Writing Prompt

Christian Bale's dialect coach from Newsies meets Christian Bale's dialect coaches from every other New York movie he's done. In a dark alley or not.

What happens then?

Dear Skoticus: Yoink.

Some things that have been giving me chills lately. They're all over the place, so you can skip them if you'd like. But it's spring! And things are growing! And tomorrow or Saturday or next week some time it will be warm enough for t-shirts! And people are mostly wonderful!



This one: the idea is great. The whole thing is pretty adorable too, but I've been thinking a lot about validation lately.



And this one.

Happy Thursday!

Note

I do like my hair. I kind of love it in fact. Easy and cute and just edgy enough that I can anywhere I'd like and not get guff. (Like E's show the other night. Complete confidence.) Because you are so considerate and are worried. :)

"Spring" Break

Ok, so there was the blizzard. Otherwise my break so far has been fantastic. A rundown.

1. Mary and Martha. Alea and I have been kicking around the idea of starting a catering company. The first logical step: dinner party "tastings." We spent all of Friday prepping and cleaning for the thing and it was a huge success--I think this is safe to say--despite my very modestly outfitted kitchen and, like, the cats. Hugest successes: Neufchatel+pesto+strawberry won tons. (Trust us.) Alea's cardamom cream puffs with orange filling. Amazing. I ate like 20. And it was lovely to have friends over and I forgot how much I love entertaining. Or the feeding part of it at least. I left the rest of the partiers to chat while I buried myself in the kitchen. Large groups, even of people that I love, make me real nervous some times. Still. Weird.



Here are mini meatloafs with mashed potato toppers. We're so clever.

2. The first official act of spring break came at 6:30 am on Saturday when my body said "wake up we're late!" And I said "nope, spring break," curled up in my flannel sheets, and went to bed for another 3 hours." So gorgeous.

3. Movies watched: Transformers, Kung Fu Panda, half of Dr. Strangelove.

4. I watched two of these movies with this lovely darling sister of mine who lives in Idaho. Her house is adorable, her (BYU-I) campus is also adorable (mini-sized) and she's really one of the kindest, most considerate girls I know. (I'm sorry your whole house smells like onions.)


(She's the one with hair.)

5. The drive to and from. I love driving. I love wide open places (Dixie Chicks be damned) and having to sit quiet and driving through this:



(the corner of Rexburg that is all mowed fields right now) and the mist and mountains of Southern Idaho/Northern Utah when Estelle (the new Ipod) knows exactly what to play. (i.e. DeBussy next to Cabas next to The Who. Perfect.)

6. Today, in the midst of finishing many busy adult things (taxes! oil change! thank you notes! laundry!) I was driving. And it was 10 am and I love being on the road mid-morning. Totally subversive.

7. I have 4 days left. So. Deeply. In. Love.

I am not making a statement.

(Disaster averted. But only just.)

Haircut Fail

So, my new haircut was supposed to look like this:


It does not.



Granted, I'm not so waifish and adorable as our subject here, but I've had short hair before. It's worked. I even brought in the picture.


On the up side, I'm on Spring Break, so I don't have to face a classroom of students for another week--maybe it will somehow miraculously grow and fix itself?

For now, however, I'm locked in my room watching Sinead O'Connor videos and looking at chocolate-based recipes online and trying to make myself feel better.

Making the rounds

Sunset

Listen.

My great happiness
is the sound your voice makes
calling to me even in despair; my sorrow
that I cannot answer you
in speech you accept as mine.

You have no faith in your own language.
So you invest
authority in signs
you cannot read with any accuracy.

And yet your voice reaches me always.
And I answer constantly,
my anger passing
as winter passes. My tenderness
should be apparent to you
in the breeze of summer evening
and in the words that become
your own response.

--Louise Gluck


(It helps to know that God is speaking. I may have cried a little.)

April is National Poetry Month! Because it is the cruelest, mayhap?

I'm posting another poem, and I don't feel bad about it. This is one of my favorites from Best American Poetry a couple of years ago.

It features one very flagrant four-letter word (which I actually think works beautifully with the poem, so am only apologetic insofar as some of my readers' sensibilities may be shocked). You've been warned. :)

RHETORICAL FIGURES

Tom Christopher

When a sentence is composed of two independent
clauses, the second being weaker than the first,
it is called One-Legged Man Standing. If it
purposefully obscures meaning, it's called Ring
Dropped in Muddy Creek, or if elegant composed,
Wasp Fucking Orchid. There are words behind words,
and half the time our thoughts spraying out like water
from a hose, half the time banging inside ou rheads
like a wren in a house. When a sentence ends
unexpectedly because someone has punched
the speaker in the face, it's Avalanche Sudden.
When instead the speaker is stopped with sloppy
kisses, it's Dripping Cloud. Not to be confused
with Dripping Cone, when someone overturns
the table, or Bird Pecking the Mountain, when
the sentence goes on for an hour and a half and ends
in a shaking death. If the speaker lies in the driveway
so drunk on cheap wine that one listening cannot
get close to the meaning and thus runs away again,
claiming, "For the last time," it's Pregnant Dog
Cooked in Sun. If the speaker sells everything for
an old convertible and drives out into the desert
with untintelligible shouting to the pissed-off stars:
Aching Stones Laughing. Forced incongruent words
are Fishes on Fire, and are beautiful but bring us
no closer to the Truth or the Cosmos or the All,
so either we tour Europe looking for the bodies
of saints or drink all night playing Johnny Cash LPs.
Everything we have said, we have said all our lives.
Same for what we haven't said. Learning the terms
doesn't help, we're still filled over the rim with longing.
Already in the poem there is Clamshell Moon, Barn
House Burning, Cow Lowing the Field, One Hundred
Village Bells, Moth Flurry. Somewhere above, a Torn
Shirt, a Peasant Girl Crying, a Baby Dropped Through
Smoke to Voices Shouting. Not much further a Cat
in Heat, a Wailing Street, and in the end Tree Frogs
Blazing Reeds with Sound.

fron Haydens Ferry Review