Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 46

added to the mandala

I added another ring of leaves and sealed everything in with some blue:



Here are some details. I love the step down and the crack:

( details )

Maaaaybe, colorwise, I preferred it when I ended with the yellow, but that's okay. Things grow and change. It's supposed to rain at around 2 pm today; I wonder what it will look like after that.

comments

stump mandala

They cut down a massive oak tree across the street from the supermarket. It was really huge, so huge a parent with two small children could have a picnic on the stump.

In situ



My shoe, to give a sense of how large the stump is



I thought, That stump would be a great place for a mandala-flower. So this morning I drew one:



I might try expanding it ... or maybe I'll just leave it at that. I have until it next rains to decide!

comments

Wednesday Reading

I actually have some paid work in, so my reading time has slipped. I made some progress on the stories in Consolation Stories, though, and also on The Souls of Black Folks.

The Souls of Black Folks,
In chapter 4, WEB Dubois talks about the first school where he taught, in Tennessee. He went looking for a school to teach at by foot as he couldn't afford a horse:

Sprinkled over hill and dale lay cabins and farmhouses, shut out from the world by the forests and the rolling hills toward the east. Ther...

a fun afternoon

Yesterday, Wakanomori and I climbed Mt. Sugarloaf, a loaf-shaped little mountain overlooking the Connecticut River.

Here is the pretty view of the river that you're rewarded with:



Doesn't the river look like such a great way to travel? All smooth like that. And the sumac in the foreground are as close to palms as New England gets.

After doing all that climbing, we rewarded ourselves by going to a little place right down on the river that Waka had discovered the other day:



The rocks stretch out into...

fireflies and Neowise

The fireflies are for some reason guarding our roof, and I'm grateful for the company at the very least.

I could see Neowise from my driveway today, brightest of the three days I've seen it, seeming to dive for the horizon headfirst--be careful! Do you know how to swim? Bright and cold (though the air is so warm). Maybe the fireflies are lifeguards for this comet--but it only *looks* like it's diving for the horizon--luckily for us, he remains swimming in the solar eddies out beyond our atmospher...

Lido Pimiento: Nada

I discovered this song by chance on YouTube and was captured by the music, the lyrics, and the video:



I ended up listening to the rest of the songs on the album that one comes from and ultimately bought the album from Bandcamp.

Here's another that in addition to being a great song has a gorgeous video: "Eso Que Tu Haces" .

comments

Neowise

I saw the comet! Thanks to mallorys_camera I knew where to look, and I went out with binoculars, and so I could see the long spray of glittering ice--how powerful is the sun to blow on the comet and make that tail appear!

It's so beautiful.

And it's doing its comet thing: appearing in a year of cataclysm, just the way a comet should.


(confirmation bias or what! Lots of very agreeable comets show up when there are no cataclysms whatsoever ... Or do they? I suppose there's always a cataclysm happeni...

Wednesday reading

Winged Histories

I made a tiny bit more progress. I liked this description of hope:

I know what I saw: hope, like a desert aloe. Hope, stubborn and bitter to the taste. that hides water. That bears the drought. An ugly plant with the power to heal.

Also, not quite a title drop, but:

Now often at night it seems as if there is something abroad in the wood with wings or something that breathes as it sits upon my chest. I get up in the night and go to the flap of the tent and open it ... The wind blows ...

adding my own books, heh

I'm slow on the uptake: I only just realized I can add my own books on Goodreads--like, mark them to-read and all--and that that alerts people (well, some people... the people who follow me here) to their existence. So I did that!

Only stand-alones, though.

Wednesday reading, plus some art

I've done only a very little reading this week.

Long form:

I read a little more of The Winged Histories, but this may just be something I need to come back to at a later date. Will keep reading a bit more, though, because I do love the writing, so casual and graceful with insights:

I put down my things, and he noticed the swordbox. "Oh! Ha, ha! Did you bring that thing? Ha, ha!" he wheezed, leaning on a couch. "A joke," he explained to my Aunt Firvaud, who regarding me with a searing stare. "Our Ta...