Asakiyume mita

Holy Fire and wisteria waves

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:00:34 GMT

I walked in the woods with a student of wakanomori's while he ran a road race. We saw wild columbine and wild strawberries and fungicidal (I just learned this from urbpan) garlic mustard and starflowers and other things I didn't recognize, and I called horses to us, which made me feel magical, but best of all we talked, and sometimes--sometimes--you can say and understand a whole lot with words that only touch on the edges of things. She gave me a glimpse of the ocean inside her, which I recognized because of the ocean inside me.

The town where the road race was held had more population a hundred years ago than now. It was chock full of churches, and even buildings that weren't churches looked rather churchlike.

Here is an actual church. The sermon will be on Holy Fire. Jonathan Edwards would approve. You don't get more New England than this.

After we parted ways, wakanomori and I went to Lilacland, where this time I took lots of photos of wisteria. Wisteria is called fuji in Japanese, and classical Japanese poems often talk about fujinami--wisteria waves. Here are those waves:

And below the cut, for sartorias, some more lilacs.

The Case of Maddie Lawrence

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:56:36 GMT

Sometimes people aren’t led to fairyland by ghost-pale lights or bewitching smiles . Sometimes it simply swallows them up, gulps them down. They fall into it without realizing. They’re lost and don’t even know it.

Like Maddie, walking home from the train station after a long day at work. She stops to admire a crabapple in full bloom, ghostly in the black-and-white of nighttime, luminous—from the starlight? Like the petals are cups filled up with it.

Her head becomes completely filled with petals and starlight, and then at some point she blinks and starts and thinks, Did I just doze off ?

And,

Where am I, again?

There’s a lake up ahead, filled with water lilies. Some are breaking free from their stems and rising off the lake, spinning lazily into the air.

Is she maybe dreaming? Did I maybe leave out the part where she got home, collapsed on the couch without brushing her teeth, and fell asleep?

Maybe I’m the one that’s dreaming, or maybe you are.

It gets worse. Who am I, again? she’s thinking. She knits her brow, trying to pull together some thoughts, trying to make some sense of things, but the only thought that comes to her is something about bells—is it that the lilies can be rung, like bells, if you catch one?

Maddie has that nagging feeling that she needs to remember something. It’s important, so she strains to, shuts her eyes squint-closed and presses her lips together hard, but it’s no good.

When she opens her eyes, someone with black and white fur on their cheeks standing in front of her, someone with a red tattoo in the shape of a star between their eyes.

“Lanterns, or bells?” this person asks, holding out both hands, and in both hands are lilies, tugging to be free from this person’s grasp. Those on the right are glowing slightly; those on the left chime, subsonically, when they brush against each other.

“Bells,” says Maddie, and the person smiles and hands her a lily, and she smiles and takes it.

water lilies, by Tom Arbour (original here)

riches and dangers of the meadow

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:23:56 GMT

Wild strawberries blooming in a field...

... and growing in among them, new shoots of poison ivy...

(The little red leaves)

So, in a month's time, this area should be dotted with sweet, bright red berries. But you will have to be careful as you reach down to pick them, because the poison ivy will be taller and broader, too.

Also, birds

Mon, 13 May 2013 03:24:44 GMT

I have a card my mother sent me once, and it has for a picture a graceful tree with thin, curling branches and elegant leaves, and on each branch is a different sort of bird--a pretty fantasy. Except today it was real: in the white lilac, I saw all at once a cardinal, an oriole, a catbird, a tufted titmouse, and two amazing yellow-and-black striped birds, magnolia warblers, I think maybe. So much color! Red and orange and black and sleek dark gray and softer, warmer gray, and then the yellow and black. A paradise of birds.

Here are what the birds really look like:

cardinal

northern oriole

catbird

tufted titmouse

magnolia warbler

Two Books, part 2: The Other Half of the Sky

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:51:29 GMT

I was very excited to get The Other Half of the Sky (Athena Andreadis, ed.), as I like science fiction (though I rarely read it these days) and I like stories with strong female characters. This anthology promises both, and if the first story I read is anything to judge by, it will deliver.

I started with Aliette de Bodard’s “The Waiting Stars,” because I’ve been dying and dying to read something by Aliette. (And why have you not read anything yet, Asakiyume? There are plenty of opportunities. You even bought Scattered among Strange Worlds, and yet haven’t read it yet. --Good question: it’s down, I think, to the burdens of work and having other things I either needed or wanted to read that kept jumping the queue.)

“The Waiting Stars” has two storylines: there’s the story of Lan Nhen and her cousin Cuc, engaged in the daring rescue of their great aunt, who is the Mind of a Mind-ship—that is, the living intellect that animates and controls the functions of a deep-space-traveling ship. Her great aunt was one of a number of Mind-ships shot and crippled by the Outsiders, as they call members of the Galactic Federation of United Planets. The Outsiders/Galactic Federation are not a nice bunch:

[The Outsiders] were the descendants of an Exodus fleet that had hit an isolated galaxy: left to themselves and isolated for decades, they had turned on each other in huge ethnic cleansings before emerging from their home planets as relentless competitors for resources and inhabitable planets.

(Lan Nhen, Cuc, and the Mind-ships, by contrast, come from the empire of Dai Viet.)

The other storyline follows Catherine, a refugee from Dai Viet brought to the Outsider world of Prime with others like her are educated in an Institution reminiscent of the Indian schools set up in Canada and the United States ostensibly to educate the children of First Peoples but actually to acculturate them to the conquering culture and erase their native language and customs. These two storylines converge in a neat way that I figured out just as it was unfolding, which is always satisfying.

