Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 29

weight, decay

Across the sky, wispy white vertebrae from some decomposing heavenly beast.


photo by Flickr user Jen Scheer; cirrus vertebratus is an actual cloud type, apparently

"Sky creatures never stink when they decay," granddad says, "because they're half made of light. Down here we're made of heavy stuff and we stink when we decay. But the sky creatures have no sweet fragrances or intoxicating aromas, either. All the tantalizing scents we love come from the fact that earthly flesh is rich and heavy.



comme...

Tramps and Vagabonds

A new Aster Glenn Gray novel is out today, Tramps and Vagabonds, and people, this one holds a special place in my heart. I beta read it, for one thing, but it's not just that. It's a very tender story, right in that place where friendship bleeds into romantic love and sexual attraction, and the characters are so, so finely drawn. And on top of that, it's a wonderful window onto a time and place that's fascinating: the world of young people on the road during the Great Depression. Aster Glenn Gra...

Mother's Day icon-card

When started my Livejournal in 2006, I asked the ninja girl--at that time 16 years old--to make me an icon. "Draw me as a wanderer with a little gray in her hair," I said. She created this picture:



Not only have I used that as my default icon for 16 years now, but I've used it on other sites, too--so much so that I really think of it as me.

Today I received this mother's day portrait from Little Springtime--who is currently 29 (she was 13 back in 2006). She did it on a form they had at the local c...

drawing of the dream tree; a few other random things

So here is what the tree in my dream looked like: like bamboo, but with leaves like a locust... except in this drawing, the joint-rings aren't raised enough-looking, hence the second, eye-searingly colored (expertly! with a mouse!) diagram/digital doodle to show you how the rings fit round the trunk and boughs.






Also...

Heard the first wood thrush of the season today. I was wondering how far south they go for winter--do they make it all the way to Colombia? ... Google says no; they winter in Centra...

May Day in the marsh

This is a secret world



Where you can find marsh marigolds, tussock sedge, and skunk cabbage







I went for a brief walk here with Wakanomori. Birds came and talked to us at eye level, little frogs jumped into the water. It was lovely.

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In other news, I dreamed of a tree with a growth habit and leaves like a black locust, but a trunk and branches that were segmented like bamboo, and smooth green like bamboo, only the joints, instead of being flush with the surface and pale colored, were BLACK and ...

an eel and a pineapple rind

Two exciting things!

First, Strange Horizons is doing a special issue featuring Southeast Asian writers, and on Twitter they mentioned especially that they'd love to get someone from Timor-Leste. So on Facebook I posted about that and one of my acquaintances from when I went there in 2013 messaged me! He wanted details, and he said he'd try writing something if I could help him translate it. I said yes! And the other day he sent me a 3,500 word story. And now I'm working on translating it!

I can't...

Laloran Justisa, a story arc in screenshots

I finished watching Laloran Justisa yesterday--I'll miss it so much; I loved it. There were a few series-long story arcs to wrap up, the most moving being the story of the main character Rosa's missing older sister. In Episode 1 Rosa and her mother are sitting in a church, remembering Adelina, who was stolen away by the Indonesians during the occupation. This happened a *lot*. They are looking at a photo from Rosa's baptism.

( the rest of the story )

Super happy ending.

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finished the Stephen King novel

The last third was definitely the weakest: a big infodump about the shadowy Final Boss (basically Rupert Murdoch). Apparently when you want to indicate that someone's a real-life monster, you make them a pedophile ... Well what that got me thinking about was how a lot of evil in life isn't about what acts a person gets up to with their own hands (or dick), but what they permit or cause to happen by the power they hold. The generalissimos and presidents and supreme autarchs of the world. Putin ma...

Wednesday reading.... Stephen King?!

For once I can make a reading post on a Wednesday, remarkable.

My ESL tutee is a Stephen King fan, and to practice her English, she bought the most recent (or must at least be close to the most recent) Stephen King book, called Billy Summers. I've never read **any** Stephen King--not anything--but of course I know him from reputation and from books and stories of his that have turned into movies. Anyway, I bought the ebook of this so I could read along with her, ask reading comprehension questio...

The Phoenix Feather Quartet

Once there was a bodyguard who was like a brother to the impetuous imperial prince he was sworn to protect. The prince fell for a breathtakingly beautiful but entirely unworldly-wise young aristocrat from a scholarly family, but when she rejected him, he turned vindictive and ordered the bodyguard to kill her. But the bodyguard had himself fallen in love with the young woman, and she with him, so they fled to the far ends of the empire. The prince--who became emperor--holds an undying grudge.

Thi...