To be turned into links....

A Book
I recently (re)read:
Mirabilis by Susann Cokal

A Movie
I recently watched:
Being Human (with Robin Williams)

For now, I have to run off to a beer tasting at The Curious Grape, in Shirlington Virginia.

link happy

here's another link to a band that I got introduced to when I attended a Mary Prankster show in Virginia last autumn:

The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

MARY

PRANKSTER

hah!!

yes, sometimes bothering to look up the directions helps.

This girl is retiring...

thats a link, folks.

lets try it again...


and in case it still didn't take, the link is supposed to be www.maryprankster.com

I have hope, I have faith, but will the link thingy really work this time??

Mary Prankster is retiring! And if that link won't work, then what kind of world do we live in???

Tarot

So, currently indulging in a new obsession (or maybe I should say "re-newed") these are the decks I really would like to own:

Celestial Tarot (I loooove the art work and the astrological references)
Tarot of the White Cats ( I have a white cat and I think these look adorable. Plus, its a nice way to learn 6 languages!)
Motherpeace Tarot (I just get a nice feeling about this one)

and maybe also

The Rider-Waite Tarot (this was the first kind of tarot I ever used...an old pack of my mom's from the early 70s)
The Tarot of Art Noveau (sexy and Italian! but several other languages are on this deck too)
Art Noveau Tarot (love the colors)

I also quite like the looks of:
Gendron Tarot,
Chinese Tarot,
Old English Tarot ,
Tapestry Tarot,
and Legend: The Arthurian Tarot.

Its nice to read something with pictures for a change.

(By the way, the book Ahab's Wife has illustrations in it! I always thought that more books for adults should be illustrated.)

tarot and melba 'snacks'

i thought they were called 'toast'

once upon a time...

today I carefully scrutizinized (sorry I'm under the influence of cheap yet drinkable wine) 'the medieval scapini tarot"

by the way it is not medieval. one card depicts rasputin!!'

nevertheless...a fun time.

then I went out and bought "the pocket goddess tarot" by kris waldherr

"I wish they made us learn about tarot in school" I said, after finding websites such as www.tarotforum.net and www.learntarot.com. there are some interesting decks out there. "tarot of the white cats" (I have a white cat.) "the triple goddess tarot" "power of flowers tarot" "inner child cards"

"oh come on you know tarot has to be an out of school thing"

"thats not true! I could see you doing tarot, llike the inner child one, with kids in art class"

blarghy blar blar...

anyways my friend said "I could see you teaching a class about tarot"

"yeah....but then you never know...you could get some girl in your class whose mother is a psychic and knows more about it than you do."

"you're really out there you know that? but its good."

......

"i mean, you are! you're obsessed!"

(this was a convivial and funny exchange)

mineral spa...

is what I said to someone shoving a dirty laundry bag full of "not filthy" laundry behind my back

"how could you be more comfortable now?"

and a pillow at my side

"I remember this from my mother and my grandmother...pillows all the time...theres a female sense....in in in...um...a a a... well...I don't think its wrong to talk about one's family in conjunction with one's mind...I think freud fucked that up...to be honest...but how...I don't know..."

sound of a lighter...cigarette lighting....

patting adjusting

anticipation of typewriter keys clacking

If you really like a book...

then never, never go online and look up the reading group questions.

especially when its a long book and you are only in the beginning stages.

because, for sure, one of the questions will give away vital information about the story

and then, you will mutter grouchily, to your monitor, "thanks for ruining it!"

BLAH.

another interesting not a link

has now been turned into a link!

http://www.williambowles.info/poems/arlette/cornered.html
Cornered
by A. Lurie

compliment

fr the "The Baroness" in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS on the Sept. 17 entry on "Conchology" (http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/) is very interesting. That is not a link. I don't know how to make my links work.

The new book I'm reading is appropriate to the new place. I LOVE Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund. I also very much enjoyed her readings and "workshop" at the Binghamton University Writing by Degrees conference. I had a brief conversation with her, as she signed my books (I also bought Four Spirits) about the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She likes The Long Winter the best. I can't really decide which one I like the best...I think that the first one I read was Little House on the Prairie, and I know I must've read The Long Winter either as the second or third book. (I read them all out of order). I can remember being in third grade and I had just moved to Renton, Washington, from Latham, New York, and I was the only kid in my class who liked those books.

I got teased a little bit by a new friend I made at my school, Campbell Hill Elementary, which was a school that had not one, not two, but THREE recesses. She was called Cheryl, she was skinny with a square jaw with a large mole, and long blond hair, and her family was on welfare and used food stamps. I think that she and I were two white girls who hung out with a larger group of mostly black girls who played on the bars every recess. Not that I think I noticed it back then, so much, but just in my memory as an older person, I notice it now. I learned to
skin the cat, and to do "the pencil" and other things which I don't remember the names of, but I could describe what I did. I don't remember which one "skin the cat" was. "The pencil" was when you made your whole body as straight as a board and flipped over the bar backwards. "Cherry Bombs" were when you hung upside down and, no hands, swung around on your knees and flipped off a high bar and landed on your feet. I only did that one time, on a playground, when my mother's boyfriend was close by and spotting me.

Also, at Campbell Hill, I learned to jump double dutch and play tetherball. I think that the first time I ever saw the older girls jumping double dutch was on St. Patrick's Day, maybe. "I am Irish!" I remember a dark skinned girl saying, with a tone of irony, or self-mocking, the one who was jumping. I secretly decided that I wanted to learn how to "jump Irish."

I almost think I love this book as much as I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books back then. A light house figures predominantly in the first part of the book, Ahab's Wife. Since Michigan is full of lighthouses, being on the Great Lakes, this seems very fitting...