There were two things I liked in particular about this story. One was the way Lan Nhen and Cuc work together in their rescue attempt. It was very tense-making; I was biting my nails the whole time. The other was the way in which Mind-ships are part of the family, and the way Dai Viet culture--explicitly a descendant of Vietnamese culture--continues to thrive in this far-future, deep-space situation, with holographic altars to ancestors, calligraphy on the walls, and great ship names, like The Cinnabar Mansions and The Turtle's Citadel.

I have a couple of reservations, but one of them relates to the spoilerish stuff, so it’s under a cut. The other one is—well, I’ve turned it over and over in my mind, and I guess in the end it’s philosophical. Here’s the thing: there’s nothing—at all—redeeming about the Galactic Federation, and no flaws, really, in Dai Viet society. In other words, we’ve got good guys, who are definitely good, up against bad guys who are definitely bad. Even Catherine’s lover, who’s a low-level flunky in the Galactic bureaucracy, ends up essentially claiming government policy as his own personal position. And I guess my philosophical question is, How do people feel about very clearly delineated good guys and bad guys like this? Do you like having the sides be very clearly laid out? Sometimes? Is it more acceptable because it’s a reversal of the narratives that more typically offered up—ones in which non-Euro cultures (or their facsimiles) are the bad guys and Euro cultures (or their facsimiles) are the good guys?

It’s my understanding that several other of Aliette’s stories are set in this universe. I’m really looking forward to reading them and finding out more about Dai Viet and the Galactic Federation. I have a feeling I’ll find out it’s more complicated than it appears from this story.

My other difficulty with the story involved the logistics and practical details relating to Minds. They appear to have actual physical bodies (all metallic-electronic, but humanoid in shape), and they’re born from human mothers, because that creates a special bond between mother and child, and yet it appears that what’s essential about them is incorporeal—so that when the Mind-ships are crippled, the Minds can be shunted down to Prime and . . . put into a Dai Viet human body? What happens to the mind already in that body, though? It’s the evil Galactics doing this, so maybe they simply don’t care about the mind preexisting in the body into which they funnel the Mind, but I’m also not clear on why the Galactics are doing this. The Galactics don’t want to let the Minds back into space, so they give them boring planetary jobs, which seems to mean that the Galactics can’t take any advantage of whatever it is that they could take advantage of by keeping the Minds alive. Why not just kill them? I would have liked to find out what the Galactics’ purpose was in keeping the Minds alive. Maybe in one of the other stories this will come up. [ETA clarification: one of Aliette's other stories; not one of the other stories in the anthology.]

The Other Half of the Sky

a bog in early morning

Mon, 06 May 2013 02:13:17 GMT

golden golden early morning. So beautiful.

On this same early morning walk I saw two deer bound away and a heron fly by, and a bluebird.

Also, I think on my travels I may have seen a yellow-crowned night heron--a strange dark thing, standing heronlike in the water, with a white patch on its head.

not my photo

ETA: Then again, looking around the internets this morning, I think it's more likely it was just a great blue heron--which *are* common around here, and which have a white spot on their head. This could be what I saw:

photo by Mike Dunn

The thing is, the overall coloring of what I saw was **dark**, darker, I would have said, then the great blue heron. But I expect I'm wrong, and that's what I saw.

Also, wirewalking has three ferrets, and one of them climbed up on me. I took a blurry photo:

two women

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:07:35 GMT

The first is a woman who I have seen wandering up and down the streets of our town since we moved here. She walks up and down in all weather, with an uneven gait. She sometimes has a cart or bag. She sometimes rides the bus. She sometimes is in the library. She is older than I am and has an odd, distant expression. Sometimes she is talking to herself.

I've only ever seen her at a distance, but she makes an impression.

In the post office today, as I was waiting in line, someone came up behind me, huffing and puffing and saying, "Oh God. Oh God," under their breath. I thought, "I should turn around and ask what's the matter." But did I? No. But then the person said, "Hello, I was wondering if--" and I thought, "Are they talking on a cell phone? Or talking to me?" So I turned to see, and it was the woman, and she *was* talking to me, and she said, "I was wondering if you could drive me down to the Senior Center."

"Sure, I could do that," I said.

So I did my post office business and waited while she did hers, and then I drove her to the Senior Center.

"I'm M--" she said. This happens to be my mother's name. And, I think somehow I knew that was her name. Maybe seyeh told me, or maybe one of the librarians told me.

I introduced myself, too.

We talked about the weather and walking, and she thanked me when she got out, and told her I hoped the rest of the day was good, and she said she hoped so too.

The second was a woman whose food truck I parked behind when I was dropping the ninja girl off in the next-door town for a driving lesson. I could see right into it--it was like a ship's galley, everything packed in so neatly: refrigerator, microwave, smoker, sink, storage spaces, wall decorations, and in this tiny space the woman was moving around very efficiently, getting her preparations done to open.

I jumped out of the car and said hi, and she said hi, and we got to talking, and she had so much to say and was so friendly, busy as she was. She does mainly different sorts of barbecue, and it's all very, very affordable (I bought a pulled-pork sandwich and brought it home with me--it was delicious.) She told me she does everything right in there--smoking the meat, slow cooking, everything. She told me she was originally from Mali but was adopted into this country (this came up because we were talking about the warm weather--she said it had gotten hot awfully fast, and I said I liked the heat, and then she said that you'd think she wouldn't mind it, coming from Mali--and then the rest of the story about adoption followed on that).

She said she'd run a restaurant for a while too, but now was doing this food truck. I didn't have my camera, so I asked if I could sketch instead. She asked if I was an artist and said she wanted someone to do a mural on her van! How cool that would be! (But I don't think I have the chops for that.)

