marycontrary | Reading

Today's poem:

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

--Tony Hoagland

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Phillies on tv

musesfool

Monday miscellany:

- So what are the odds we get an antipope this time in addition to a pope?

- Sepinwall gave season 2 of Andor a good review (minor spoilers, I guess) - the first 3 episodes drop tomorrow and it sounds like they are doing 3 episodes a week for 4 weeks, as each one comprises a mini-arc. Trying not to get spoiled on the internet is sure to be a nightmare.

- I haven't done the AO3 stats meme regularly since 2018 because not much changes in my top 10. In 2021, however, I made note of some up-and-comers in the 11-20 slots, and it turns out that as of 4/20/25, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (i.e., the one where Dick convinces Jason to stop killing through the power of hugs) has crept into the top 10 by hits - it's number 9! (It looks like Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough) (the Steve/Bucky remix AU where Steve finds Bucky working as a barista) is the one that fell out of the top 10.)

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc also made inroads into the top 10 by kudos, landing at number 5! Additionally, 2 Star Wars stories also found their way into the top 10 by kudos: There's Still Time to Change the Road You're On (in which Anakin time travels to the post-RotJ era and meets his kids) at 6, and deep as a secret nobody knows (AU where Leia tells Vader she's Padme's daughter and it changes everything) at number 8!

The 3 Avengers stories that dropped are again, Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough), plus Even a Miracle Needs a Hand (Clint/Darcy fake Christmas boyfriend), and with the lights out, it's less dangerous (Steve/Bucky, then and now).

According to these posts, I did not previously do the full list by comments, but I will note the appearance of deep as a secret nobody knows at number 3 on the comments list, and another Vader-and-Leia AU, Just a Little Bit of History Repeating, at number 10, with the VMars/Avengers crossover we travel without seatbelts on sitting pretty at number 7.

So I guess given enough time, these things CAN change.

- Today's poem:

Nothing Will Warn You
by Stephen Dunn

Nothing will warn you,
not even the promise of severe weather
or the threats of neighbors muttered
under their breath, unheard by the sonar

in you that no longer functions.
You'll be expecting blue skies, perhaps
a picnic at which you'll be anticipating
a reward for being the best handler

of raw meat in a county known
for its per capita cases of salmonella.
You'll have no memory of those women
with old grievances nor will you guess

that small bulge in one of their purses
could be a derringer. You'll be opening
a cold one, thinking this is the life,
this is the very life I've always wanted.

Nothing will warn you,
no one will blurt out that this picnic
is no picnic, the clouds in the west
will be darkly billowing toward you,

and you will not hear your neighbors'
conspiratorial whispers. You'll be
readying yourself to tell the joke
no one has ever laughed at, the joke

someone would have told you by now
is only funny if told on yourself, but no one
has ever liked you enough to say so.
Even your wife never warned you.

***

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Good Times, Bad Times = Led Zeppelin

resonant

For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin

May this house be full of kitchen smells
and shadows and toys and nests of mice
and roars of rage and waterfalls of tears
and deep sexual silences and sounds
of mysterious origin never explained
and troves and keepsakes and a lot of junk
and a flowing like a warm wind only slower
blowing the leaves of trees and books and the fish-years
of a child’s life silvery flickering
quick, quick, in the slow incessant gust
that billows out the curtains for a moment
all those years from now, ago.
May the sills and doorframes
be in blessing blest at every passing.
May the roof but not the rooms know rain.
May the windows know clearly
the branch and flower of the apple tree.
And may you be in this house
as the music is in the instrument.

rachelmanija

In this YA novel published in 1990, six fourteen-year-olds face their inner dragons while they're in an accelerated academic program which includes a class on Beowulf.

I read this when it first came out, so when I saw a copy at a library book sale, I grabbed it to re-read. It largely holds up, though I'd completely forgotten the main plot and only recalled the theme and the subplot.

My recollection of the book was that the six teenagers are inspired by class discussions on Beowulf to face their personal fears. This is correct. I also recalled that one of the girls was a gymnast with an eating disorder and one of the boys was an athlete partially paralyzed in an accident, and those two bonded over their love of sports and current conflicted/damaging relationship to sports and their bodies, and ended up dating. This is also correct.

