Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 41

some random stuff

I saw dreadlock, deadlock, and deadname in quick succession and started thinking about not hair or tangled traffic or trans rights, but about a dreadful lock, a lock that dies--is executed even. A dead lock. And I thought, how do you kill a lock?

Answer:

The key was turned
The bolt slid into place a final time
Then liquid copper was poured into the hole
--the whole plate melted, a metal smear—

Then prayers, candles, incense
No more will people pass through here

--- * * --------- * * ------------ ...

a place to rest your eyes

My sister has many talents--one of them is painting. I really *love* her painting, and I thought I'd share her painting website and highlight a few of the pictures so you can enjoy them too.

(This is the website--you can see these and many more paintings there in a larger size)

One thing she does is look at the relationship between sky and water--all the colors of sky, and what those do to water, plus the texture of clouds:



She also paints the many, many textures and patterns of water--man I love t...

gōkan-19th cent. Japanese revenge tales

Wakanomori does a lot of work with gōkan, a form of 19th-century illustrated fiction in Japan. They tend to be exciting stories--lots of revenge tales, with ghosts and so on--and the illustrations are just fabulous. Not only do they give you this amazing picture (literally) of 19th-century daily life (graffiti on the walls, a fortune-teller's booth, a traveller having his feet washed at an inn), but they also show you a whole lot about book publishing in Japan at that time (e.g., advertisements ...

Excerpt from Lagoonfire

The first chapter-equivalent of Lagoonfire is posted at the publisher's website! I've already posted the first two paragraphs here on DW, but the longer excerpt will introduce you to all the retired Sweet Harbor gods:

( Click through to read .)

And I know the release date--March 3! So if you preordered, your copies should arrive then or shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, enjoy some bioluminescence. Here, with mangroves, in Florida...


( Source )

And here, in Mexico

( Source )

comments

the snow bees are swarming

Out my window, thickly.

The windows were often covered with hoar-frost; then they would warm coppers on the stove and stick them on the frozen panes, where they made lovely peep-holes, as round as possible. Then a bright eye would peep through these holes, one from each window. The little boy's name was Kay, and the little girl's Gerda ...

'Look! the white bees are swarming,' said the old grandmother.

'Have they a queen bee, too?' asked the little boy, for he knew that there was a queen among the r...

Wednesday reading

I've been reading folktales from Amazonia. This beautiful picture book, The Great Snake: Stories from the Amazon, has block-print-style illustrations by Fernando Vilela, whom I now have the impression is Brazil's foremost illustrator, as he also illustrated a different Brazil-related picture book that Amazon (the company this time, not the region/river) recommended to me some time ago.




I love this image of manioc/cassava plants, how it's achieved by repeating the print.



But what I really love abou...

a song and a would-be novel?

I heard this song last Saturday, during the 3:00–5:00 Portuguese radio program on WTCC, Springfield Technical Community College's radio station. I liked the melancholy air, I liked that I could understand snatches of it, even though it was Portuguese Portuguese instead of Brazilian Portuguese, which is what Duolingo teaches. It's got the sort of melancholy abandon that really speaks to me right now (Nossa vida é bem curta e um dia se vai "Our life is very short and one day is gone"--so you might...

Atmosphere and sky

comments

Newe Yeare Lemon Pigge

The twitter account "Chaucer Doth Tweet" [image error] LeVostreGC had this fun poem on how to make a New Year's Lemon Pig:

A lemon as bright as the sun yn the skye
Two whole cloves bicom the eyes
A curly tayle of foil of tin
For legges push IV tooth-picks yn
To make the ears but folde the peele up
A shinye coin yn the mouth for luck
Cheer be brighte, dreams be big:
Biholde! a Newe Yeare lemon pigge.
(source tweet)

Irresistible! I made one:



comments

shadow cities and windows

I've photographed this before, but I keep doing it because I keep being fascinated by the image: the snow that's pushed up by the sidewalk snowplow casts shadows that look like marvelous city skylines. This one seems to have a dome in the center--a mosque or Eastern Orthodox church:



And this one has some impressive spires and minarets:



We went on a hike on Mt. Tom late this afternoon (there is another mountain called Mt. Toby ... it feels like a rather-too-familiar naming convention? I prefer moun...