She told me about how restaurant owners don't like her and other food van people, saying they take away business, and that one guy had been really threatening (he sounds like a jerk)--but the town has said they have permission to operate, provided they stay in certain areas. She had newspaper clippings about the whole business that she let me see. She said she was thinking of doing the B-town fair, and I said, Do! Do come!

I asked her if I could come back with my camera on Sunday and take pictures, and she said yes. I am so excited for this. In my daydreams, I ask her if I can apprentice with her, work for free, just to learn how to do it all. In real life I can't--I have to earn a living. It's fun to daydream, though.

I haven't forgotten about the other book review--that's still coming, probably Monday.

a golden land

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:50:42 GMT

Two books, part 1: A Cup of Smoke

Fri, 03 May 2013 02:43:55 GMT

So I have two books that I'd like to share about. One is A Cup of Smoke, which I've mentioned before--a collection of short stories and poetry by Rachel Manija Brown. The other is The Other Half of the Sky, a collection of short stories featuring competent women in outer space, edited by Athena Andreadis. I'm dipping into both volumes, and I thought I'd share my findings as a way of encouraging you to give them a try, too.

From A Cup of Smoke, I decided to read the title story first. From The Other Half of the Sky, I decided to read "The Waiting Stars," by Aliette de Bodard first--because I like the way she talks in the blogosphere, and I've been meaning and meaning to read some of her fiction. (I even own some, and yet, and yet!)

I enjoyed both stories very much, but they don't really go together well, so I'll do "A Cup of Smoke" first and talk about "The Waiting Stars" in a separate entry.

"A Cup of Smoke"

It's a fable, set in Japan, and featuring a young girl caught in the rain, a fox spirit, and collection of typical Japanese obake (monsters) and yôkai (spirits): an animated stirrup, an umbrella with a lolling tongue, a kimono-clad catfish, a dream-eating baku, a bodiless hand, and so on. Hazuki, sent to fetch clams for her mother's soup, is granted shelter and a story by the fox spirit after she correctly answers the fox spirit's riddle.

umbrella with a lolling tongue

dream-eating baku

Here's the encounter with the stirrup:

A small creature jumped out at me, squeaking disapprovingly. I skidded backward, staring at it. It had only one eye and seemed to be made of strips of leather, but it could leap high as a cat.

“It’s the stirrup of a samurai who fell in battle,” said the old woman. “It lay in the field waiting for him to come back. But he was never going to return, so I took it in.”

“It’s a stirrup . . . and it’s alive?”

“Many things come to life after a hundred years of existence. Stirrups, lanterns, bolts of cloth . . .”

When Hazuki asks for a story such as her grandmother's grandmother might tell, the fox spirit (the old woman) satisfies her by sharing a memory--in the form of a cup of smoke:

She took out a bottle and tilted it over a sake cup. Mist flowed down like a waterfall.

“Just one sip and pass it on.” She indicated all the eager creatures around me.

The smoke tasted like rain. I breathed it in.

Before she leaves, Hazuki must successfully answer one more riddle, and if not, she must give the fox spirit something.

What happens? Does she answer the riddle successfully? If not, what does she give? (Do you think you could answer the riddles successfully? Want to try?) For the answers to these and other questions, you will have to get the book--an ebook--which is a mere $4.99 at Amazon and Smashwords.

I may share more as time allows--I can tell I'm going to like this collection very much.

The air itself golden

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:34:12 GMT

The air itself was golden yesterday evening--living gold. "The fields arrayed in living gold"--no, the air itself. Shimmery--all your molecules are excited to move through it, your lungs are happy to inhale it.

And this May Day is a golden day--a nature's-first-green-is-gold Day

On my walk, on a piece of lawn owned by . . . the town? the supermarket? crazy, contorted dandelions. They were gasping and dying: you could tell by their wilting and twisting, thought it took me a moment to realize that's what I was seeing: death pangs. Then I noticed the little sign confirming it: "warning, pesticide application." And then I feared what death my feet might bring to other places, having first walked through that lawn. I scuffed them good and hard along the road to try to clear the poison before I walked on living stuff again.

I'm having a hard time in one area of my life, and while being reminded of war victims and starvation is often only shame inducing rather than salutary, three times in twelve hours I was shown things that put stuff in perspective in a good way:

A friend whose twenty-nine-year-old son has gone through treatment for colon cancer. Who knows what the future holds for him? But he found a sweetheart online and is off in California, meeting up with her and spending time--basically having a romantic adventure. Living while he's alive. Wonderful.

This story, which maybe others of you heard, of the mother and daughter injured in the Boston bombing. The mother was one of the two who had to have a double amputation, and one of the ones visited by a vet who had lost both his legs in Afghanistan, who encouraged her and told her how she could get through this.

"He was 'steady as a rock' on his prosthetic legs, she says. "And he's telling me I can be the exact same way ... "After I met them, it was like this ... this little spark," she says. "You know, it's really going to be OK ... After that point, it was like I got it that the sky's the limit. Nothing was taken from me that I can't get back. I can even be better than I was before."

And then there's a friend of mine (you know who you are, if you happen to read this) who is facing *very* hard stuff, who wrote on Facebook,

Many angels were sent my way ... Gifts of friendship, books, learning, companionship, honesty from my adversaries in the face of devious traps, even overflowing fresh foodstuffs. I'm not saying that everything is all fixed and all perfect, but even in a very dark hour many lights were sent to keep my stumbling feet moving along my road.

I want to be like all three of those people. Thanks, teachers. I hope the lesson sticks.

Other scenes from Saturday

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:16:21 GMT

At the Harvard Science Center, Hermes signs the Boston Strong boards.

True Art?

Symphonic skies on the way home.

Only one T story

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:06:53 GMT

I wonder what other stories I thought I would tell you; I can only remember one, right now.

