A Single Layer

It's not the planes I love. It's the hangar.

today i am blogging about emily. mb: so, emily, what do you want to tell the blogworld? emily: they should all come and help me paint my house. mb: you have a house? tell me about your house! emily: it's a darling little bluish grey three bedroom two bath with hardwood floors and a yard. mb: how long have you lived there? emily: two! whole! weeks! mb: how are your cats adjusting to the change? emily: they're a little crazy, but they always were! mb: what is one major decorative change you will make to your new abode? emily: well, we already painted the kitchen a nice alpaca color, which isn't too major... (interrupted by beep from the oven signifying the end of the scones' ...never mind. they need another minute) and we'll be painting most of the other rooms as well. other than that, it's just small things here and there. mb: where do you find your greatest inspiration? emily: pottery barn. no, i'm kidding. my greatest inspiration for what? what are you putt...

If Cynthia Voigt had written science fiction, it probably would have looked something like The Hunger Games . In Suzanne Collins's newest novel, we meet a protagonist who seems remarkably familiar. Like Voigt's heroines, we understand her story because she seems so much like ourselves - no matter how strenuous or bizarre the circumstances, we feel certain our story would be the same. We, too, would have those resources, that practicality, that certain sensitivity that separates us from the masses. I don't say this critically - it is the book's strongest feature that it identifies with every one of its readers and says 'this could be your story.' It is not just its portrayal of Katniss Everdeen, the novel's heroine, that is familiar. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic North American nation, Panem. It is a country held together by fear - a fear instilled by the capitol into each of its twelve districts and maintained by a yearly event called the Hunge...

I am very good at having favorites. Every week during storytime, I tell the kids: 'this is one of my favorites!' and then inwardly roll my eyes. They are all 'my favorites'. But there are a few that really are. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane , for example. Or Lewis's Till We Have Faces . I could read these books twenty times over and still feel that they are new to me. Among my true favorites, there are few picture books. Not because I am a snob about chapters, but it's difficult for me to put picture books in the same category as chapter books to begin with - and then to compare them? It just seems awkward. But let me tell you about The Rough-Faced Girl . If I can. The little blurb on the inside flap calls it a Cinderella story, and I suppose it is that. More than suppose - there's a girl who sits by the cinders, who is mocked by her two proud sisters, who is chosen by the 'prince' instead of them, who is rescued from penury and obscurity b...

First I read this by Walter Ong: In contending with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Derrida is of course quite right in rejecting the persuasion that writing is no more than incidental to the spoken word. But to try to construct a logic of writing without investigation in depth of the orality out of which writing emerged and in which writing is permanently and ineluctably grounded is to limit one's understanding, although it does produce at the same time effects that are brilliantly intriguing but also at time psychedelic, that is, due to sensory distortions.... then I pick up The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and read this: Nervousness seeps into terror as I anticipate what is to come. I could be dead, flat-out dead, in an hour. Not even. My fingers obsessively trace the hard little lump on my forearm where the woman injected the tracking device. I press on it, even though it hurts, I press on it so hard a small bruise begins to form.... This is my dilemma.

Eve, or september 12th. i know it's a shame, the proportion of the pain, but there's one thing i can do on this day that has both name and gain. i can take this bitten body warm between my two palms, and cleaning house from top to bottom, give her balm. what's one more mourner or less on this day of second deaths, and what has my grief got to do with the towers and the rest? i have not lost a soul, just the trust of this small thing warm and shaking, claw and purring from the pain - not from the trains or the rains or the memories of mayhem one september - this twelfth, all i see is the calm misery pouring out of these two animal eyes as she twitches and whines with hives and parasites between my palms. good grief knows when to weep over one thing at a time.

via http://ffffound.com/ p.s. i am so beyond over this layout. if anyone feels like helping me pimp my page to better reflect its content, please tell me how to outdo blogger's paltry template selection. my internetal creativity is nonexistent.

mom: 'all these halloween ideas. more different ways to make a bug out of food...'

watch me bust at the seams to offer you praise and if my dance seems epileptic, know my heart is full of grace, full of grace. my sparkles are gangley and gauche cheap cheesy kitsch and unholy but holy's your business - it's you drawing breath from my lungs. in this near particular, all I can give is a song that will break all your crystal will rise to the rafters and ruffle the wings of the owls. and everyone watching cries what a shame! that such music should come from one so overweight that these notes make their way through my messes of hair or emerge from between these crooked teeth. they'll wonder in silence because they are decent enough not to announce it in front of themselves (let alone their neighbors): how could He be quite pleased how the Lord be satisfied or the man with the microphone brazen to try to ignore all our eyes and the skin he stands in thick in the way of the aria fit for a king - such contradiction of praise and praiser oh, we all have our highs w...

still working, reading, and sleeping. in that order and with little reprieve. be back soon.