Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 34

an angel ghost, an unexpected guest

I did a chalk drawing of an angel offering an apple to a fox (... if foxes can crave grapes in Aesop, then they can be offered apples)--I had the angel leaning out of a sky window because I love that conceit. The fox came out VERY wonky in the body, but I like his face.

The feet belong to the next-door neighbor girls






I finished right before a good, drenching rain, so now the angel is a ghost:



In other remarkable news, a plant grew in the pot I had planted calendulas in. It looked vaguely familiar--...

Follow-up Piranesi entry (warning: contains spoilers)

People commented at the time that Piranesi came out that you could read in it Susanna Clarke's experiences with chronic illness, and, primed for that, I can see it, but talking to the ninja girl this morning, I was thinking about it more in terms of death and rebirth (or death and afterlife), and I was thinking: it's a really a daring choice to center your story on a person after death, so to speak, a person who's in eternity.

I really viscerally disliked 17,776, another story that deals with bei...

Piranesi

I adored the time I spent in the presence of the narrator of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, a man who communes with the infinite House that is his world, who takes care of so many things: recording the tides (because the House encompasses an ocean), cataloguing the statues (the House is full of statues), leaving offerings for the bones of the dead, and paying attention to the birds who share the House with him.

I knew from the beginning that we would have to learn the truth about the narrator, who r...

no surgery!

While the doctor's first choice would be to do surgery, he felt going a nonsurgical route can work, and if it doesn't, the consequences for me aren't dire, and he's willing to keep working with me throughout the healing process, including fixing things if the nonsurgical route doesn't work out as well as it might. So I'm happy! And for anyone who sees this entry and not the last one, all we're talking about is a broken toe. It's uncomfortable and interfering with my life, but it's not, y'know, a...

On the less marvelous side of the scales

I broke my toe! Falling down in my own house! How dumb is that? And when the doctor looked at the X-ray, he said he wanted to talk to a foot surgeon because of the nature of the break... and now they want to do surgery. I am NOT EAGER for that, not one bit. I thought they could just put it in a boot and it would get better. So I will talk to the surgeon tomorrow and try to get a better sense of things.

This was not in my game plan, but I guess breaking random bones, big or small, rarely is in an...

Taking the level-two Tetun course

During the summer I took the level-one Tetun course (Tetun: the lingua franca in Timor-Leste) offered through Timorlink. It's an Australia-based program, but the teachers all have deep connections with Timor-Leste.

Next week I'm starting the level-two course, and--because life is stranger than fiction--my teacher is going to be none other than the inestimable Kirsty Sword Gusmão .

Life keeps thrilling me--I feel so lucky to be alive!

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Pra não dizer que não falei das flores

"Pra não dizer que não falei das flores" is the name of a Brazilian song. It means "So it can't be said that I didn't speak of flowers." It's also known as "Caminhando" (Walking). I came across it originally as part of a medley of songs sung by Chico César, a Brazilian reggae singer. (The whole medley is just wonderful and I listen to it all the time.)

When he segued over to "Pra não dizer que não falei das flores," my heart was grabbed by the lyrics:

Caminhando e cantando e seguindo a canção
So...

the girl and the anaconda

A project I haven't touched in a while was to read through some folktales from Amazonia. The other day I got back to it. I'm lucky to have the book in two languages: Spanish (the language it was written in) and English:



The English translation is obviously easier for me to read, but it misses certain details, and the English book fails to give certain information--for instance, the names of the people from whom the tales were collected:



Also, the English sometimes elides over details ("cómo conseg...

Sinda, his face black, his eyes red

Prompted by being on the Darmok panel at this year's Readercon, I rewatched the Darmok episode of TNG, paying close attention to all the phrases the Tamarians use, and then just this weekend we rewatched it yet again, this time to show it to the healing angel's significant other, who had never seen it.

I wanted to see how much of the conversation between the Tamarians that flabbergasted the Enterprise crew at the beginning of the episode would seem comprehensible once you've seen the whole episod...

Yo bebí del agua turbia

I've been listening to a lot of music from Colombia's Pacific coast; I love it. This song, "Yo bebí del agua turbia" (I drank the cloudy water), is not only beautiful itself, it has a beautiful video to go with it. Ever see a video of a place and feel homesick for it, even though you've never been there?

The white lacy dresses the women are wearing: I remember my sister and I had UNICEF cardboard figures from different countries, with facts about the countries written on the back. I had a girl,...