Boston's Mass Transit is known as the T. T for transit? I think. The lines are color coded. In one direction, the Blue Line's destination is Wonderland. Isn't that great? The train to Wonderland. That's the line you take to get to the airport.

There's a park at the airport stop, and from it you can watch the trains go by . . .

(You can also watch them from the station platform, of course...)

But I promised a story. It is a fairy tale, and it is true.

The ninja girl had a verrry early-morning interview at a hotel at the airport stop. We were worried we might be late, and we were rushing, rushing--as much as you can rush when you are dependent on the arrival of public transportation. We were hurrying down the corridor from the Orange Line to the Blue Line, and there, standing stock still as people streamed by, was a man, maybe in his thirties, looking lost. His eyes met mine.

"Excuse me," he said--accented words, but I'm not sure what accent.

"Yes?" I replied, wanting to help out, but not wanting us to miss our train.

Slightly furrowed brow as he formulates what he wants to say next.

"Airport?"

Ah, easy answer.

"Yes," I said, nodding. "This way."

"This train?"

"Yes, that's right. This train goes to the airport." And then I hurried on, and even as I was hurrying, I was thinking, I should have told him it's the third stop. I should have told him we were going there too; he could get off where we were getting off. But I didn't...

Soon we've disembarked, ourselves, and are looking the map that I printed out, trying to figure out how, precisely, to get to the hotel. The ninja girl is anxious. I'm kicking myself for not printing it in a larger format, wondering if I can ask someone. . .

"Excuse me, can I help you?" --accented words: Hispanic. A man my age or somewhat older, bald, in a brown coat.

I explain where we want to go.

"Oh, that's easy. Just walk through the park--you can see it from here."

And sure enough, we can.

"Thank you!" I say, so very grateful.

"You're welcome," he says, smiling.

Later, after I'd left the ninja girl there (she was in time) and was heading back through the park, I thought I saw the guy who gave us directions. I waved and hurried over--I wanted to say thank you again--but it wasn't him.

"I'm sorry; I thought you were someone else," I said to the perplexed guy I stopped. He smiled--no hard feelings--and we went our separate ways.

I hope that the guy who I was so brief with did get on the train, did get to the airport, did catch his flight or meet his friend or family member.

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:35:49 GMT

In Cambridge for the morning, and look who now has a Cambridge Public Library card, and is typing LJ entries on a Cambridge Public Library computer. Next mission: find out the location of this thing and that thing in town (things I used to know the whereabouts of, but establishments move around and put on new clothes if you're away for a decade or more), so I can entertain the ninja girl when she's finished with her job interview (not here; I took the T here after dropping her off).

I have a T story for you--I have more than two T stories for you--but I will save them for when I can add pictures.

Wittgenstein's birthday and other trivia

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:11:42 GMT

The Writer's Almanac informed me this morning that today is Wittgenstein's birthday. Of course I thought of sovay, occasional sufferer of the morose whisperings of a tiny, shoulder-sitting version of the philosopher.

Did you know, though, sovay, that not one, not two, but three of his siblings (he was one of nine children) committed suicide? So there was something in the Wittgenstein family well that was not doing anyone any favors.

Today must have been a good day for philosophers, because it is also David Hume's birthday. I have no opinion on Hume as a philosopher, knowing his name and not much else about him, but this quote of his reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday:

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.

The first part is easy to agree with; the second part makes for a tidy aphorism but provokes a yes-but reaction in me.

Unrelated to philosophers, except in as it may give you the opportunity to read scholarly articles on them, Jstor has a beta service that allows people who otherwise have no free access to Jstor articles to read 13 a month free online. I'd heard about this in a half-attentive way, but this morning there was an article I wanted to read, it was a Jstor article, I clicked on it, and voila, got offered the chance to use the service. A handy dandy thing for story research, for sure!

The Crocodile Twins (a folktale from Mermaid's Hands)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:33:17 GMT

(I'm thinking if I create a website for Pen Pal, this will be the sort of thing I can put there.)

Sister Twin in the Crocodile's Mouth

So you want to hear the story of the crocodile twins, do you? Settle down, then, and I’ll tell you about them. The first thing to know is that they weren’t crocodiles, no. They were people like ourselves. And the second thing is that for most of this story, they weren’t “they.” They were just “she.”

Oh, they started out as “they”: two newborn babes, her with her left arm under his right one, him with his right one over her left, the two of them always hugging each other close like that, even when they suckled at their mama’s breast. A storm and the golden crocodile prince of the Caloosahatchee mangroves reduced the twins to “she.”

You see, the twins’ papa had left their mama behind on the island of Martinique, before the twins were even born, and sailed north to seek his fortune. He was supposed to send for his wife before her lying-in time came, but her belly grew as round and large as a ripe watermelon, and she still heard nothing from him. She wasn’t one to wait pining on the shore, not her: she stole six silver teaspoons from the great house where she worked and bought herself passage on a ship carrying rum to New Orleans. On board that ship the twins were born—just ahead of the storm that shattered the ship and cast mama and babies ashore by the hungry mouth of the crocodile prince.

Snip, snap, he swallowed Brother Twin up in one sweet gulp, then went to close his jaws on Sister Twin, when her mama, screaming and weeping, thrust a broken spar deep into his gullet—and at the same moment, wouldn’t you know, a ripple scooped up Sister Twin. Fresh from the warm seas of her mama’s womb, Sister Twin felt right at home cupped in the ripple’s hands. She kicked her tiny legs and splashed her little arms, and all the mangrove fishes swarmed round, curious. The golden prince of the Caloosahatchee saw that the baby had fetched him a far finer meal than she’d have made, herself, and spitting out the spar, he slid into the water and feasted freely. Then he caught Sister Twin in his mouth, but carefully, and carried her back to shore. He enjoyed the flavor and feel of her on his tongue, but he didn’t let himself swallow her.