What I'd completely forgotten was the main plot, which was about the narrator, Eric, who idolized his best friend, Paul, and had an idealized crush on one of the girls in the class, who he was correctly convinced had a crush on Paul, and incorrectly convinced Paul was mutually attracted to. Paul, who is charming and outgoing, convinces Eric, who is shy, to do a speech class with him, where Eric surprisingly excels. The main plot is about the Eric/Paul relationship, how Eric's jealousy nearly wrecks it, and how the boys both end up facing their dragons and fixing their friendship.

Paul's dragon is that he's secretly gay. The speech teacher takes a dislike to him, promotes Eric to the debate team when Paul deserves it more (and tells Eric this in private), and finally tries to destroy Paul in front of the whole class by accusing him of being gay! Eric defends Paul, Paul confesses his secret to him, and the boys repair their friendship.

While a bit dated/historical, especially in terms of both boys knowing literally nothing about what being gay actually means in terms of living your life, it's a very nicely done novel with lots of good character sketches. The teachers are all real characters, as are the six kids - all of whom have their own journeys. The crush object, for instance, is a pretty rich girl who's been crammed into a narrow box of traditional femininity, and her journey is to destroy the idealized image that Eric is in love with and her parents have imposed on her - and part of Eric's journey is to accept the role of being her supportive friend who helps her do it.

I was surprised and pleased to discover that this and other Sweeney books are currently available as ebooks. I will check some out.

selenak

Daredevil Reborn: overall, good finale. I'm not shipping anyone on this show (or its predecessor), but I was amused, given that Luke Cage managed to make "coffee" a synonym for sex back in the Netflix day for all the Marvel shows, that Frank expressed the wish for coffee with both Matt and Karen. (Not at the same time.) On a more serious note, the finale evidently went for an Empire Strikes Back vibe in that ( spoilery stuff happens )

Wheel of Time S3 finale: speaking of Empire Strikes Back vibes... Though in this case just in one plot line. Okay, two, technically. (The second one being Team Elayne, Matt, Min and Nyneave not gaining what they wanted to, but what Nynayve did get was so important that I hesitate to equate this with the goings on at the White Tower.) This, too, is based on a book series written many years ago, and was shot way back when yours truly hoped the world would be less insane in 2025 than it actually is, but can't help but feel extremely on point with its ( spoiilery stuff )

Doctor Who ?.02: amusingly weird, technically impressive, everyone looks gorgeous in their costumes. But Fourth Wall Breaking stories are not really my thing, and so I can't say I loved it.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Bamberg

cimorene

I finished reading The Abbot (Scott) and The Roots of the Mountains (Morris), but I haven't been able to take time to compose posts about them because I saved a ton of quotations and I really wanted to finish the sweater I've been knitting. I finished weaving in the ends today, so tomorrow I can block it.

Also the remaining Emily Wilson translations I've got are Roman plays by Seneca, not Greek tragedies, and I'm not liking them as much. Also the book is a pdf which is always a pain. I've got another William Morris reread and another Walter Scott novel set in the middle ages to read queued up, but I'm taking a break to reread the original Villeneuve Beauty and the Beast, which I've been meaning to get around to for a while, because it has hilariously elaborate fairy lore backstory but I couldn't remember the specifics.

lightreads

Bitter Medicine

3.5/5. Urban romantasy about two fae-blooded people (well, technically she’s descended from a Chinese medicine god and he’s a half-elf), one a talented artist and magician, the other a sort of enforcer cursed with a terrible reputation and an actual curse.

I liked this ~~even though it’s het~~. The emotional beats are complex and thoughtful, and the writing is pleasant. Also, it’s so nice to have a romantasy about goddamn adults, you know? I mean, in this case they are both over a hundred, so they’d better be by now, but you know how it is.

Marking down for that thing where, if I poke the worldbuilding, it doesn’t so much poke back as jiggle alarmingly. There are fundamental facts about how this fantastical modern world works that I do not understand at all. So just go in with those senses turned down and you’ll have a good time, kay?

