A Single Layer

let it be known in all the world that my dad is the very best because he maketh me coffee every morning. groggy of head, i stumble into the kitchen and lo! it is ready, piping and hot. glory be.

Dear Tara, I was wrong. I said Milosz was my favorite, but it wasn't true. John Donne is my favorite, and has been for some while. I guess I forgot because he's canonical and I didn't want to be pretentious. (Like there's something unpretentious about loving a Nobel-prize wining Polish poet in exile, recently deceased.) Here's my perhaps favoritest poem in the world. (But of course, with me 'favorite' just means 'that which gives me delight.') Anyway and however, this is a perfect poem and prayer, and more mine now than it ever was. Pass it along to Spencer. Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and wo...

on my way home, i noticed one of the billboards on 2nd street had changed. for a good long while, it was an advert for the movie coraline , with the tagline: 'be careful what you wish for.' now it's an advert for a re-release of disney's pinocchio , with the tagline: 'your wish has come true.' huh.

this is the text i just sent my brother who asked 'what should i read after emma?': Gaskell if you can find her. Most stores just carry cranford, which is about old women and not that phenom. Read jane eyre if you haven't already. It's em's favorite book ever. Very good. Ooh! Read rebecca by daphne du maurier. I'm reading it with jenny e. After the astonishing life of octavian nothing. Oscar wilde's plays are hilarious. And anthony trollope has some good stuff. You liked sir walter scott, didn't you? And if you're looking for a novel even longer than this text, read george eliot. Who is a woman. I like her middlemarch.

Someday, if there is a man trying to woo me and finding it difficult (unlikely, but possible), he need only put this on .

the poppies persist against the whip of the rain the birds do the same, their hollow bones rising against the wind.

Check it out!!!! You know you're brilliant when Colbert calls your name. And if that's not enough!!!! The Talisman Ring was the first Heyer book I ever read. Absolutely incredible how little of it I really remember - I am pleased beyond expression to find all her books coming back into print with pretty covers and stuff. Makes them look almost respectable. For those of you who don't know, Georgette was my guilty pleasure all through high school. I made up for it with things like this , of course. But I defy you to read the first chapter of any one of her quaint little romances and not find yourself chuckling and giggling like a lunatic. This was my favorite.

Dear God, the ocean out my front window looks so beautiful - like the garb of a god - like the iris of an eye -

In defense of Chalice , if I may argue with myself, the book is really dealing with a sort of myth of sanctification. And I don't mean myth in the disillusioning sense; I mean it in the richest and most credible sense - which is, incidentally, pretty much the only way I use the word. In the last few days, there have been several moments when I have thought 'this needs sanctification,' and the image of Mirasol wandering over the four corners of her country desperately meting out her magic in drips of watered-down honey would come to mind. The book is full of these images. The bees, the honey, the fire - they are beautiful images because they have weight and depth and they call out directly to this need in us to have things of weight and depth lend us blessing. We need the words 'you are whole and healthy' to be spoken over us so that we can be whole and healthy. No wandering wordsmith will do. The one who reminds us of our healing is also the one who gives it to us w...

It's raining buckets, and of course that's a good thing. I'd like to remind all my Californian readers that there are plants in the world that don't have sprinkler systems to feed them. Though, I probably shouldn't be allowed to drive in the rain. Just not a good thing for the People. Even so, I'm making the trip back to my place of work in about in hour so that I can join coworkers for dinner and a movie. Coraline !!!! Can't hardly wait. We've been selling the book like bananas to strays. It's pretty incroyable . So, I read Chalice , by our favorite Robin McKinley yesterday. That is, I finished it yesterday. Did I like it? Good question. As Jenny B. and I were saying the other day (on the couch - not on the blog. Don't go checking your references), McKinley has a habit of writing half of her novels with rich, concrete detail, fleshy, earthy, human stuff. And then half-way through, some bit of magic happens and everything gets vague. I don't...

okay, i didn't mean to disconcert anyone with the stalkerish world map. i just thought you should know that i can tell where people check my blog from. the information is distilled to me in a variety of ways as i choose, either in list form, or as a pie graph, or even in the manner below. i like to know where people are when they read my posts. but don't worry; i don't track down ip addresses to get names or anything. you're still anonymous. unless i know where you live.

Hello, readers. This is you.

For Dickensians everywhere. Reading this article, I had a sudden and elaborate flashback of watching Hard Times in Edinburgh. Haven't thought of the adaptation since I gave the DVD back to Jess - many thanks.

Time to revisit one of my favoriter sites . It isn't updated as regularly as one would like, but I think that has something to do with its newness. Spread the word, send in your stuff, and see it grow like a bamboo stalk. There are some pretty pictures, too. And yes, this has everything to do with my present (and very old) preoccupation with fairy tales.