Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 42

"Come Water, Be One of Us," by Octavia Cade

This fabulous short story in Strange Horizons contrasts the personhood-under-the-law of corporations and rivers, and it is beautiful. It's also very short; you can read it in probably five or ten minutes--or you can listen to it ( link ). A few selected quotes:

Try convincing a corporation it isn’t a person now, see how far it gets you. There’s whining and litigation and they slouch down the street after you, cat-calling. “Look at me, bitch! I’m talking to you!”

...

We made the corporations people,...

winter mist

This morning was enchanting--the Fedex driver I encountered agreed that it was a fairyland out there.



... or a ghostland?



So **full** in its empty-seemingness



Don't let go of the guide rope!



And then everything became bright, tangible, solid--and that had its own beauty. Can't get enough of Jiji these days, lovely boy. We're so glad he's home.



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so--theories?

Okay, so I am interested in entertaining theories, from the realistic to the far-fetched, for the origins of the gold on the shores of the Venezuelan fishing village in the last entry. Other details you should know are that

the jagged coastline around Guaca, on Venezuela’s Paria peninsula, is punctuated with bays and islands that have long given refuge to adventurers.

It was on this peninsula, in 1498, that Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the South American continent,...

a mysterious treasure

I learned about this story from amaebi , who said it's like part of a folktale, and she's right.

"Treasure Washes up on Venezuela's Shore, Bringing Gold and Hope to a Village,"
by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera; photos by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez
New York Times December 12, 2020.

Such a story! All this gold, washing up in a poor fishing village. True to folktale form, the first thing to turn up was a gold medallion with an image of the Virgin Mary on it:

The fisherman, Yolman Lares, saw some...

Flashback, by Sonia Mendez

I have a writer friend who's had experience with incarceration, and sometimes she puts that in what she writes. She posted this to FB this morning and gave me permission to share. It says everything you need to know about imprisonment, abuse of power, and resistance in under a hundred words. And the way she lived that metaphor...

Flashback- I decorated my cell once with paper butterflies I colored myself. I made them 3D so their wings stuck out and appeared real. A guard walked by and was not imp...

word games

trade

lord

resistance

trials

kingpin


"Hey, we all share the same first name," they exclaimed.

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the dangers of a spectacular sunset

I set off at 3:30 to deliver cookies to those of my children who live within driving distance (the other two live a continent and an ocean away--a different continent and ocean depending on which direction you tackle the journey from). By 3:30 the light is already long, and by the time I was leaving from my first stop (4:10), the tips of the bare trees were already red from the setting sun.



It was a 30-minute journey south to the next stop, during which time the sky did such tantalizing...

paçoca and PW

I have a pen pal in Brazil (we have a great story of how we became pen pals, but I'll save it for another day) who told me about this dessert, paçoca, which is served during Festa Junina, in June. It's *very simple*: ground peanuts and sugar and a touch of salt, ground to the consistency of wet sand (as one recipe I read described it), and then pressed together in a form.

Eating the foods of faraway places that I'd like to visit but can't is one of my favorite things to do, so just now I made som...

Jiji came home!!

He came running up to the house when we got home just now after a hike, yowling demandingly. He is pretty skinny, but otherwise seems completely unharmed, and still even has his collar. We are SO HAPPY to have him back. Talk about Thanksgiving!!



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like Kay with ice shards

I keep turning the water writing over in my mind; I feel like Kay with ice shards. I think about how the wires are continuous strands, but their reflection in the water is in pieces--how the thing that looks like it holds meaning is this gorgeous tangle of fragments, how the tantalizing hint of meaning is there precisely because of the brokenness. And maybe it's significant, or maybe it's not, that the medium that causes this is water, which is always whole. My mind is endlessly voluble on this...