Content notes: Violence, magically-enforced obedience, shitty parents

selenak

Even Darth Real Life is not able to keep me from my annual Easter Well sight seeing, or the pic spam based on it. Happy Easter to all who celebrate, and hopefully good holidays to everyone:

( More Easter Wells await beneath the cut )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Bamberg

musesfool

I made these confetti cookies from Smitten Kitchen this afternoon (pic), but unfortunately, they are way too sweet for me. They are really easy to put together though, especially with the food processor, since you don't need to soften the butter and cream cheese before you get started, and there's no need to chill them before baking.

In other news, I watched the 3 available episodes of season 3 of Leverage: Redemption and enjoyed them, though there was some cognitive dissonance in seeing Noah Wyle as Harry Wilson after 15 intense episodes of The Pitt. Aldis Hodge gets more handsome every time I see him, and the gloves have come off in terms of the writing - they are not even playing anymore about how stuff that is legal still isn't right. Plus, there have been some fun guest stars: ( casting spoilers ) I look forward to the rest of the season!

***

I haven't posted any Neruda in a while, so here's today's poem:

Sonnet XLVI

Of all the stars I admired, drenched
in various rivers and mists,
I chose only the one I love.
Since then I sleep with the night.

Of all the waves, one wave and another wave,
green sea, green chill, branchings of green,
I chose only the one wave,
the indivisible wave of your body.

All the waterdrops, all the roots,
all the threads of light gathered to me here;
they came to me sooner or later.

I wanted your hair, all for myself.
From all the graces my homeland offered
I chose only your savage heart.

-Pablo Neruda
(Trans. ???)

***

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Mets vs Cards on tv

lightreads

Shroud

4/5. Our narrator, vassal of a future space exploring hell corporate, tells the story of how she survived many days on the surface of a mysterious and deeply hostile moon, populated by inexplicable and frightening life forms. Then things get weirder.

Good standalone scifi with a long section of survival horror. This makes an interesting companion to Alien Clay, another recent book of his. Both are about humans who are powerless within an oppressive and unfair human system, and how they encounter terrifying alien life, and how those aliens embody another way of being sentient in a radical departure from the human way, and what that illuminates. The two books come at that story from very different angles, but to interesting effect alone and together.

Content notes: Death, corporate dehumanization, the existential horror of alien consciousness

cimorene

We went to Stentorp and petted the lambs!

Here's all the pictures on my pet photo blog

I got a sweater's worth of very soft brown finnwool too.

This is my favorite. I can't get over the expression of this lamb while Wax was petting it 😂. I want this reaction to everything:

musesfool

I decided to make the King Arthur pretzel rolls again today (well, half the recipe to make 4 hero-shaped buns) - they only require a first rise of 1 hour and a second of 15 minutes so I could start them at 3 pm and be eating by 5:30. I proofed the dough in this nice bowl I have that has its own lid, and I did it in the unheated oven with the oven light on (I've never done it like that before but I've seen it recommended a few places), and about 50 minutes in, there was a loud popping sound, and it turned out that the carbon dioxide produced by the rising dough popped the lid right off! That had never happened to me before! I figured if that was happening, the dough was proved and it was. They turned out delicious. Definitely recommended.

Here's today's poem:

Singe

I read the tops of the poems, ten or twenty lines down.

In the beginning of the book, a man is leaving his wife
for a lover. By the end, the lover is tired of the man, who wonders
if he made a mistake. The book has the quality of a diary,
the beginnings of poems imply the ends of other poems, other days,
this is a man to know in the morning.

It's raining here, where the book lives for now, and the mood
of fog fits the sadness of the book, I hold it out the window,
bring it back and dry it off with my shirt.

I know a woman who knows the poet. I call her and ask
which tops of poems are true. She wants to know why I don't
finish the poems. I tell her I dreamed last night
I work inside a steam shovel, that the tops of the poems
are my sky, my white clouds. It's impossible to talk
to just one poet, and I'll feel the ears
of people I don't know floating behind me for a week.

There are two children in the book. They must be in college by now,
married or incapable of marriage. I believe the poet was honest
about their names, I consider finding and e-mailing them,
asking if they felt betrayed or like rock stars, some other kind
of celebrity, I suddenly want to know if they play tennis
or like Pop Tarts, if either drove up to see their father
and threw the book at his head, the stab marks on the cover
making him break down and apologize for the hurt, not the poems.

