Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 2

Wednesday reading

Look at this! Posting about books I've read or am reading on an actual Wednesday. Wohoo, winning!


(  The Lincoln Highway  )

(  Saint Death's Daughter  )

(  The Tail of Emily Windsnap  )

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July 25, 2000

My mood improved markedly with a visit from the tall one and his son, my grandkid, little treelet.

Wakanomori brought down a diary the tall one had kept as a kid: here is the entry from July 25, 2000, which includes our visit to Lloyd Alexander's house, where we put on a play for him and his wife Janine. Also included is a visit to the US mint in Philadelphia and commentary on the Delaware River (big!)

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a handful of microfictions

Having some feelings, so ... have some microfictions.

May 20, prompt word "serve"

Directions for serving certain abstract dishes:

--revenge is a dish best served cold
--pornography is a dish best served hot
--satire is a dish best served salty
--mockery is a dish best served bitter
--disappointment is a dish best served sour
--romance is a dish best served sweet


June 26, prompt word "kind"

"May I pay you in kind rather than currency?" the woman asked. The man was selling Dastrian funerary masks, perhaps w...

a trade

This question popped into my head when I looked out my window and saw a catbird balancing on a stick, using its wings to help it balance.

Would you trade your arms and hands for wings?

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Rhapsody to humid heat

Waking up this morning was like waking up in the Amazon, and I AM HERE FOR THIS. Out my back window, a northeastern jungle, so many shades of green, dappled sun, morning mist. An aural bouquet of birdsong and small critter sounds. Right now there's a scent of wood smoke.

I love the way the medium of humid air makes you intimate with every other thing. The way everything is right on your skin and in your lungs. The glass of water sweats, you sweat. Time dissolves, sound travels nonlinearly, odor...

a wonderful day

Today was wonderful!

It started out with meeting a young woman in a wheelchair, birdwatching by a small pond with cattails.

"I think I saw an American bittern," she said.

Later I brought some catalpa blossoms to a friend, and they gave me an iced, homemade-banana-syrup-and-oat-milk latte to take with me on my errands. It was a hot day and the drink was perfect!

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My errands included buying a sickle to cut this long grass.

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Not now: now I want to let it alone, as the fireflies and butterflies and bees...

Dónde tienen su hogar las aves migratorias?

Where do migratory birds have their home?

Below are just three screenshots from a series of 16 photos on the Instagram account of somadifusa (Laura Ortiz), of murals she and the tattoo artist Azul Luna (Instagram account azulunailustra) painted in Bogota, Colombia.

I'm captivated by these images both of traveling swallows, some bearing backpacks and baskets, some with shells on their back like hermit crabs, and of hearts that are also nests, or that morph into shells, or sprout flowers and eyes....

Wednesday reading: Belle-Medusa, by Manuela Draeger*

It's a cold, surreal post-apocalyptic world, plagued by meteor showers, crumbling apartments patrolled by tigers, one where former tar-spreading technicians repurpose themselves as morning soup sellers. Bobby is wakened by a knocking at his door. He doesn't open it, but he's told, through the closed door, that Belle-Medusa, an immensely huge jellyfish, needs his help. Belle-Medusa has a library of scents in her memory, but they're mainly ocean scents. She wants Bobby to collect and convey land s...

the rambling rose and all her beguiling promises

This is the season when Rosa multiflora, the indomitable conqueror of roadsides and wastelands, the one who can render a pleasant meadow into an impassable, laceration-producing wall of arching, spreading, canes, puts out its flowers. Everywhere there are curtains and drifts of small, white-and-yellow blossoms, with a fragrance so intense that you breathe it in and begin to float. The whole rest of the year it's thorns and You Shall Not Pass, but right now it's Come To Me And Stay Awhile My Love...

driveway art: song sparrow

We have some sunny days, and I finished the job I was working on, so I drew a song sparrow. The song sparrow is found throughout most of North America, "continuous from the Aleutians to the eastern United States," says Cornell Ornithology. They're small everywhere bird with a lovely song. Both their song and their plumage varies across the continent.







Scientific name "Melospiza melodia." You can hear samples of their songs here . (The ones around here sound most like the fourth recording down.)

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