“One of the merfolk, are you? And passed the seablood on to the hatchling?” he asked, and though his words were garbled—what with Sister Twin resting between his tongue and teeth and all—her mama understood him.

“No, never any such thing!” she said, looking round right and left lest the captain of the stormbroken ship, perhaps washed ashore nearby, might be hearing the crocodile’s words.

No sea captain wants any of the merfolk on his ship. You might as well invite the ocean itself into your ship, if you once offer to carry one of the merfolk.

“Why deny it? I can feel where her gills would grow, if you gave her to the waves. But I can also feel hot human blood in her, and I see you leaking her nouriture down your front, so why don’t you take her and feed her?”

Trembling, Sister Twin’s mama lifted Sister Twin from the crocodile’s mouth.
“Thank you for sparing her,” she said.

“Sparing her? I’m adopting her—so don’t you be thinking of running off with her,” said the golden prince, and snapped his mouth shut on Sister Twin’s mama’s ankle, not so tight as even to break the skin, but tight enough to hold her.

“Now give her back to me,” he ordered, when he saw Sister Twin had drunk her fill. Her mama hugged Sister Twin tight, and the crocodile gave a low, rumbling growl and closed his jaw tighter on her ankle. Blood flecked the sand. Sister Twin’s mama moaned. When the crocodile loosened his grip, she laid Sister Twin back in the cradle of his mouth.

And so three, six, nine, twelve months passed this way: each day the golden prince used Sister Twin as his fishing lure, and when he was sated, turned her over to her mama for feeding, then demanded her back again. Each night, and every hour she wasn’t calling the fishes or nursing, Sister Twin was resting in the old crocodile’s mouth, between the ivory pillars of his teeth.

“Papiyon volé, fly butterfly,” Sister Twin’s mama would sing to her, an old lullaby from back on Martinique, but sometimes also, “Swim little fish, fast and far,” a lullaby from the underwater realms. But Sister Twin was too young to catch her mama’s meaning and just clapped her hands and smiled. And then Sister Twin’s poor mama began looking peaked and thin, shaking and shivering, while yet being so hot to the touch that Sister Twin shrank from her, and then blood mingled with the tears in her eyes and she vomited up something black and thick, and then she was dead.

“Diseased,” sniffed the golden prince, turning her body over with his narrow snout. “Not even good to eat now. I should have finished her off before she took ill. As for you, hatchling, you’ll live on fish from now on.”

And so five more years went by for Sister Twin, and just as the ball python your teacher keeps in that glass box in the classroom won’t grow no bigger so long as it’s in that small space, so Sister Twin didn’t grow no bigger, living as she did in the mouth of the golden prince of the Caloosahatchee.

Now sometimes she’d make an odd complaint to the old crocodile.

“My left arm aches,” she’d say. “My left arm aches where it’s half missing. Where’s the rest of my left arm?”

“It looks whole enough to me,” the crocodile would growl in reply. “But if it bothers you so, I can bite it off at the shoulder. Although then you’ll be hard pressed to swim, won’t you. And if you can’t swim, you can’t lure in my dinner, and if you can’t do that, I may as well eat all of you and not just your arm.”

And Sister Twin would swallow her complaints and curl up in a sulky ball, pressing her left arm against the old crocodile’s tongue, which always soothed the ache.

But what about Sister Twin’s father? She all the time believed the crocodile was her papa. She thought herself the most unlucky crocodile child, with her too-soft skin and her tiny size, just a pimple on her papa’s tongue and no more. We know that ain’t so. Her real papa, her handsome, warm-blooded papa Olivier, found his way to the ship of Sabelle Morning, the poor folks’ pirate. Sabelle Morning took a shine to him and gave up pirating for a season to sail the Coral Spyglass all the way down to Martinique to pick up his dear wife for him. Olivier’s heart fair broke in half when he heard that she was lost to him, that the ship she took to find him been sunk in a storm, somewhere up Florida way. From that time on, Sister Twin’s papa put tris konsa after his name, Olivier Tris Konsa, Olivier So Sad, because of his great sorrow.

After that, whenever the Coral Spyglass plied the waters off the Florida coast, Olivier Tris Konsa would scan the shore, looking for his wife’s ghost. There came a day, in the hottest month, when they were floating by the mangroves of the Caloosahatchee, that Olivier Tris Konsa turned to Benny Brave, the first mate, and said, “Those there, caught in the mangrove shoots, they look like rum casks.” And Benny Brave said yes, they did. “And do you see a mark on that one, a red mark, in the shape of a diamond?” And Benny Brave said he did see it. Then Olivier Tris Konsa kicked off his boots and tore off his shirt and dived into the water, because he knew the cargo carried by the ship his wife had taken had been marked with a red diamond.

He swam in among the mangrove shoots and saw that yes, it was old rum casks right enough, and marked with the red diamond. Some were still whole. He waded through the swaying underwater meadows of turtlegrass to shore, where a grim sight met his eyes, a skeleton reclining against a buttonwood tree, bleached tatters of clothing still clinging to it.

“Aliyet, is that you?” Olivier cried, but Aliyet had no tongue left to answer with. Olivier pulled his hair and flung himself at her feet, weeping.

“What a racket! Listen to him carrying on, like a crowd of startled shorebirds,” grumbled the old crocodile, coming ashore himself after fishing up a feast with Sister Twin.

“What a racket,” agreed Sister Twin, but her left arm ached something fierce just then, and also her heart: those old bones made her feel sad too, though she didn’t remember enough to know why.

That’s when Olivier Tris Konsa looked up and saw the great old crocodile with the tiny, miniature child crouching in its mouth, gripping one of its teeth in her right hand and one in her left. The strange sight pushed his sadness right out of his mind for the moment.