Calvino had an idea for a book that appeared to have been pulled
from a fire. What wasn't there would be as much of the story
as the little bells, the indentations of eye teeth in a pencil,
the shape of wind against a sheet. The bottom of this book
is on fire, is where the lies have fallen, where someone
tells someone they were never loved, where a body is rhapsodized
as the font of renewal, and eight pages later, deplored as snare.

I devise solace for the book: we should count birds, I tell it,
should ride a horse, you and I. Some other time I'll read
the bottom only, read this life and turn each page
with both hands, carry the words in the basket of my flesh,
carry them over, carry them safe, some other time, nor was it ever
too late.

—Bob Hicok

***

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Mets vs Cards on tv

cimorene

From the hospital, that is. He got home yesterday and I spent all day expecting (in vain) my mom or sister to remember to explain the medical mysteries and the outcomes (my sister explained them today). It seems things were caused by medication errors. He missed a heart medication the day of his surgery and was on too many blood thinners, which have been adjusted now. He is still too weak to use his phone though, so I haven't heard from him in a while. Usually he is quite active in our family chat. But this is probably because he didn't get the medication he takes for tremors while he was in the hospital.

I was happily expecting to go pet the spring lambs at Stentorp today, and also buy more local untreated wool at their Easter open house. Then last night I had cramps that were the most painful I have felt in years and years. It didn't hurt as much as when I broke my elbow, but that was almost ten years ago. I do most months have cramps bad enough to curtail how much I move around in spite of taking painkillers, but usually less than a whole day's worth of them, and nothing that I have ever needed stronger painkillers for than ibuprofen. In fact in the last few years they've gotten much less severe and I have mostly been fine with 1000 mg of paracetamol (acetaminophen). I guess I've used ibuprofen instead maybe... three times in the last year, and then usually only 400 mg. Last night I took 1000 mg of paracetamol and 600 mg of ibuprofen and I was crouching over the side of the bed pressing a microwaved wheat hotpack to my belly with one hand and wolfing down buttered toast with the other (my stomach is sensitive and I never take ibuprofen without food), and then I lay there with a hot pack under my lower back and another on my lower abdomen for like... an hour, probably?

I was mentally clinging to this promised treat of petting lambs and getting wool last night, and I got up a little early today. But apparently Wax's new episode of 911 came out early this morning and she spent four hours or something trying and failing to get a copy of it and then she was so mad about bad writing and the continued absence (second week in a row) of her blorbo from the screen that she was unable to... leave her computer chair... or think about anything else... until it was too late to go today. They still have an open house tomorrow, though. We'll have to go tomorrow.

(This bad writing on 911 isn't related to the previously-mentioned fact that apparently her ship is going canon. Since last update, a press release for next season promised to continue the "will-they-won't-they" between the characters, so this seems like confirmation, but also confirmation that they won't before the end of the season. The bad writing is a pretty widespread issue, since it's a network tv primetime soap opera, and continuity, plausibility, and character development are spotty. This week's offensively bad writing is related to a ridiculously implausible medical emergency and melodramatic brush with death [two things that happen frequently], the apparent departure of one of their biggest stars and the first time a main character has departed the show. Either someone died, or it's another fakeout: he did already fake die a year ago, according to Wax, so it's repetitive either way. Seems like maybe the actor is actually leaving now? The character death, besides being silly, implausible, and repetitive of past notes, is not good writing for the character, according to Wax, who is also giving angry jaded snorts at text posts looking forward to characters dealing with "deep grief" because the show is notoriously bad at remembering to show characters grieving or, in general, experiencing psychological consequences after traumatic experiences.)

musesfool

Today's poem:

The Game
by Lorna Crozier

So many conversations between
the tall grass and the wind.
A child hides in that sound,
hunched small
as a rabbit, knees tucked
to her chest, head on her knees,
yet she's not asleep.

She is waiting with a patience
I had long forgotten,
hair wild with grass seeds,
skin silvery with dust.

It was my brother's game.
He was the one who counted,
and I, seven years younger,
the one who hid.

When I ran from the yard,
he found his gang of friends
and played kick-the-can
or caught soft spotted frogs
at the creek so summer-slow.

As darkness fell,
from the kitchen door
someone always called my name.
He was there before me
at the supper table;
milk in his glass
and along his upper lip
glowing like moonlight.
You're so good at that, he'd say,
I couldn't find you.

