Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 162

from the rooftops to the ground beneath our feet

There is an aerial on this roof, an antenna, and on it are hanging, invisible to the eye, the laundry of thoughts those beneath the roof have hung out to dry. Those thoughts, fluttering and snapping like the flag the next yard over. The transmissions the aerial receives bleed into them, stain them, dye them. When will the householders take down their thoughts and hang up new ones?



Behind things
The fronts of buildings are designed for show, but not the backs. The behind-world is an interesting...

Not One of Us and Glass Seed Annual

One's an announcement of publication and the other is a call for submissions.

Not One of Us no. 49 is out now. It has a story of mine, "Tithe of Days," which comes with its own song (shhhh.... I'm not much of a singer and don't usually make up songs).

Here is the table of contents--very pleased to be in such fine company!

We Were Real, by Josh Eure
Delenda (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Little Bell, the Beasley Boys, and a Long Road Home, by Tim L. Williams
Shipwrecked (poem), by Adrienne J. Odasso
Tithe...

Songs in the Shade of the Flamboyant Tree

I've always loved nursery rhymes and lullabies--they're one of the most evident examples of living folk traditions, wherever you go. I was looking for lullabies from Martinique the other day (because of a Mermaid's Hands folktale I'm writing up), and came across this lovely album:



It has traditional songs and nursery rhymes from Martinique, Guadaloupe, Haiti, and Reunion, and you can listen to them all here at the Secret Mountain website page here --just click on any of the song titles on the l...

Golden-brown world

I think I'm going to make many posts today--well, maybe three, anyway. This is the first. Welcome the sun at 6:45 am:



And here, from yesterday, are last year's cattails



Doesn't this look like a spinning wheel distaff, with a pile of roving on it, waiting to be spun?

Clockwork Phoenix 4--a partisan review

Clockwork Phoenix 4 is nearly out, and oh my goodness, the stories. There’s not a single bad one, and there are some amazing gems. I know whereof I speak; as the anthology’s proofreader, I read each one very carefully. (I apologize in advance if any typos got by me!) So, this is not a disinterested review, it’s a partisan recommendation.

I’m going to focus on just four stories, the stories I found myself thinking about for the longest time after reading them, but I‘ll have shoutouts for a hand...

Friday miscellany

How to be an authority figure: Carry a clipboard

After a band concert at the high school the other day, I was waiting with all the other parents for my child to emerge from the band room. It was a real confusion of people, families waiting, meeting their performer and leaving, kids talking to one another, adults talking . . . And in that, a kid came up to me and said, "Do you know where we pick up the butter bread? I ordered four loaves."

I was really puzzled--then realized I happened to (a) b...

The Peacock Garden, by Anita Desai

This Reading Wednesday I've just finished Anita Desai's The Peacock Garden. I read it in two different temporal mindframes--my childhood mind of about eight or ten, and my current mind, which contains several decades more of stuff. I loved the story in both.



I’ve wanted to read it ever since rachelmanija reviewed it, describing it as a “secret garden” book. About secret-garden books, she writes,

Some of my favorite books and shows and movies are in this genre, stories about people and places...

briar spiderwebs and chickadee spinners

Yesterday all the briars were glistening with dewdrops, the way they do after a rain. When the sun hit them, they were dazzling:



The briar barrier looked sort of like a giant spiderweb--spiderwebs string raindrops in the same way:



Careful where you take your sip . . .



Elsewhere, a chickadee was perched on top of the exploded cattail fluff from last year's cattails, pulling at it, as if it were fibers on a distaff, and he was intending to spin it. I didn't have a camera for that, but fortunatel...

Their Eyes Were Watching God: the hurricane

I was in awe of the majesty and terror of the hurricane Zora Neale Hurston wrote in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Its slow coming, its mercilessness, its destruction. And, as I said last entry, how so much of what she wrote could have been written about Hurricane Katrina. Crazy. Seventy years later and still so much the same--at least when it comes to the very poor, facing a storm.


cover illustration from the 1965 Harper Collins edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Before the storm...

Morning...

Their Eyes Were Watching God: the sensual world (post 1 of 2)

I've been fascinated by Zora Neale Hurston for a long time. She was a free thinker who led an unusual life; she did ethnographic research, collected folksongs, and wrote novels. I'd read some nonfiction by her, but I'd never read any of her novels. Recently I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I loved for lots of reasons, but rather than talk about all those reasons, I'm going to focus on just two things, in two separate posts. This post is a bouquet of sensual descriptions--trees,...