“That’s a dangerous chair you’re sitting in,” he said to Sister Twin.

“My papa won’t eat me so long as I don’t whine too much,” said Sister Twin. “And so long as I keep luring in his supper.”

“That creature was never your papa,” said Olivier. “Look at your legs and feet and look at his. Run a hand over his hide and touch your own skin. And if he’s your papa, where’s your tail?”

“Stepfather, then,” rumbled the crocodile. “Cared for her ever since her mother died—that pile of bones you’ve been sprinking with your second-rate brine.”

“Oh!” cried Sister Twin, remembering a tune that made her think of fish and butterflies.

“Oh! cried Olivier Tris Konsa, looking at tiny Sister Twin with shock and comprehension. “Come here, little one. I’m your real papa, who’s wept and yearned for you these six long years.”

Sister Twin didn’t hesitate for more than a moment, but when she went to step from the golden prince’s mouth, he clamped down on her ankle, just as he’d done to her mother those six years past.

“You think I’m just going to give her up? What do I get in return?” he asked through his teeth.

“How about I reach both my arms into your mouth?” suggested Olivier. “You snap down, and whatever you catch, you can keep.”

Each of Olivier Tris Konsa’s strong arms was twice as big as Sister Twin. The golden prince of the Caloosahatchee chucked.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

So Olivier Tris Konsa approached the crocodile, but before he did, he grabbed one of his dead wife’s arm bones, and he held it hidden under his own arm, so the crocodile wouldn’t see it. No sooner had he stuck his arms into the golden prince’s mouth then he jammed that bone in between the roof of the creature’s mouth and his lower jaw, just like a tent pole, way back by his throat.

Now you wouldn’t think a human bone, a thin bone like that, would be any match for a crocodile’s jaws, not jaws that can crunch a wooden spar to splinters the way the golden prince’s had, back when Aliyet and her babes first washed ashore. But maybe Olivier knew just where to put it, or maybe it was Aliyet’s own great desire, present in the marrow of her bones, to foil that old lizard. Whatever it was, the bone held, and the crocodile’s jaws stood propped open. “Ahh, Ahh! Eh ihh Ah! Ah oahhh!” was all he could say. Olivier bundled the rest of his wife’s bones in the remains of her skirt and slung them on his back. Then he lifted Sister Twin into his arms.

“Are you ready to come home with me now?” he asked, kissing the top of her head.

“Yes,” she said, tracing his eyebrows with her thumbs, then touching his nose and his hair, but as they waded out toward the Coral Spyglass, she moaned a little.

“What’s wrong, treasure?”

“My left arm. It hurts me sometimes.”

Olivier looked it over but could see no bruise or scar.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with your arm, except that it’s so small, but that matches the smallness of the rest of you. Hush now.” And he took a few more steps, but Sister Twin moaned again.

“It’s getting worse! There’s a piece of my arm missing, Real Papa, and the only thing that makes it feel better is to press it against Crocodile Papa’s tongue. Please take me back!” Poor thing was wailing by then, and squirming like an eel in Olivier’s arms, trying to slip free and swim back to the crocodile. So Olivier turned round, but when they came in sight of the crocodile, he set Sister Twin down on a rum cask and told her to bide there.

“Are you hiding a piece of my daughter’s arm somewhere, you old lizard?” demanded Olivier.

“Aahhhaaa, ahhh, uaah,” said the crocodile, because his mouth was still stuck open.
Olivier reached one of Aliyet’s leg bones out from the bundle on his back and used it to knock her arm bone loose from the crocodile’s mouth. When the crocodile spit it out, Olivier caught it. Now he had Aliyet’s arm bone in one hand and her leg bone in the other: short sword and long sword.

“Where are you hiding the rest of my daughter’s left arm?” Olivier asked again.

“Are you blind? You can see for yourself it’s whole,” retorted the crocodile.

“She says a piece is missing, and that nothing eases the pain but pressing what’s left against your tongue.”

The golden prince gave a rasping laugh. “It ain’t her arm she’s hankering after, it’s that other hatchling I swallowed, so long ago, that came from the same clutch as she did.”

“Twins!” gasped Olivier. In a single leap he was on the crocodile’s back, squeezing tight with his knees and brandishing his weapons.

“Cough up that other one, or I’ll kill you,” he ordered.

“You really are soft in the head. Nothing I once swallow comes out from me alive again.”

“Give me the other one, or I’ll tear you apart from the inside, looking for him,” threatened Olivier, preparing to thrust Aliyet’s arm bone back into the crocodile’s mouth.

“All right! All right! Why should I want to keep the tumorous lump anymore anyway, now that you’ve taken his sister off my hands?” And he lifted his tongue as much as the membrane that connects it to his mouth would allow.

You knew that, right? That a crocodile’s tongue don’t move free, like yours and mine? It’s true: crocodiles can’t lick no lollipops, can’t get the last taste of their meals off their teeth or scaly lips. Their tongues are fastened down.

Beneath the membrane holding down the golden prince’s tongue, was a sleeping boy—Brother Twin.

“Fool thing swam right back from my stomach to my mouth, after I swallowed him. Trying to reunite with his sister, no doubt,” muttered the crocodile. “I learned a trick or two from the oysters about how to keep him from bothering me, wrapped him up in spit and kept him tucked in down there. But now you’ve got the one, you might as well have the other, I suppose.” He tipped his head and the sleeping boy fell out onto the sand. He opened his eyes and looked right and left, blinking. He yawned and staggered to a stand, awake for the first time in six years.

“My left arm!” cried Sister Twin, splashing through the turtlegrass to shore.

