Dance: The Narnia Trail, Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

March 18, 2016 at 9:56 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
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This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is DANCE.

And it just so happens that self was having a conversation with a member of her writer’s group, about Diary of a Wimpy Kid and other childhood classics, which led her to remember:

Rostrevor, July 2015.

She was a guest of Csilla Toldy, a poet she met in Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig. On her first day in Rostrevor, Csilla took self walking along The Narnia Trail, which led through a magical wood. At intervals along the trail were these strange twig creatures, each caught in the middle of doing a silent dance:

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Aren’t they fabulous?

C. S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He would have loved this trail.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Still Dexter Filkins: 3 a.m. 9/12

March 18, 2016 at 4:17 pm (Books, Recommended)
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I walked up into One Liberty Plaza again and into Brooks Brothers and toward the back, by the fitting rooms. It was 3 a.m. I lay down in a corner on the carpeted floor and tried to sleep but couldn’t, it was too cold. I had run out of my house in a gallop that morning and hadn’t brought a jacket. I got up, looked into one of the racks and pulled out a gray cable-knit sweater, size XL.

— The Forever War, pp. 46 – 47

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Dexter Filkins Again, 9/11: Several Hours After

March 18, 2016 at 3:28 pm (Books, Recommended)
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  • Above me stood one of the airplane landing struts, maybe thirty feet high, snapped off and lying at an angle in the street, looking like the collapsed wing of some enormous bird. The tire was still filled with air.

After several hours, Filkins manages to get right up to the site. He engages a fireman in conversation. Many of these first responders would be dead of cancer, years later, but right then, no one knows. This fireman is quite willing to talk to Filkins.

  • They couldn’t get in there themselves, the fireman said, so they were sending dogs in, and the dogs had cameras attached. In case there was someone still alive in there. “We’re seeing a lot of spinal cords,” he said.

And all self wants to ask is: Why spinal cords?

Stay tuned.

 

 

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AWP Los Angeles Coming Up

March 18, 2016 at 3:21 pm (Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
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Self is thinking again of how she loves to wander the AWP Book Fair.

Last year, when she was walking around the one in Minneapolis, it struck her that she had stories in three different journals that launched that spring. It was an amazing realization. What that means is: a lot of hard writing and determination. Because, self has no agent. No publicist, either. Just this blog (and she doesn’t really consider this a PR thing. Not at all)

Here’s a story she had in The Chattahoochee Review, several years ago (She always looks up the journals that have published her):

Dumpster

Edgar wanted me to help him get rid of a hand. When he showed it to me, I had a hard time believing it was real. It was stiff and bloodless. The upraised palm had the tattoo of a pentagon in what must have once been dark blue ink. I thought the fingers might belong to a woman.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

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Dexter Filkins, 9/11

March 18, 2016 at 3:04 pm (Books, Recommended)
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“The police weren’t letting anyone onto the ferries that day; they were only taking people off of Manhattan, not into it . . .  The men and women were drawn and silent, and remarkably well dressed, like they were coming from some formal disaster. Nobody was looking back over their shoulders, even though . . . there was much to see. The whole sky.”

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Quote of the Day: Nothing To Do With St. Patrick

March 18, 2016 at 4:42 am (Books, Recommended)
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From The Forever War, the book self is currently reading, Dexter Filkins’ oh-so-riveting account of the war in Afghanistan:

  • By the summer of 2000, Ariana Afghan Airlines was down to two planes: a decrepit Boeing 727 and a Soviet-made Antonov 2004, which because of international sanctions, were flying without the benefit of spare parts.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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