We ate well and
cheaply and drank
well and cheaply
and slept well and
warm together and
loved each other
Motto For Life
May 26, 2019 at 3:13 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Sayings, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: English writers, environment, nonfiction, Prague, reading lists
Beginning a new book deserves some kind of pause, a marker.
The new book would have been Diane Setterfield’s Once Upon a River if she had managed to snag a copy in Prague (Self has always got to be reading something; she feels bereft if she lets a day go by without having a book she can say she is “currently reading”).
Instead, she’s reading Tim Dee’s Landfill: Notes on Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene. So far, she’s only on p. 1 but she keeps getting distracted (last afternoon tea with Irene! A walk to the Spanish Synagogue for a concert).
She also likes the drawings that start each new chapter. The bookmark she’s using is a quote she copied from a restaurant in Fowey (Dear Fowey: What a special thing it is that she was able to attend this year’s Festival of Art and Literature!). It’s by, of all people, Ernest Hemingway, who she hasn’t read in AGES. But it is written like a prose poem. Don’t dear blog readers agree?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Thought for Tax Sunday, April 2019
April 14, 2019 at 4:16 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Filipino Writers, Sayings, Sundays, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: happiness, inspiration, seasons, travel
Self travels the world.
And does her best to be happy.
That is all.
The Laughter of My Father, by Carlos Bulosan
March 28, 2019 at 6:05 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Sayings)
Tags: Carlos Bulosan, favorites, memories, novel, The Philippines, wisdom
One of our foremost Filipino writers was a migrant worker who died at 40 of tuberculosis, in a Seattle boarding house.
His name was Carlos Bulosan, and The Laughter of My Father was one of Dear Departed Dad’s favorite books (Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino found this copy for me, previously used naturally!)
Reading it now, self can understand why. She’s reading the Bantam edition, published August 1946.
p. 2:
Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go into the living room and stand in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers and making faces at himself; then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Poetry Sunday: AINE MacAODHA
October 28, 2018 at 5:48 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, plans, Recommended, Sayings, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, discoveries, Northern Ireland, poetry, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Self really likes that the cottage is full of poetry books. Every time she comes, she discovers someone new.
She found a book called Landscape of Self (Belfast: Lapwing Publications, 2015) by Aine MacAodha.
Here’s the first half of a poem called
To My Children When I’m Gone
Some mountains are higher than others
Winter can cause frost bite.
Without a bit of darkness
We may not appreciate the light afterwards.
Remember the good in the world
The take your breath smiles
The smile from a stranger in a strange place
The beauty in a daisy chain
The elegance in a buttercup
The wonder of a webbing spider
The warmth of a heart
When another’s fiery arrow hits it
Love and goodness costs nothing
Hatred causes illness
Treat the nature around you with respect
Treat your spirit with kindness others too
Manners are easily carried.
Aine MacAodha kindly agreed to an interview, so WATCH THIS SPACE.
Words: Rosario Ferré
July 20, 2018 at 6:09 pm (Artists and Writers, Flowers, Links, Sayings, Surprises, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: essay, Fridays, inspiration, Rosario Ferré, wisdom, writing process
I write because I am poorly adjusted to reality; because the deep disillusionment within me has given rise to a need to re-create life, to replace it with a more compassionate, tolerable reality. I carry within me a utopian person, a utopian world.
— from the essay The Writer’s Kitchen, Feminist Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 1986), translated from the Spanish by Diana L. Velez
A minute ago, self decided to google Ferré and learned she had passed away, 18 February 2016. She was 77.
Noooooooo!
The View Across the Street From the Gallery Bookshop, Main Street, Mendocino, 21 April 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog writers. Stay tuned.
