Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 50

We ransomed our dignity to the clouds

Having finished our two-person reading of Hamlet, the healing angel and I decided to read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. We're in the middle of Act II right now, and it's as good as the only other Tom Stoppard play I know, which is In Arcadia. I really loved that. I love this too.

Here are some lines that stuck out for me in our today's reading:

GUIL: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show our progress except a memory of the smell of...

takeout... and falcons

We have gotten takeout three times since quarantine began. Each time, the dance has been different.

First time, the healing angel did the pickup: the restaurant had all the bags of takeout sitting out front, with names on them. The healing angel lit down, picked up our bag, and returned to our nest.**

Second time, I did the pickup. We placed the order and then the restaurant called when we could come and get it. They slid open a speakeasy-like slot and pushed the bag out onto a wide counter,...

Senegalese artist Youssou N'dour and 19 others collaborate

From Afropop worldwide:

A coalition of 20 Senegalese musicians teamed up to raise awareness about coronavirus and also raise funds for Senegal's Ministry of Health, releasing a remix of an old Youssou N'Dour tune.

IT IS AWESOME.



In addition to being a great tune, I enjoy seeing the faces of all these artists--and also watching the murals grow.

The music is a guise, and now I'm reflecting it, and my reach is sharing these words with you.

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Tchaikovsky's octopuses

Children of Ruin is the sequel to Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. If you liked Children of Time, I think it's a safe bet to say you'd like Children of Ruin.

I'm not going to talk about writing craft or the plot or even what I liked best. Instead I'm going to talk about the octopuses. Portiid spiders were what came into their own in Children of Time; it's octopuses in this book.

Tchaikovsky does a breathtaking job conveying such an alien form of intelligence--an individual octopus isn't...

casual resemblances

Things that are not that other thing







2D



also sorta 2D



Back to 3D









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a bounding deer

I decided to buy some street-art-quality chalks and see how long they last (answer: not long! This would be an expensive hobby...)

And I drew this...



The nice thing about chalk art is you can keep on tinkering with it. I might add more red to the face.

I also ended up decorating my jeans:



The healing angel and her significant other are living across our household and the significant other's household (yes: we know--we consider ourselves all one infection/virus family), and yesterday evening they...

Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero by Michael DeForge

My brother, who specializes in finding weird, cool comic books and graphic novels, got me this collection by Canadian artist Michael DeForge.

The eponymous Sticks Angelica is ... well, she introduces herself on the first page, and the story/collection continues in this vein:



Leaving the molecules in a bowl for the animals to eat--and then calling the animals filthy--that's the flavor of it. Oh, and her hilarious résumé.

Other characters include Oatmeal, a rabbit who's hopelessly in love with...

poignant

I'm putting this behind a cut because people have different bandwith for stuff. This is not a tragic story, but it's --well, like the subject line says. Poignant.

( There is a new assisted-living facility in my town )

It was a very salient image of our times.

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vernal stream

Wakanomori and I went for a walk in a place where water was bubbling up everywhere. I didn't have a camera, so he obliged me by taking this. You can hardly see that it's water, but it is--you can tell by the ripples (click through to see the photo bigger):



I loved the little pools of smooth stones, set in frames of leaves, all underwater.

The sound was beautiful too--he took recordings.

In other non-pandemic news, I finished reading Children of Ruin! Loved the ending; I'll try to share more on...

Ube coffee cake

Some days ago, rachelmanija posted about supporting small, family-owned businesses in the LA area. One was a Filipino café, and the description Rachel gave of the yummy ube coffee cake.... mmmm.

So I ordered some, and my box came today!



Look at all the coffee cakes!!



Such a beautiful color! And the flavor is **delicious**. Wakanomori had made fresh coffee, so we actually ate our slices of coffee cake with coffee--as Stipulated By Law!



All that would have been a wonderful, satisfying experience....