined Village, a project "intended to produce modern folk music that represented modern multiculturalism in the United Kingdom" (Wikipedia). "Tam Lyn Retold" recasts Tam Lin as a war refugee threatened with deportation whose lover holds onto him despite his turning into "a victim, a l...

The inanimate object

Sometimes on Wednesday nights, I join an online writing session--you know the type of thing: everyone introduces themselves, then settles down for X amount of time for writing, then comes back together to chat about it. Usually, along with the introductions, there's some kind of icebreaker question...

(  CW! You are about to enter the realm of petty, competitive thoughts and resentments!  )

So there you go folks! Unvarnished Asakiyume!

comments

capitalism and Thanksgiving

I find it amazing and daunting to see how the capitalist machine took a holiday that has very little that's commercializable to it (you buy food; you may buy tickets to visit family--that's it) and turned it into a multiday festival of consumerism of all flavors.
Black Friday--buy buy buy from major retailers of all stripes!
Small Business Saturday--don't forget the little guys, especially those near you! Buy buy buy!
Cyber Monday--*wringing hands* But what about the online vendors? Please cast ...

un très bon micro

I've started listening to Denis Bertet's 2021 Tikuna classes. OMG great French review because he says everything in French and then translates into Spanish, so if there's something I don't remember, I can catch it the second time around.

First class he shared a video of a man sitting in his house, introducing himself, and asked the students for things they noticed about the language on first hearing (although the class included both people who were familiar with the language and/or culture and ab...

languages-lifeways-connections

It was a peak linguistic delight to listen to a presentation, given in Portuguese by a charismatic Colombian researcher named Mayra Ricardo Zuluaga, on a film she and a Tikuna scholar (meaning, in this case, a scholar who is Tikuna) named Sandra Fernández Sebastián had made about huito (in Tikuna, é), the fruit that's so important in Tikuna culture. It makes a deep, blue-black dye, and painting this on you confers protection and blessings. It's used on babies for this purpose, and in coming-of-a...

The Sleeping Soldier

I've been daunted by the idea of trying to do justice to Aster Glenn Gray's The Sleeping Soldier here on Dreamwidth. Somehow I did manage, finally, to say a few things on Goodreads, but when I think about writing a DW post, I think about saying more, or making it more personal, or something. And then I wilt. And that's a shame, because I love this book. All of AGG's books are fun, thoughtful tales, but this one really nails a central theme of hers, which is what friendship means or has meant for...