A Pillow Book from the Land of Artichokes

MAKURA NO SOSHI: A WOMAN WHO LOVES INSECTS

Friday, September 24, 2004

BIG YELLOW TAXI (HOMAGE AND VARIATION)

Morning light sifts through the window later, and more tentatively, now--taking more time to pool into the hot buttery squares on the floor that the cats love to dip and roll themselves in, as if they were succulent pieces of lobster. Night comes shuttering down more quickly. The band of light that wraps around each day like a wide bright ribbon seems to be shrinking--like a favorite shirt that shrinks in the dryer, leaving the day's wrists and hips uncovered.

There's a red-headed woodpecker running up and down one of the wooden columns on my front porch. It stops to periodically tap on the column--bright head a thrumming blur, like the bobbin on a sewing machine. The cats come to the windows, nudge the curtains aside with their heads, and stare.

At night, lacy insects with bodies the color of green apples quiver around the windows--a shiver of filigree, drawn to the light inside.

Things quicken. The geraniums and dahlias burn their colors into the air more brightly, birds hurry in harried, twittering conferences, and I think reckless thoughts. Things quicken.

Why is it that I love the light the most only as it's leaving?

Posted by Artichoke Heart | 10:36 AM |

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

BLOG POST ABOUT NOTHING IN PARTICULAR

I find that I frequently feel as if I should be blogging about something, when in fact I'm thinking that perhaps it's really all right for me to blog about nothing in particular. And that blogging about nothing in particular is, perhaps, a way of pushing through the times when I'm not blogging about a particular something. And it's not even that I don't have something to blog about . . . in fact I have a few rather large somethings that I'm interested in blogging about, but the large-ness of their something-ness is such that I feel as if I need more time to explore the topic. So perhaps it's a matter of genre. The large somethings are little essays of sorts?

But I think it's okay for a blog post to be about nothing in particular. Very Seinfeld-esque.

And short. Not that my blog posts are typically tomes or anything, but I'm officially giving myself permission to simply crack open a blog window and just toss off short little nothing-in-particulars. (Which, I suppose, may strike you as pretty much what I've been doing all along, but I assure you, there's a difference!)

I've been busy with classes and writing. It's been hectic, but good.

As I write this post, I'm attempting to push through the deadly 1950's B-Movie Alien Swamp Fog typical of my first few waking hours. Steady application of caffeine is key at this juncture. My goal is to be able to at least fake some semblance of being a sentient being within the next 45 minutes, at which point I'll have to put on my Professor Hat and go into school. Wednesdays are usually my sacrosanct writing day, but things are neither sacro nor sanct today.

So if my sacrosanct writing day has been taken over by meetings and administrative work, is it safe to suggest that my Wednesday has been profanicursed?

Posted by Artichoke Heart | 8:19 AM |

Links

Home
Archives
E-mail Artichoke Heart
About
Pictures

Books by Artichoke Heart

Beyond Heart Mountain
Year of the Snake

Poems by Artichoke Heart

Pearls
Hope
Songs for a Rainy Season
Toothpick Warriors
Chrysanthemums
Snake Wife
Happy Hour
Girl With A Bowl On Her Head

Pillow Book Courtiers Of The
East Wing

Pillow Book Courtiers Of The
West Wing

Acknowledgments and Buttons