Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 166

blue rails, speaking in bullets

I walked home between the railroad tracks, and right beside me they were brilliant blue, though further ahead they were shining silver-white. My eyes playing tricks? No, that blue was a gift from the bright, clear sky to the rails. Here, wear this, just for the moment And the rails obliged.

I read an excellent (if dark) poem over at Strange Horizons, "Jael," by Nancy Hightower. I traveled over to her website to tell her I'd enjoyed it, and found her biography, which started with some bulleted...

put the documents in the shredder head on next time

My kindly father gave wakanomori the present of periodic delivery of bags of coffee. One came the other day, packed in shredded paper. Nice and ecological!

Except glancing at the shreds, Waka noticed they were actually financial documents--pay stubs and such--the sorts of things you shred so that unscrupulous people don't use them to find out, oh, say, social security numbers and the like.

Oops.

I've blotted out the people's surnames, but as you can see, very identifying information, along with...

Where you gonna run to?

Warning: Politics

Perhaps you’ve heard about the 2010 Department of Justice white paper detailing a legal rationale for the overseas killing, “by drone strikes and other means,”1 of American citizens who are “senior operational leader[s] of al-Qa’ida or an associated force of al-Qa’ida.”2

“All you need to know in order to understand the memo is that Obama administration lawyers have enthusiastically endorsed the once-vilified Bush administration decision to classify security operations against...

Fruitful Hands

fruitful hands: the gardener brings all things to life.



Photo taken by Matsumura Yuriko (on Twitter as @yukoshka) and retweeted by the Japanese tanka poet Tawara Machi

Matsumura Yuriko set aside her gloves, thinking she'd wash them later, and when she came back to them, she discovered that numerous tiny seeds had sprouted. "I'd better hurry up and wash those gloves," she wrote. "No: if anything, let them bloom," Tawara Machi urged.

Owl Snow

A little wedge of land, thrusting thornlike from the other world into the flesh of this land of hours and days, a wedge moreover, with very porous boundaries, such that humans will keep wandering in--troublesome creatures, with their deeds and plans and surveyor's instruments!

Owls rule that wedge of land, and they have found the most effective remedy for these intruders to be snow. Not dry, sharp, ice-crystal snow, which hisses as it falls, or sleet, which crackles, but soft, wet, silent snow...

Coyote, LimeRed Teahouse, and Fox

Coyote
"I was driving home last night," wakanomori said this morning, "and I saw a form cross the road. It was big!"

"Was it a raccoon?" I asked, remembering a lovely story queenoftheskies told about a raccoon couple.

"No... it was a coyote," he said. "It crossed the road ahead of me, then turned to watch me as I drove by. I ended up craning my neck behind me to get a better look, and then remembered I was driving and turned back round again. Good thing, too: I was heading for a tree."

"That wasn...

Snowmelt stream

A lightning shadow twisting in the snow, dark, like the image you see when you close your eyes against too much brilliance.

See how it has opened a door in the snow (but just a crack)--the white blankness gives way to something murky and indistinct, a realm into which you can slip if you just part the curtain of water.

Hunger and thirst

Tomorrow is the start of Lent,1 a time for spiritual reflection. Last year, as a spiritual practice, I did Ramadan in Lent. I did this because I really like the notion of Ramadan and because I'm full of admiration for the fact that a large percentage of the world's population fasts in a very rigorous way for a whole lunar moth. It's hardcore, it's 熱心 (nesshin: ardent), as they say in Japan. I like that. And I did find, fasting day after day last year, that I felt connected to those who suffer...

Meeting Lucius Malfoy of a morning

I was walking home from the post office in the rain this morning, when, just up ahead of me, I saw a guy who looked extremely like Lucius Malfoy heading for his small pickup truck.1 He had Mr. Malfoy's long, super-pale blond hair, pulled back, eighteenth-century style, like Mr. Malfoy in this picture, and the same eyes and nose, somehow, though a slightly rounder face.

"Wow, that guy really looks like Lucius Malfoy. I wish I could see him better," I thought to myself, but he'd already climbed...

the wind and the snow

The snow spirits are in their glory, racing around carving bowls around stones and cars, creating dunes and cliffs and thin, thin ledges of snow, tangoing with the wind--and the wind is roaring in the trees and moaning in the wires--wonderful.

(Which I can say because we have power. I'd feel differently if we were without power, as it is quite cold out.)

The state roads are still closed, but seyeh is essential personnel (!!) , so he can bring Little Springtime home for some cake.

Here is a state...