“My right arm!” cried Brother Twin, and they locked in an embrace, him with his right arm over her left one.

“That’s not your left arm--that’s your brother. That’s not your right arm--that’s your sister,” their papa said.

“I dreamed so many dreams about you,” whispered Brother Twin. “All I did was dream about you.”

“I missed you. I missed you with a powerful ache, every day,” replied Sister Twin.

Olivier took them home with him. He called Sister Twin Aliyet, after her mama, and Brother Twin he called Reveye because Brother Twin slept all those years beneath the crocodile’s tongue but was awake at last. For himself, Olivier took tris konsa off his name and added tèlman kontan—Olivier So Happy. And maybe tomorrow I can tell you more stories about the mischief Aliyet and Reveye made for their father and their new friends, but not tonight. This is enough story for tonight.

Quote of the morning, from yamamanama

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:18:18 GMT

We used science to determine that coconuts are mammals because they have milk and hair.

Deluge, by Nijla Mu'min

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:22:07 GMT

Last year, cafenowhere alerted me to an independent movie in search of funding: Deluge, by Nijla Mu'min. Now the film is completed. From the website:

After witnessing the mass drowning of her friends and struggling with the decision not to jump in, 15-year old Tiana must decide if she will join the order of black mermaids that protect the waters where her friends rest. This film is partly inspired by the 2010 mass drowning of six black teens in a Shreveport, Louisiana sinkhole. None of them could swim. The film blends coming of age drama and fantasy to explore traumatic memory in a post-BP oil spill New Orleans.

Deluge layers personal, historical, and environmental trauma into an intimate portrait of female teenage awakening and realizations about mortality and fate. Through the merging of subtle moments and emotion, we find each character on edge in some way; on the edge of teen sexual discovery, on the edge of life, and on the edge of a dual existence between two worlds.

Stills from the film:

photos by Nijme Rinaldi

Lots of interesting independent stuff out there in the world!

Reaction to "Alias Ruby Blade"

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:08:58 GMT

I enjoyed the documentary very much! There was a lot of unusual footage, like of Xanana Gusmão, revolutionary leader (and current prime minister) in prison, or of Kirsty Sword Gusmão's first visit to East Timor, back in the very early 1990s. The things I was most surprised to learn were tangential to the main story: Cipinang Prison in Indonesia was nothing like what I would have imagined, and the degree of corruptibility of the guards was amazing. Some half-dozen of them were essentially in the pay of the Timorese resistance and Xanana ended up with a cell phone and computer in prison. At one point Ramos-Horta (Nobel Peace Prize winner and East Timor's first president) remarked that at times Xanana seemed more up-to-date technologically than Ramos-Horta himself:

"What's he talking about? Does he know more Internet than me? He's in prison, and he knows more Internet than me!

Also, this prison: the prisoners cooked their own meals (Xanana filmed himself making "prison mashed potatoes") and grew their own vegetables--and apparently growing bonsai trees was part of the government's program of their rehabilitation. Consequently, Xanana was always sending Kirsty bonsai trees. She ended up with about twenty of them, it looked like.

The details of the development of their personal relationship were charming. At one point Kirsty sent him a photo of her, back to the camera so that it couldn't reveal who she was to anyone who might see/confiscate it. He then painted that photo and sent her the painting. She took a photo of herself in the same position (same hair style), looking at the painting. He then painted that. So they ended up with this recursive set of images:

He sent her fish, too, and took video of himself tending fish in his own aquarium:

Then there's footage of them when he finally got released. At one point he was opening a pack of Marlboros, and I was struck again by how much he reminded me of my Japanese boyfriend (whose favorite brand was Marlboro). They could have been brothers--that's what I thought, looking at this image:

And the film does deal with the historical events around East Timor's independence. The very first shots, from when Kirsty visits when it's still under Indonesian rule, show lots of anxious faces, every time the camera pans the local population:

And there's the live footage from the horrible Santa Cruz massacre in 1991, which I've seen stills from. There happened to be an Australian team there, filming the demonstration, and when the journalist realized what was happening, he buried his camera in a grave (the demonstrators retreated to the graveyard associated with the church and then were mown down by the police--and many of those who were taken alive were lated killed in police custody). He later retrieved it, and it was that footage getting out that led to international pressure that eventually led to the referendum that resulted in East Timor's independence. And, the film covered the vote in that referendum. I've seen this mentioned in the past, but one thing that was notable about the people coming to vote was that they came with their household goods, because they knew that after the election, there would be violence, and they were likely to be refugees.

But I think the strength of the documentary isn't its historical focus; it's more about these two people coming together in this tumultuous circumstance.

An ax wight

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:10:04 GMT

Ax wights look like skinny six-year-olds, dressed all in dried leaves or cobwebs or bark or discarded plastic bags or bits of cloth. They may have belts made of bits of chrome or old reflective tape or broken mirrors. More salient than any of those details, though, is the giant AX they carry around. Ax wights hang around on forest paths. When hapless hikers come wandering by, an ax wight will ask them rapid-fire and random questions, such as "Do you like raccoons?" and "How far do those train tracks go?" and "Why is your hair that color?" and then, when they get bored--which takes on average no longer than 50 seconds--they slice the hiker down the middle with the ax.

You can forestall this, however, by carrying something shiny-sparkly in your pocket. As soon as you see the ax wight, give them the shiny-sparkly. They will drop the ax, take the shiny-sparkly, and sit right down, fascinated. You can make a getaway at that point. If you've got some forethought, you might want to take the ax with you, especially if you know you're going to have to come back the same way. (Sometimes they may be so fascinated by what you give them that they're still looking at it when you come back, but you probably don't want to count on it.)

Here's the shiny-sparkly I gave to the ax wight I ran into this morning.

