To 2008.

Skumps.

Where the drifts get deeper.

The wood grew wilder, her mood milder. And winter eventually cracked and bled the color of roses.

Exhaustivo.

Last one. Promise.

Last year's leftovers.

Found this at the back of the icebox. Scraped off the rime, peeled back the layers of foil, took a cautious sniff, and decided that, with a nice holly garnish, it might just be fit for consumption.

He who would pun would pick a pocket.

Not exactly drawn in the spirit of the holidays, but, 'tis the season for shearing. It's more 'greyish lamb' than 'black sheep' and, if there's any allegorical 'lord/queen/church' to 'master/dame/little boy' parrallel to be drawn, I've probably missed the mark. But it's gotten me somewhat shakily back on track and has kept me from any, ahem, ...woolgathering.

Don't spray it.

Been overdosing on Mother Goose. Here's a little known jewel:

Whistle, daughter, whistle,

And you shall have a sheep.

Mother, I cannot whistle,

Neither can I sleep.*

Whistle, daughter, whistle,

And you shall have a cow.

Mother, I cannot whistle,

Neither know I how.

Whistle, daughter, whistle,

And you shall have a man.

Mother, I cannot whistle,

But I'll do the best I can.

This, days after my grandmother waggled her finger at me over lunch and said (around a mouthful of raisin bread), "Hsst! Ladies never whistle!" Perplexing when one's only sources of Old World counsel contradict each other.

*Intentional correllation between sleep and sheep?

Also comes in flavors "Smashing Pumpkin" and "Metallica".

Ever wonder what radiohead would sound like in lullabye format? I confess, after the String Quartet Tribute To and Christopher O'Riley Plays...I did.

Pale green things.

There was really no use in talking him down--a bullfrog has his pride. And there was no one willing to do it if he would--amphibians are notorious gamblers. Once the notion of a bet is lodged in the clay deposits of their brains, they are intransigent. So between the stubborness of a bullfrog with something to prove and a mass of singleminded high rollers, things were not going to budge. They don't call it a bog for nothing.

And so the bets were placed, and slick fingers passed every type of swampland currency: marshpearls and methane baubles, tiny beetles trapped in amber, and lilypads stamped with the image of All-Father Heron. While a thousand wet voices warbled together, and a thousand webbed feet slapped the stone, and each nicitating eyelid fluttered in an ecstasy of trade, while the bullfrog creaked more with every lungful. Until the whole swamp was...fit...to...burst.

Shaking two trees.

Turning your milk to curd and switching your babies out for birchbark. Making your purses lighter and your eyelids leaden. Twisting your evening curls into bramble. The Bad Boys of Unseelie.

Shades of mediocrity.

Knees have turned uniformly black after last week's tumble.
Adding brocoli to the lunchly mac n cheese for a pep turns my pasta greeeen. With envy.
Seeing red on the couches--spilled red wine and bulldog ooze-face. The wine comes off, the ooze does not.
Sworn off the Raw Sienna 552 that's commandeered every brush I own.

Living in just one mind.

Trying my luck, my hand at Peter S. Beagle's "Two Hearts". If you haven't read it, good christ, already. Gorgeous, as ever.

Hard to pluck the Grifiin out from the shadow of the Harpy--she's so dominant a feature in the lunar landscape of the first book. Furthermore, it was difficult to approve the fevered second monster held next to the Harpy's chillier aspects. The Griffin is all heart(s) and stomach, blood and guts, to her cool. Jaws for the flocks, blood for the fields, and a singleminded focus on rapine without romance. No regard for the myth properties that even the Harpy had sense to acknowledge. Denied even a gendered pronoun, it is simply reduced to a weapon.

So I nocked the thing onto a tightly strung moon and used it according to purpose.

What's your poison?

For every princess that needs a good humbling, there are three kings disguised as beggars and twelve castle kitchens full of ready tasks. It's simply a matter of cultural palate. Do your countrymen prefer mintrels to potmakers, or dishes to drapes*? The author is usually obliging enough to salt to taste.

*The English take to hearthtending, the Germans to food preparation, the French--livestock

In memoriam.

Paul Norris (1914-2007).

A gentle mind, a gentle line.

Then again, maybe not.

A cool option.

For those without the wherewithal for NaNo.

No. I'm calling this one The Perfect Swish.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day: Ensorcell.

Pelting.

They all saw her, but of course they let her run. They turned their eyes and scrubbed the kit. Vigorously flavored the stew. Yelled a little too loudly for the pail. In those last seconds while the sun lingered in the streets to set her hair traitorously ablaze, the townspeople that had pitied her and worshipped her mother gave her safe passage into shadow.

And so exhaled their concerns--as much for themselves as for her. For if a king's strength is enough to inflame his people, there was the thought that his madness might be enough to infect them.

W-w-w-want some candy?

Second sight: Always a privilege of that littlest child with the untied shoes and the flyaway hair.

Seven, eight. Stay out late.

There's nothing up there. No life at all. Excepting the mountain, of course, and he's an unreliable sort of ally. And there's no sound--or was none that day. No animal movement, or breath of wind. Only the memory of rain for company. And that too was leaving--offering itself back to the sky in great clouds. Leaving along with any remaining light.

The elements plotted against us.

How shall we punish these two sillies caught out at dusk?
Smothering?
Yes, that will do!

It was a gentle suffocation, to be sure--caught between falling night and the pleasantly perspiring earth. Perfectly poetic. But all I could think of was our stone colored dresses, and our clay-stiff hands and how no one would find us here washed onto and into the rock. The lookouts from the castle had been sharp-eyed once--two generations back. The flocks of sparrows were notoriously careless and cruel--if they even remembered us in the morning, it would be with a snicker. The mountain himself might have noticed--but at the moment was cozying up with a floozy cumulonimbus, settling in for the night, curling us into oblivion with his littlest finger.

Just us and the False Folk. And that thought is enough to make a person cry out in terror. But the closing dark left no room for even a squawk, and our muteness worked against us. So the wordless spaces filled with dark eyes and pale fingers and wide mouths that knew neither song nor rhyme, and we despaired of any rescue.

You really had me goin' there for a minute or two.

Where the edge of the Watch meets the frilled cuff of the Green, there forms a pocket of leaf and iron and the blades of each deter all light. In the deepest shadow of this pocket there is a seat, studded with flowers that nod and are the color of bone. Deeper still there is a thing--shaped loosely into the form of a man. And he does not nod with the flowers. And he does not sit in the seat. He stands, very still, rooted to the ground like a gate of ivy, like a tree of spears.

He only moves within the fringes of sight, and there his face is blurred by fear. Your own.

In the way of all of Those Who Follow, if you look back, you'll have trapped him. If you run without acknowledgement, it will be the reverse.

For the seat is not for him, you see.

Wyld Stallynz.

There was a heated debate over who'd get linking rights to the new radiohead cd. Alex got first dibs thanks to an unlikely blurb on NPR, but in honor of that gorgeous, sleepless sound, I'll offer this.