Of Books and Blooms

not-quite Journaling, 62

My autumns are wild
magic, uncanny prose
and storms,
storms of dark poetry.

11/21/2023: Chilly fall(ing) months are for delighting in hot coffee and creepy bits by some of my favorite word weavers--Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Poppy Z. Brite… And I just picked up “Monstrosity”, a short story collection by Laura Diaz de Arce. I was seduced by the cover… 😏📚

 

11/28/2023: One of my radiation therapists traveled to the Dominican Republic (the island of my birth) and brought me back an avocado the size of my head. Fine, I might be exaggerating--I have an enormous skull--still, the thing was huge. I planted the seed. And I’ve been harvesting (and eating) the leaves--which happen to be yummy (and grow as ginormous as the seed that sprouted them).  Click HERE for photos of the growing process.

 

12/1/2023: If the sight of my cactus’s growing erections didn’t make you chuckle or giggle a bit, then your sense of humor is a lot more grownup than mine--which doesn’t say much, so stop gloating--my sense of humor has been stuck at the hormonal teenage phase for a few decades.

 

When the universe told my kabocha squash soup that she could be whatever she wanted, she bloomed nuttily. 🤭

 Poets and Storytellers United--Friday Writings #106: Seasonal Readings.

Luna Dwelling Races Might Get Better Odds in Mercury

I close the book while chanting the last few words aloud (spoilers!) for me and for the ghosts of reading past: “races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” I let the words leap back and forth from page to tongue to brain, and I wonder if the pronouncement is only true for earthly fictions; or, if maybe, plots about Luna dwelling races get better odds in Mercury.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a time machine.

When I was thirteen, this book (my favorite of all books) took me to prose full of floating fishes and blind leeches (that mistook a wrinkled back for a wall). On this day, decades after fishes and leeches, we went on our umptieth trip and ended up on a page where “Human beings are not born once and for all... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” No wonder humanity is always screaming and pushing, pushing, pushing… for better (one hopes).

- as suggested in the piece, the quotations are bits from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book that always transports me to interesting pages.

- for Poets and Storytellers United (Weekly Scribblings #30: Writing as a Metaphor for Living). Write new poetry or prose which includes 3 or more of the following words: allusion, conflict, edit, fiction, grammar, mood, pace, plot, poetry, prose, punctuation, rhythm, and stanza. I went with fiction, plot, and prose.

 the beginning of a reading journal project (which did not quite survive *cough*)

“You are what you read”

I was walking towards the pharmacy, deliciously lost (for the umptieth time) in John Lee’s more-than-awesome reading of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, when I overheard someone say, “You are what you read”. And since my brain’s sense of outrage often shares a direct connection to my tongue and teeth, I totally blurted out, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard today.”

I’m sure the person didn’t hear me. Seriously. The nasty stay-out-of-my business look that she gave me must’ve been provoked by the fact that I had turned around much too quickly, and my sudden stop forced a glare out of her startled eyes.

I’ve been thinking about that. No, not about her eyes. I’ve been thinking about her words. Now I think they might be the stupidest (and most dangerous) thing I’ve heard this year. Can you imagine a world where those words were true? Readers of Stephen King would be murderous addicts, readers of Edgar Allan Poe would be murderous psychopaths, readers of Jeff Lindsay would be… just murderous.

But I’m choosing to believe that the woman wasn’t being literal. She was most likely just trying to get the teenage boy walking with her to read more books. Right? Well, I really hope so. Because the idea of a world where someone truly believes people become all the books they read is both scary and saddening.

What do you think she meant? How do you feel about it? And do tell me what you are reading… I’m certain that the title(s) won’t tell me who you are.

a Sophie Gilmore illustration, in A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader

for Poets and Storytellers United (Writers’ Pantry #1: Home Is People)