Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 75

Leidy Tabares

Having finished La Niña, Wakanomori and I found a new, non-narco (this rules out the majority of what's available on Netflix) Colombian telenovela to watch: Lady: La Vendedora de Rosas. It's very loosely based on the life of Leidy (Lady) Tabares, a Colombian streetkid who got lifted up to glory as the star of a film called La Vendedora de Rosas [the rose seller] (1998) aaaannnnd then dumped right back into the situation from which she came. Gotta love exploitative directors.

The real Leidy Tab...

photo prompts

Today I did a creative-writing session using the collection of photos I'd put together, and it was fascinating (and in some cases touching) to see what photos people chose, and why. It'll take me some time to put the stories online, but when I've got them up, I'll link to them.

But here are some of the photos people chose:



That's by Wanda Lotus, who does great photos from the subways, streets, and parks of New York City. Check out her work here or here , and consider supporting her Patreon.

This...

Family of Man

In 1955, the Museum of Modern Art staged an exhibition titled The Family of Man. I wasn't alive then, but in my childhood, I often took the accompanying book out of the library, and as an adult, I bought a copy. The list of famous photographers (and photographs, like Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" ) is impressive, but what I loved and continue to love is, first, seeing powerful moments in human experience from all over the world--grieving, celebrating, solitary and in pairs and crowds--and...

a high hidden place

Back when I was doing Inktober posts, I posted the image of the eight of swords, from the Rider-Waite tarot deck:



I decided to use that and other tarot images as writing prompts with the group of adult students I'm working with, and that image prompted two very diverging responses. You can read both of them here , but I wanted to feature the first--a story told in just four sentences, but so full of drama--here:

The woman is from Sparta and she’s the king’s daughter. The Romans want to retaliate...

leaf maze

It's been a while since I made one of these. sartorias and I were talking about maze walking as a form of meditation, and so last night I took the opportunity to do some creative raking.



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November

Prick my skin and peel it back
Inside you'll find
November skies
That filled me to the brim
When I looked up today

Speaking of winter (....more or less) a story of mine, "The Stars' Chill Song," which was originally published in Zahir (a speculative fiction zine that has since closed) in 2011, is reprinted in Still Water: A Noblebright Fantasy Anthology.

The only other stories in it that I've read are the ones by Sherwood Smith, but I sense a theme of coldness, at least in the titles ("Ice and Fir...

"Halloween Lucky" a success

I was pleased with how it went. I had a big vat of candy, as usual, and then a glow-in-the-dark plastic pumpkin with the cards in them. (Confused? Entry here.)

This is how the setup looked at about 5 pm:



The jack-o-lanterns are supposed to look like No-Face from Spirited Away (right) and the cat bus from Totoro (left)--the latter without the ears, though, which takes away from the effect. Pleasingly, a number of kids not only recognized No-Face, but commended me for being in what they considere...

in prison

Is it a human person or a fairy being, imprisoned behind the leaf-vein bars? What was the crime, or were they falsely accused? When and how will they be freed, or will they free themselves?



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getting the car inspected

I still haven't managed to do any more Inktober sketches, in spite of some excellent prompts, but here's a doodle of a young woman who was in the waiting room at the mechanic's where I went to get my car inspected.

She was perched on one of those molded-plastic chairs that have depressions for your bottom and your back. She had her legs drawn up to her chest and was concentrated fixedly on her phone. She was pretty, but nervous seeming, someone I'd expect to express themselves in waves of rapi...

seal script that looks like cat kanji

Wakanomori is providing me with all kinds of interesting items these days. For today, have some cat kanji. It looks made up, doesn't it? But it's a bone fide form of seal script--that is, stylized kanji used for signature seals.　The source is 篆楷字典 (Tenkai Jiten), a dictionary of seal script (tensho) and kaisho, a very clear, blocky style used in inscriptions.



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