Showing posts with label Bookery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bookery. Show all posts

Saturday, January 06, 2018

Of Samosas and Vaginas



Because I didn't plan ahead, cocktail samosas ($2.99 frozen; broiled for < 11 mins) and the dregs of a jar of mango chutney will have to do as my offering to the potluck of a new bookclub. Unusually, I seem to be the youngest, so they all love on me anyway.



 I'm looking forward to learning--among other things--how to work with mobility/speech/hearing issues in discussion formats.

The books I suggested were Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and Carmen Machado's Her Body and Other Parties. I started talking about "The Husband Stitch" and couldn't shut up about vaginas for a quite a while :).

_

Friday, January 05, 2018

A Project with Nu

While At was out discussing a podcast project with his erstwhile boss at the high school newspaper (also junior prom date; fire tweeter), Nu and I were at the antique store trying to find a small chair for the corner of the kitchen by the cookbooks' shelves. 


We found it.


Bonus: It seems to be an actual kitchen chair covered in old-timey vinyl. 
Bonus+: It cost $15 and once we'd thrown some (faux) sheepskin on it, was exactly what I'd envisioned.
Bonus ++: It turned out that an awesome student works there (her mother had recently purchased the store)
Bonus +++: Her mother and I were able to embarrass her by talking about all the ways in which she was awesome.




_


Friday, December 15, 2017

Reading

Today is a sabotaged page
brutish
dusty
untrustworthy

on the edges of my brain
the hot animal knees
me, tears me,
sees me in tears

on the undercurrent of loss
in the flooding and
leaking
and catching

I can untie words heavy as air
as ephemeral; I am
a lookout, I am
eaten by the sea


(Note: I'm reading Truddi Chase's When Rabbit Howls and took on a new CASA case yesterday)
_

Thursday, November 09, 2017

Imprint

I am the serotinal student

clasping ideas between breaths

clamping lips around knowledge

i touch a thousand books

i read them all


-

Thursday, June 22, 2017

When a Banker Says...

that they work with families 
on Detroit's Eastside,
they deserve their own 
thank-you copy.

_

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Reader

The sky has never been a wall
it has no borders to speak of
it takes my troubles everywhere

It's true that light is rationed--
but it's abundant by my birthday
(though scant at Christmas)

So I can read a book all day,
All Day. In a cinnamon haze
my sweet, dusty feast

_

Thursday, December 01, 2016

"Arrival Times"

After three different emails with that ambiguous subject heading, K and I finally got together with our respective human offspring to go see Ted Chiang's stupendous, extraordinary, etc., etc. sci-fi short story turned movie Arrival.

It broke me. It's intensely emotional and threw me for a loop (haha). And the small blazes of happiness were because At worked out and shared the reveal way before it happened and my Nu pointed out in the first few minutes that "Come back to me" was used as a refrain. Before she lost interest in the movie and took a tiny snooze.

Speaking of which, it's the first movie in a long, long time that I didn't slip a nap into. I even napped during--please don't tell my kids--The Force Awakens.

Although they've known all about it for years.

_

Thursday, September 08, 2016

The Ladies Finger

Don't know how I first came across it, but I love this blogzine--irreverent, honest, charming, and pathbreaking. It seems to be written and produced in India, but it's a great read for anyone with transnational feminist sensibilities.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Monday, January 11, 2016

Monday, January 04, 2016

Resonance

The in-flight magazine 
reminded me of 
my own little comic

who likes the story of 
Carol Burnett tugging 
on her ear

_

Monday, December 28, 2015

New Book

Nu started writing 
(yet) another novel. 
The title makes me 

giggle 

every

time.




_

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Christmas Quartet

The kids gave me presents that blew me away.

Nu brought home a healthy recipe book (standard school issue parent present) in November when we had no holiday wrapping paper yet. She made this to wrap her present in:

At got me this because my RBG tee was fraying:


Nu gave me an extra present (because she loves me best of all!). It's a chocolate countdown calendar! (And she teamed it with a bag of chocolate she got her dad to buy for her.) 



And Nu kept her creativity going by making the puppies a play yard:


My four kids are simply the best.

_

Friday, December 18, 2015

The Beginning of the Alma Season...






Her family makes these ornaments,
and the awesome student 

(whom I've never had in class)
gave me one.
Aw!

I turned into an embarrassing 
blabbering mess of gratitude.
Gah.


_

Friday, November 06, 2015

Frieda

Sometime between ages 16 and 21…

First I fell in love with Ted Hughes. Then I fell in love with Sylvia Plath. Then I hated Ted Hughes,  while being mildly annoyed with Sylvia Plath. Then I took to raving against Hughes, and if you mentioned Plath's name would break down in angry tears. Then I pretended neither of them existed while reading their poetry secretly.

If that sounds exhausting,* how much more exhausting to be those intense, talented people, constantly under scrutiny and the pressure to perform.

Love Frieda Hughes' interview in which she talks about her parents. And I've come a long way from being that impressionable and emotional teenager who took everything personally, but still needed to hear this:
"To me, as a child, my father seemed to blame himself for almost everything. It was awful. A child does not want to see their parents suffer. Thousands of people all over the world every day split up, thousands of people have affairs. Not everyone kills themselves."
* Yes, it also sounds nerdy, but everyone knows that already.

_

"I'm a weirdo/doofus/nerd/naif" (Part MXVIII)

I realized during my meditation this morning that my energy for contacting so many people yesterday (the "emotional labor" that St...