Now I wade through
hip-high bearded grass
to where she sits so still,
lay my larger hand
upon her shoulder.

Above the wind I say,
You're it,
then kneel beside her
and with the patience
that has lived so long in this body,
clean the dirt from her nose and mouth,
separate the golden speargrass from her hair.

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Homewrecked - Empires

rachelmanija

That amazing cover is an extremely accurate drawing of an actual photograph which is reproduced in the book, of a performance piece by Claude Cahun.

Liberated is a graphic novel telling the true story of Claude Cahun, a French Jewish writer and artist born in 1894. Cahun, along with their lover, the photographer and artist Marcel Moore, was active in the Parisian surrealist movement. Later, they resisted the Nazis via a stealth propaganda campaign aimed at occupying Nazi soldiers. They created pamphlets and fliers, and smuggled them into the soldiers' cigarette packs and even pockets! And they did all this while Cahun was chronically ill. Eventually, they were ratted out, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, but the war ended before the sentence was carried out.

Assigned female at birth, Cahun's life and art interrogated gender, persona, and identity, writing, Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. Marcel Moore was also assigned female at birth, but I'm not sure how Moore identified in terms of gender, or whether the name Marcel Moore was a preferred name or a pseudonym/artist's persona. I think the graphic novel probably doesn't pin this down on purpose, and my guess is that either it wasn't clear at this remove, or it seemed more true to Moore to leave it ambiguous/fluid.

The two of them met at school, fell in love, and traveled Europe together. And just when it started getting socially dicey for them to stay together, social cover fell into their lap when - I am not making this up - Moore's mother married Cahun's father! When they moved to the island of Jersey to escape the Nazis (this only worked for so long) they represented themselves as sisters living together.

The graphic novel is largely told in Cahun's words, with lovely graphic art plus a few of Cahun and Moore's own photographs. It's a quick, moving, inspiring, thought-provoking read, more relevant now than ever.

musesfool

I was doing so good with reading books again but alas, I have had the 2nd Finlay Donovan book open in the same spot for a week and instead have been reading fic or watching tv. So have some quick thoughts on TV I have watched:

Silo: I enjoyed this - the first season is better, but the second season has its moments! Unfortunately, Steve Zahn is like a BEC for me, so that put a damper on parts of season 2. Like, he's a decent actor or whatever but he makes me want to turn off my TV every time I hear his voice.

The Residence: I enjoyed this a lot and I hope they make as many seasons of it as Uzo Aduba wants, perhaps in really fancy buildings every time, though I hope they are slightly tighter in terms of story telling - 8 episodes was slightly too much imo.

Abbott Elementary: this season has been a lot of fun and I will be watching the finale tonight!

Elsbeth: still enjoying this also, though I've been doling out the episodes more slowly now that I'm like only 1 behind the current episode.

Severance: I have avoided saying much about this show since for me it's a very mixed bag (great acting, beautiful cinematography, wonky pacing, questionable writing) and I know a lot of people love it, but I hope Tramell Tillman has a long, highly decorated career as a leading man in action movies, musicals, rom-coms, and whatever else his heart desires. I am also always happy to see Dichen Lachman on screen!

Wheel of Time: I have been enjoying this as well, though 8 episodes feels too short given everything that they are covering (note: I haven't read the books and currently don't plan to). ( spoilers ) Let them all sing more! The singing has been GREAT.

And lastly, here's today's poem:

Object Permanence
by Hala Alya

This neighborhood was mine first. I walked each block twice:
drunk, then sober. I lived every day with legs and headphones.
It had snowed the night I ran down Lorimer and swore I'd stop
at nothing. My love, he had died. What was I supposed to do?
I regret nothing. Sometimes I feel washed up as paper. You're
three years away. But then I dance down Graham and
the trees are the color of champagne and I remember -
There are things I like about heartbreak, too, how it needs
a good soundtrack. The way I catch a man's gaze on the L
and don't look away first. Losing something is just revising it.
After this love there will be more love. My body rising from a nest
of sheets to pick up a stranger's MetroCard. I regret nothing.
Not the bar across the street from my apartment; I was still late.
Not the shared bathroom in Barcelona, not the red-eyes, not
the songs about black coats and Omaha. I lie about everything
but not this. You were every streetlamp that winter. You held
the crown of my head and for once I won't show you what
I've made. I regret nothing. Your mother and your Maine.
Your wet hair in my lap after that first shower. The clinic
and how I cried for a week afterwards. How we never chose
the language we spoke. You wrote me a single poem and in it
you were the dog and I the fire. Remember the courthouse?
The anniversary song. Those goddamn Kmart towels. I loved them,
when did we throw them away? Tomorrow I'll write down
everything we've done to each other and fill the bathtub
with water. I'll burn each piece of paper down to silt.
And if it doesn't work, I'll do it again. And again and again and -

