zirconium: Photo of cat snoozing on motorcycle on a sunny day in Jersualem's Old City. (cat on moto)
Today's mailman asked about the dog, having not seen her for a while. He said she was one of the few who didn't bark at him. I might be snuffling as I type. Read more... )
Finally: I started this entry some hours ago. Night has fallen, so let there be light.

first night
zirconium: picrew of me in sports bra and flowery crop pants (Russian tins of fish)
[The subject line is from Barbara Jordan's "Bruegel's Crows," in Channel.]

Some days, things mushroom like mad:

IMG_9924

They might even get decidedly warped:

IMG_9951

It's okay. There will be other days full of light...

NC Arboretum

and sweetness:

NC Arboretum
zirconium: picrew of me in sports bra and flowery crop pants (doll with bike)
[subject line from Matthew Arnold's Lines Written in Kensington Gardens, which correspond to a UU hymn set to a Thomas Tallis canon that I often play when in need of solace]

Asheville Art Museum mural
(The Writing on the Pharaoh's Wall (detail), Gabriel Shaffer, Asheville Art Museum)

Hello, new month
of maybes, maybeings,
and wish-I-mays now here --
behold how bedecked
you already are
with swirls of stitchery

already a diary
of crossouts and detours
and acronymed prayers
and half-rehearsed words
and words for rehearsals.

To tally today:
how many angels
in toeshoes on
the sparkling tips
of pinwheel spokes?

Any minute now
the rules that you thought
were to keep you in line

will vault
with a vehemence
over the handlebars.

O brace yourself
for the many-tongued wind

its whipsharp accents
its cloudblurred vowels

you will grapple for years
with what it has to say to you.

~pld
zirconium: me @Niki de St Phalle's Firebird (firebird)
...of a sort. William Ackland was a son of Adelicia Acklen, who led quite a life in Nashville some 150-ish years ago.

Ackland Art Museum

There are three Picassos on display in one of the galleries, but my favorite painting in the collection is Rose Piper's Slow Down Freight Train:

Ackland Art Museum

On the opposite wall, there's a recently restored Rousseau painting of Paris. That captured my attention as well.
zirconium: me @Niki de St Phalle's Firebird (firebird)
2015:
firmly rooted to the floor
yet floating

in Sharon Louden's COMMUNITY
(Playing within a thicket of mirrors at the Asheville Art Museum. Album here.)
zirconium: of blue bicycle in front of Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston (blue bicycle rear)
...everyone has some. But now, looking out there,
she felt easy, at home in the world -- maybe like
a casual snowflake. And some people loved her.
She would remember that. And remember this place.

As you will, wherever you go after this day,
just a stop by the road, and a glimpse of someone's life,
and your own, too, how you can look out any time,
just being a part of things, getting used to being a person,
taking it easy, you know.

-- William Stafford, "Emily, This Place, and You," in The Way It Is


Snapshots of the audience at a Charanga Carolina concert one year ago:
Read more... ) Charanga Carolina concert
zirconium: photo of Greek style coffee, Larnaca, October 2011 (coffee in Cyprus)
Earlier this afternoon, my dog continued ripping the guts out of her old Santa toy and then started dry heaving.

My state of mind isn't quite that bad, but things are a bit crunchety here wrt the time-space continuum, which (as many of you know) I have an ongoing lovers' quarrel with at the best of times. So sharing my notes and snapshots of the archives, bookstores, chapels, graveyards, and restaurants I visited on my way back from Miami (via Jacksonville, Charleston, and various cities in North Carolina) will have to wait until the new year.

As it happens, I'm booked through January work-wise, so it'll be nice to go through the sheaves during breaks from citation-herding. Plus many of you are still in the thick of your own elfish/elven plots...

But speaking of elven plots -- there is no escape! [click the images to enlarge]

Karpeles Manuscript Museum, Charleston There is no escape from Tolkien

I went to the Karpeles Museum in Charleston to look at the Doyle, Sayers, and Fleming manuscripts they had on display there. I'll write more about that later, but the salient point is that the building used to be a Methodist church in a rather run-down part of the city, and the stalls in the women's bathroom are papered accordingly, with flocks of angels ... and, inside one door, a very detailed family tree lifted from LOTR. LOL.

Another delight was the Stowe Garden's orchid "tree":

Me and the orchid tree orchid tree closeup

(16 ft. tall. 300 orchids. An aside to Nashvillians: my Cheekwood membership covered admission to the garden and three museums, and would've covered the NC Arboretum if I'd had time for it.)

And here's me with an old pal on the Green in downtown Charlotte:

me w/a fishy friend

Wishing you all a smooth end to the year (or a crackletastic one, if you're into fireworks and other happy kabooms), and a happy and healthy 2013 ahead.
zirconium: picrew of me in sports bra and flowery crop pants (Default)
Doll & Miniature Museum of High Point
[woman lighting candles - Israeli doll at the Doll & Miniature Museum of High Point]



Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

schooling

Sep. 9th, 2012 03:20 pm
zirconium: picrew of me in sports bra and flowery crop pants (Default)
Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune doll, at the Doll & Miniature Museum of High Point, NC


Writing news: 7x20 recently published "Gray Areas".

Weekend reading: an interview of Bel Kaufman (author of Up the Down Staircase) by Robert Sullivan, and parts of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life. Among other things, I hadn't known she was such a Francophile. And I loved this glimpse of her Columbia j-school training:


[John] Hohenberg would run students through harrowing "speed drills"--demanding that they crank out stories in just a few minutes. And he urged everyone to keep $100 set aside. It was basically a Fuck You account--so that if an editor ever demanded that you do a story you hated, you would have at least $100 to help you walk away from the job.

[Minutaglio, Bill; Smith, W. Michael (2009-10-15). Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life (Kindle Locations 1611-1614). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.]
zirconium: Photo of cat snoozing on motorcycle on a sunny day in Jersualem's Old City. (cat on moto)
I went to a Charanga Carolina concert yesterday, in the American Tobacco District. It was a good time, in part because it was fun to watch terrific dancers getting their salsa and merengue on:

Jazz on the Lawn

Jazz on the Lawn

And then, at the Durham Bulls game, the grounds crew showed some moves as well:

Durham Bulls game Durham Bulls game

:-)
zirconium: Photo of cat snoozing on motorcycle on a sunny day in Jersualem's Old City. (cat on moto)
umbrellas roosting outside the Hen House

The summer day
smudged with humidity --
eyeshadow-colored ciphers
crowding the page in my sketchbook.

(The Hen House is a pottery and condiment shop in Highlands, NC.)

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zirconium: picrew of me in sports bra and flowery crop pants (Default)
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