Skip to main content

Liberty, Santa, Musicians, Clowns, Doves

Taste: a pasty, cooked kidney bean
Touch: Pain, scaled: Pain on a scale of one to ten with ten being the worst pain you have ever experienced in your life, the worst pain you have ever experienced in your life
Sight: A man dressed as the Statue of Liberty, in a sickly green robe, the shade of oxidized copper, jumping holding a sign with an arrow that says, "Taxes"; a shell pink sunset falling over the snow-covered mountains textured by evergreen trees into fluffy looking mounds like coral; a pale crisp moon in a sky the opposite of shell pink, depths of the ocean blue; a square of flat salt and pepper ceiling in the speckled corner of which someone has hung a translucent blue mobile over the place where the patients all look up waiting; blue shadows and black holes, an ultrasound; blood, the color of Syrah, in two vials
Smell: canned dog food like a stew that has sat out overnight
Sound: Tasmin Little's Naked Violin, Bach, the difference between her own 1757 Guadagnini violin and a 'Regent' Stradivarius of 1708 from the Royal Academy of Music; a vibrating whoomp, whoomp, the sound part of ultrasound; "Sorry," and "Just think of Santa Claus coming down the chimney."
Extra: jobs it is evil to pay people to do; and what does the foreign man see when he peers into the folds, staring at their secret history of endless encounters, a place where he does not belong and yet which is far less foreign than the city in which he lives; Said in a dream: "Things are safer with the appearance of openness than if we were to erect barricades."; cliche, an anemic vegetarian; this town survives on a tax base of pawn shops and tattoo parlors; on this block live from north to south: a pole dance instructor, an accordion player, a clown, a DJ at Muslim weddings, and a man who builds trebuchets; the word, "libertine"; "Having the eyes of a dove means not stopping at the literal meaning of words but knowing how to penetrate their mystical sense." — p354 The Island of the Day Before, Umberto Eco

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on "Depression Hates a Moving Target": What I Mean by Relatable

Relatable — I used this word in my reviews of Depression Hates a Moving Target   by Nita Sweeney on Goodreads and Amazon . It's a nice word, but overused of late. So, it feels lazy. What do I mean? I connected with this book. It made me reflect more on my own first marathon experience. It made me want to put on my running shoes and head out the door again. In fact, I did. Now, typically, my mental health doesn't hinder my ability to do the stuff I want to do and my body flies under the radar. Still, I also felt goofy stepping out in my running gear a lot of the time. I didn't see myself as a "runner" or an athlete. And, I had no idea if I could run 13 miles let alone 26.2 when I started. More to the point, could I stay moving for the 4+ hours straight it would take to complete the marathon? To do the training mileage, I knew I'd have to run through streets and trails on my own and that made me nervous, too. Waves of grief wash us to strange shores. Whe...

What is Solarpunk? Good question, great answers from our community

What is solarpunk? My fellow Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers authors Commando Jugendstil and Tales from The EV Studio put together this video for the Turin International Book Fair . It features editors and authors from the solarpunk community sharing their thoughts. Together we're imagining optimistic futures based on renewable energy. My soundbite was: "Solarpunk futures are — green spaces with clean water that are pedestrian, collective, feminist, creative communities. And they include non-human animals. " Mary "solarpunk" Shelley cat did a great job (at 6:15) helping from her rather ridiculous cat tree which she absolutely loves. And what better time to wear this solar-colored "Veganism is Feminism" tee from The Herbivore Clothing Company . Seriously. I'm holding a stack of solarpunk books: Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers  edited by Sarena Ulibarri which includes my story "Watch Out, Red Crusher!".  Wings of R...

Springy story review: "State Change" by Ken Liu

Why it springs to mind:  You'll never look at an ice cube the same way again. Where read: In the 2014 Hugo award-winning Lightspeed Magazine , August. Length: 5,194 words Summary: A woman has an ice cube for a soul. Memorable: How the story invites us to think about the shape of our soul, how it (or our perception of it) influences us and how it changes. What ordinary every day object would your soul be? A silver spoon, a beech stick? A great party conversation starter, this. Quote:  “All life is an experiment." Notable:  The protagonist Rina is an avid reader (always a good choice). Pairs well with: T.S. Elliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay Origin:  The story was written in 24 hours based on a writing prompt. (See Author Spotlight: Ken Liu ) About the author: Ken Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings , the first in a fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, is due out from Saga Press ( a new Simon & Schuster imprint ) in 2015.