***

Current Mood: thoughtful

rachelmanija

Finally, a book that lives up to its premise!

The Tainted Cup's plot is a murder mystery, complex but playing fair, in the tradition of Agatha Christie. Its main characters are Ana, a spectacularly eccentric reclusive genius, and Din, her young assistant who does the legwork, in the tradition of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin or Sherlock Holmes and Watson.

...and the setting is a world that has been regularly ravaged by leviathans the size of mountains that emerge from the sea every "wet season" and rampage around, not only stomping everything in sight but also creating zones like Annihilation's Area X due to their magical, mutagenic bodies!

This has led to the Roman Empire continuing as it's the only force that can (barely) keep them in check, and also to it evolving a sophisticated scientific/magical biological technology which can perform many forensic, military, and technical functions including augmenting people and animals. So you have legionnaires augmented to be short-lived but massively strong and with extra bones that crunch when they move, called cracklers, using giant sloths called "slothics" to haul around artillery to shoot at kaiju!!!

I fucking love this sort of setting. All I want is to roll around in its weird biological decadence, ideally with guides in the form of interesting and/or likable characters. A good plot is just gravy. But! I love the characters AND the plot is excellent!

The opening scene is a masterclass in how to introduce a very unusual and complex setting by making your viewpoint character someone who 1) must navigate aspects of the setting that are new to them too, 2) has a compelling personal problem that's emotionally engaging, 3) and introduces a mystery to keep us hooked.

Din, the viewpoint character, is the new probationary assistant to the investigator, showing up alone to his very first murder scene. He immediately tangles with the guard on site, who is clearly richer and more experienced and correctly sizes him up as a newbie, and is also suspicious that the investigator herself isn't there. This neatly introduces us to the military and investigatory structure, and makes us wonder about Din's boss. As Din is introduced to a very wealthy household, we get to see the biological magitech of the world while also encountering the bizarre murder he's investigating. And while all this is going on, Din is trying to hide the fact that he's dyslexic, which he thinks could get him fired.

It's an instantly compelling opening.

Ana and Din are great characters, Din immediately likable, Ana immediately intriguing. The supporting cast is neatly sketched in. The plot is a very solid murder mystery, the setting is fantastic, and everything is perfectly integrated. The mystery could only unfold as it does in that setting, and the characters are all shaped by it. As a nice little bonus, there's also good disability rep in the context of a world where many people are augmented to boost them in some ways while also having major side effects. Good queer rep, too. And though a lot of the content was dark/horrifying, the overall reading experience was really fun.

I loved this book and instantly dove into the next one. I hope Bennett writes as many Ana & Din books as Christie wrote Poirots.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

musesfool

I'm pretty sure I'm going to stay home for Easter this year, so now I need to decide what I'm going to cook. I thought about making the fancy French chicken, or maybe a traditional ham, or I could make crepes for breakfast and then manicotti for dinner (though that seems like a lot of work). I also want to bake something but what? A strawberry galette? Some other strawberry tart type thing (using frozen strawberries)? Strawberry sticky buns? Clearly my brain has focused in on something strawberry but it doesn't have to be! Small batch cheesecake? Confetti cookies? or maybe I will bake some more bread? I'm off both Friday and Monday, so there's time to do several different things, but I just need to decide what and then tailor my shopping list accordingly.

Work continues to be super busy thanks to the search committee stuff on top of all our other work, but aside from some scheduling that is going to be a nightmare, we should have a couple of weeks off from dealing with meetings with them.

Here's today's poem:

Water on Mars
by Clare McDonnell

for Susan

Mars has the memory of water
carved into her parched rock.

