Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 96

acorns

Here is the thing. There was a bumper crop of acorns the previous fall. No one thought much of it at the time--some years there are many, some years few. But then spring came, and those acorns all sprouted and grew, sure and strong. They linked their seedling arms, their sapling arms, as they reached for the sun. The roadsides disappeared, then the roads. Houses and towns were swallowed up, in just one season.

You have to be careful with acorns. Out of little acorns mighty oaks do grow.


Photo:...

A good book beginning; clocks and time

I've started The Dubious Hills by pameladean , and even just a few pages in, I find it wonderful in ways that are difficult to articulate. There's the intimate scope: the focal character, Arry, lives in a very small community, where everyone has been intimately connected all her life. Partly it's the small details of that life--milk spilled on the floor for cats to lap up, hair cut to get rid of burrs (a necessity I remember from my own childhood). But a bigger reason is the way people underst...

quickly changing things; a cake

I wish it weren't so hard for me to post now. It's as if I've lost the knack. How can something that was once natural become no longer natural? Because that's what it feels like: like there was a fluidity and ease before, and now there's not. I have some theories on the why of this, but they're not very coherent.

Meanwhile, I had photos stored up on my camera. Some evanescent things, like my neighbor's pussy willows, already transitioning from shiny grey buds to delicate, fringed, minute flowe...

My coming was foretold

On Friday at the jail I was noticing how much they announce you're coming--each stage of the way. "Central control, one volunteer up to you," says the guy at the main desk, and then "One volunteer in the sally port," says the guy at central control," and then "Programs, one volunteer in the elevator," and so on. It made me feel, yesterday, like the fulfillment of a very short-term prophecy.

And speaking of sally ports, did you know--I did not, until I Google-searched the word just now--that al...

Age of Blight, by Kristine Ong Muslim

Age of Blight
Kristine Ong Muslim
The Unnamed Press, 2016

My first exposure to Kristine Ong Muslim was her short story in Lauriat, a collection of fantasy stories by Filipino-Chinese authors. That led to my reviewing Grim Series , a collection of Muslim’s sharp, often gruesome, sometimes beautiful, poems. So when I was asked if I would review Age of Blight, a new short-story collection by Muslim, I readily agreed.

I read through it slowly. It’s dark, highlighting the monstrous things people can be...

so at twilight you may walk safely over the swallowing earth

Work's been intense, but I took a break and met wakanomori for lunch, and we read a little from this book, The Old Ways, by Robert MacFarlane, and there was this passage:

The way-marking of old paths is an esoteric lore of its own, involving cairns, grey wethers, sarsens, hoarstones, longstones, milestones, cromlechs and other guide-signs. On boggy ares of Dartmoor, fragments of white china clay were placed to show safe paths at twilight, like Hansel and Gretel's pebble trail. (p. 15, italics...

Cecile Emeke's "Strolling" series

A friend on Tumblr introduced me to this short-film series by Cecile Emeke, "Strolling," which Emeke describes as "connecting the scattered stories of the black diaspora."

These videos let you fall into conversation with complete strangers. It's not really conversation, of course; it's monologue (even in the first one embedded below, each of the people takes turns talking to you-the-viewer rather than talking to each other), but the intensity with which they address you, and the inherent inter...

We hope you are feeling better

Yesterday the healing angel got a card-shaped envelope from the emergency room where I'd taken him at the beginning of his medical adventure. Since I'd already paid the sizable deductible for taking him there, and since, anyway, it wasn't bill-shaped, I was curious.

"What's that, a thank-you-for-visiting-us card?" I asked, sarcastically.

The healing angel opened it. Inside was this message:

We hope you are feeling better after your recent visit and we truly appreciate you entrusting us with yo...

railroad crossing

I had to drive the healing angel in to school this morning, and on the way, we cross railroad tracks. There's a sign warning you you're coming to a railroad crossing, and I thought, yes, trains cross here. Watch out!

But what if it were a something-else crossing. I know you can get signs for deer crossings or moose crossings or turtle crossings. Those creatures don't cross on a schedule the way trains do, though. They're more unpredictable. No flashing red lights or bells when they're coming....

working conditions

My current job requires a bit of concentration, so I printed out some pages and worked on it manually, away from the computer and the temptations of the Internet. I found a great patch of light and sat in it, my back against the stove.

But you know, the mind is very good at coming up with distractions. I decided I had to take a picture of how the light looked. At least I waited until today to post. (The job's ongoing, though, so maybe I'll choose that spot again...)