Greetings from the Jurassic era

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:56:00 GMT

Greetings from genus Equisetum, happily existing on planet Earth from 200 million years ago to the present. "You young whippersnappers with your 'seeds' and your 'flowers' and what-not, when all a body needs is a few good spores. Right, mosses?" The mosses nod in sporific validation.

And speaking of spores, there was an interesting thing on BBC radio the other day about a guy who grows fungal furniture. Here's an article on what has to be the same guy. The furniture is... well, about what I'd expect, i guess.

I wonder if Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey, editors of the very cool Fungi anthology have heard of it. . .

A chance to watch "Alias Ruby Blade"

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:00:04 GMT

A while ago I blogged about the movie Alias Ruby Blade, about the clandestine activity of Kirsty Sword Gusmão in aid of the Timorese resistance during Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. The film is at the Tribeca film festival right now, and you can watch it for free! I'm watching as I type. (Well, I've paused it to type this, actually. But the first five minutes are looking excellent.)

To watch it, you have to create a Tribeca account. If you click on this link for the film, it will tell you you need to set up an account, and it'll give you the screens to do it. (And then you can look at other films too.) Then just go back to the original screen, and you're all set.

I'll share my impressions after I've finished the film.

(Here's a review: "Alias Ruby Blade: Tribeca Review")

It's difficult, but it's real

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 17:26:59 GMT

That's a paraphrase from a line in from Taylor Swift's song "Love Story." (Yes! Taylor Swift. True fact: first time I heard the song, I listened with bated breath because I didn't know how it was going to end. I cheered when it ended up with a happy ending. The actual line is, "This love is difficult, but it's real.")

Difficult, but real. I like real, and it makes me even like difficulty. Real is so present, so tangible, so experiential. I'm not talking about gritty-grotty depressing "realist fiction" as opposed to fantasy. I'm not talking about tough news events as opposed to fiction. I mean, on a more fundamental level: the business of drawing breath, feeling things (both with your hands and your heart), living day to day: it's difficult but it's real.

Here are some real, and not particularly difficult, things from this morning.

I ran my hand along some staghorn sumac. It was as velvety-feeling as it looks (you can see a picture--not mine--if you click the link). I'd like it if actual stags would come up to me, when their antlers are all velveted like that, and let me feel those, for comparison. Heh, that sounds a bit sexy, but I mean it only to be sense-y.

I waded across a stream. The cold of it reached through my rubber boots (but not the wetness: yay), and I really liked the pressure of it, squeezing my feet and ankles. And then this morning there was this brief poem from Sherry Chandler ("bluegrasspoet"):

I remember wading the ankle-deep branch, rocks would tip under my feet and crawdaddies would backpedal, leaving a murky trail of silt.

Same same, but different :-)

Also this morning, there was a tree with a skirt of bright green moss and a girdle of pink surveyor's tape. Around it were lots of stumps. Either that tape marks the tree as doomed, or saved. It's alive right now, in any case.

And last, I took some raindrops off some rosa multiflora thorns with my tongue. They tasted very cold and fresh, and doing it gave me a great sense-y *and* sexy thrill, because: thorns.

Submissions to Not One of Us

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:41:30 GMT

Here I'm rebroadcasting sovay's repost of lesser_celery, the editor of Not One of Us. It really is an excellent magazine.

This is just to signal-boost lesser_celery's recent post: Not One of Us aten't dead, it just had a website glitch for a week. Please re-send all submissions or queries from April 9th through 16th. And then send work no matter what, because they are an excellent magazine.

An assortment of thoughts and pictures

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:11:28 GMT

Daffodils are out. I sent this photo to a friend who is studying for her finals.

Then this morning, for some reason, the sign below struck me as hilarious. Context is everything, I guess, but even within the context of this town, to see the sign, you have to be coming from one of the few sections of town that are actually more "thickly settled" than the portion of town you're about to enter. LOL. What the sign really means to say is, "Caution, Weeping Willows"

Figure of speech or amusement park ride?

This morning, someone on NPR mentioned the Central African Republic's "slide into a spiral of chaos." "Hmmm, sounds fun, actually," said wakanomori. And that got me thinking. Spiral of Chaos --a fun amusement park ride that would make me throw up! And how about the Vicious Cycle? Not to mention the Slippery Slope

Seriously, I want to see an amusement park with all those rides. What others should be there?

A book!

rachelmanija has published A Cup of Smoke, a book of poems and short stories (with a very pretty cover... just saying). I loved her memoir (All the Fishes Come Home to Roost), and I loved her Rhysling-winning poem "Nine Views of the Oracle" (which is in the collection), and I enjoyed beta reading the novel she co-wrote with Sherwood Smith (Stranger, due out in 2014), so I have every expectation of very much enjoying this collection.

(Smashwords Link and Amazon link)

And there were other things, but they've scattered now, and it's time to make dinner, so I'll come back when I remember them.

ETA: Oh wait, I remembered. A friend of mine sent me this poem, which is perfect for "poem in your pocket" day:

Bat's Ultrasound
by Les Murray

Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wing
with fleas, in rock-cleft or building
radar bats are darkness in miniature,
their whole face one tufty crinkled ear
with weak eyes, fine teeth bared to sing.

Few are vampires. None flit through the mirror.
Where they flutter at evening's a queer
tonal hunting zone above highest C.
Insect prey at the peak of our hearing
drone re to their detailing tee:

ah, eyrie-ire; aero hour, eh?
O'er our ur-area (our era aye
ere your raw row) we air our array
err, yaw, row wry—aura our orrery,
our eerie ü our ray, our arrow.

A rare ear, our aery Yahweh.

Do you have a story for this badger?

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:32:04 GMT

Can you tell me a brief story about this badger?