Does she remember rivers;
their silkiness, their languid drawl,
their flux and gush, their roar,
clots of frogspawn, green weeds waving?
Did she understand the pebble talk of water,
delight in the twinkle of sun and shade
and the sudden shimmer of fish?

Was there once someone there
who saw a lake as flat as a polished table,
the surface so tense that insects hardly
dented it, darting between lily pads?
Did he notice how wrinkles halo out when
a swallow dips for flies, or how the breeze
strews handfuls of sparkle over the water?

Was there an enormous ocean there
whose curled tongue was shredded on rocks?
Did it suck the sand from beneath a poet's feet
leaving him in unsteady wonder?
Did his child cup handfuls of spilled sun
from its surface, let it seep through her fingers
to become water again, licking her ankles?

In winter, did rain slap him with glass hands?
In summer, did it finger his face softly,
bring back aromas to dryness,
plump up the wall's cushion of moss?
And when it stopped, did each lupin leaf
hold a diamond between its fingers,
was the fissure a stream, did the red rock steam?

***

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Mets vs Twins on tv

cimorene

My dad, as regular readers likely remember, is a quadriplegic wheelchair user (partial use of arms, C5/6 injury) dating from a car accident 22 years ago when I was home from college.

Because of all the complications inherent in spinal cord injuries, there are a lot of minor scares and hospitalizations, and these have readjusted my anxiety meter over time so that a sudden ambulance ride to the ER is no longer guaranteed to be alarming, or a memorable milestone; especially here, so far away (my parents live with my sister in Louisiana, so the time difference is 8 hours). Oftentimes I never hear the exact details except that it wasn't too serious until he's back home the next day.

But on the 7th he had a minor inpatient operation to remove a small tumor, but then two days later was sent back in an ambulance after a cardiac event that required three defibrillations. There was evidently a hematoma after the surgery that led to internal bleeding that dropped his blood pressure too low (BP is one of those spinal patient issues). Now he's been there all weekend and seems to be feeling better, but apparently they are still investigating some mysterious (?) symptoms (as always, the degree of mystery that actually exists vs. what doctors have remembered to explain to mom and she has remembered to tell us is uncertain). He isn't being kept cold to control his blood pressure anymore and they moved him out of intensive care, anyway.

This uncertainty is a little tough to deal with, even though as a baseline I'm very inured to periods of elevated worry about his health. I guess it's partly that there's not enough information to judge exactly how worried I should be. But I haven't been this worried about him for a few years at least.

resonant

If you sometimes have blood in your urine, even just a bit, even just now and then, and you test negative for a urinary tract infection, ask your doctor if you need to see a urologist. If it happens twice (especially if you smoke), TELL your doctor you need to see a urologist.

I've just had my follow-up appointment from having a small cancerous growth removed from my bladder. I'm fine! I feel fine! My prognosis is fine! But I'm glad we caught it early and wish I had gone to a specialist even earlier.

The doctor compared this procedure to removing a malignant mole from your arm or a polyp they find during a colonoscopy, so as procedures go this was a pretty simple one.

I now have to have a cytoscopy to watch for regrowth, and after four years the frequency will go down but I'll have to have them annually for the rest of my life, just another annual thing like a Pap or a mammogram.

I would have pursued more healthcare if I hadn't been scared. So if you're scared the way I was, I'll put some details below the cut; if you're squeamish, maybe don't click that arrow.

( cut for gross stuff )

Profile

marycontrary

March 2011

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Page Summary

musesfool - in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha
musesfool - this picnic is no picnic
resonant - Poetry month: For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin
rachelmanija - Face the Dragon, by Joyce Sweeney
selenak - Catching up on various shows
cimorene - reading
lightreads - Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai
selenak - Easter Wells 2025
musesfool - the indivisible wave of your body
lightreads - Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
cimorene - Lamb-petting Easter open house at the sheep farm
musesfool - the shape of wind against a sheet
cimorene - My dad is home!
musesfool - the patience that has lived so long in this body
rachelmanija - Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, by Kaz Rowe
musesfool - After this love there will be more love
rachelmanija - The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett
musesfool - their flux and gush, their roar
cimorene - new paternal health alarm
resonant - Today's medical tip

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