I started a knitting blog!
Which might be terribly boring for those who don't knit (and even those who do)...
But here is the link
Love,
Willow~
Sunday 15 November 2009
Sunday 8 November 2009
NEW PROJECT
I'm going to either relocate my blog to another website and make a different one, or just transform my current blog into something different! So there!
Saturday 29 November 2008
House of Books
Yesterday I visited my grandparents' house in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. They live in a farmhouse that is over a century old with two barns, an enormous vegetable garden, eight cats, a couple kittens and two very enthusiastic dogs. This was my first real visit in about 10 years.
In this house the walls are made of books, the fire roars in winter, and art covers all spaces where books are not. Floors creak and there are gravestones holding up the water pump in the basement. And not a thing had changed since my last visit when I was thirteen years old--except my grandparents themselves. My grandaddy is frail, in his own world. My grandmamma is concerned with feeding us. Both are intelligent, sharp witted and adore each other. I see my father and his five siblings growing up in this house, curling up in the many corners with blankets to read, painting in the dining room, sewing in the hallway.
Growing up, there was an extremely strong emphasis placed on reading. For every birthday and Christmas we were given books...on my fifth grade birthday I received a first edition copy of Wuthering Heights.
Oddly, I never thought about the connection between my grandparents and my love of reading.
Driving in the car with my aunt later that evening we were discussing a new person in our family. She said to me, "I am concerned about him because he does not read books." I laughed. How strange! A lack of reading is a major character flaw? And yet, I kind of agree. After all, people who don't read don't seem to hold my attention for long.
In this house the walls are made of books, the fire roars in winter, and art covers all spaces where books are not. Floors creak and there are gravestones holding up the water pump in the basement. And not a thing had changed since my last visit when I was thirteen years old--except my grandparents themselves. My grandaddy is frail, in his own world. My grandmamma is concerned with feeding us. Both are intelligent, sharp witted and adore each other. I see my father and his five siblings growing up in this house, curling up in the many corners with blankets to read, painting in the dining room, sewing in the hallway.
Growing up, there was an extremely strong emphasis placed on reading. For every birthday and Christmas we were given books...on my fifth grade birthday I received a first edition copy of Wuthering Heights.
Oddly, I never thought about the connection between my grandparents and my love of reading.
Driving in the car with my aunt later that evening we were discussing a new person in our family. She said to me, "I am concerned about him because he does not read books." I laughed. How strange! A lack of reading is a major character flaw? And yet, I kind of agree. After all, people who don't read don't seem to hold my attention for long.
Friday 7 November 2008
Lost Art
So I have a problem:
William Gass.
William Gass' book The Tests of time has forced me, beyond my expectations, to re-evaluate the way I look at the practice of writing. Indeed, as a former Waldorf child, I do value the art of writing: the sound of fountain pen against paper, the liner under my blank white sheet so that I write straight, the constant smell of white-out, and the feeling of satisfaction after completing an entire dictation without messing up once...and thus I feel bizarre writing my thoughts on a keyboard. I read the beautiful sentences that Gass has composed, and I cannot help but obey his pleas. Where did the personality of our sentences go? Times New Roman eats the flavor of our words, spitting them back at us like pre-chewed food for the masses (His image). Suddenly I am torn--I love my blog and the instant beauty I can achieve with the sameness of the type and I also hate this sameness, the polished and mediocrity of my pre-made template picked from 8 or so others when I signed up.
And what am I to do? Write my thoughts and scan them, somehow, in order to keep my small chunk of cyberspace? Let it go? Or delete everything and pretend Amaranthine never existed (and a part of me loves the irony of that).
I do realize that Gass' book is exactly what he was preaching against in that particular essay. And I do realize that this is the age of internet communication and I am simply doing what others are doing. But I crave subversion! This feels like dead air and broken windows. How can I make my empty house occupied? Or at least haunted...
William Gass.
William Gass' book The Tests of time has forced me, beyond my expectations, to re-evaluate the way I look at the practice of writing. Indeed, as a former Waldorf child, I do value the art of writing: the sound of fountain pen against paper, the liner under my blank white sheet so that I write straight, the constant smell of white-out, and the feeling of satisfaction after completing an entire dictation without messing up once...and thus I feel bizarre writing my thoughts on a keyboard. I read the beautiful sentences that Gass has composed, and I cannot help but obey his pleas. Where did the personality of our sentences go? Times New Roman eats the flavor of our words, spitting them back at us like pre-chewed food for the masses (His image). Suddenly I am torn--I love my blog and the instant beauty I can achieve with the sameness of the type and I also hate this sameness, the polished and mediocrity of my pre-made template picked from 8 or so others when I signed up.
And what am I to do? Write my thoughts and scan them, somehow, in order to keep my small chunk of cyberspace? Let it go? Or delete everything and pretend Amaranthine never existed (and a part of me loves the irony of that).
I do realize that Gass' book is exactly what he was preaching against in that particular essay. And I do realize that this is the age of internet communication and I am simply doing what others are doing. But I crave subversion! This feels like dead air and broken windows. How can I make my empty house occupied? Or at least haunted...
Tuesday 14 October 2008
oh, the oddness
Today, on the night of the Hunter's Moon, I was given my first Blood Orange of the season.
Sunday 21 September 2008
Monday 15 September 2008
Three
Pyre
I wrote this in 2006, revised it in 2007 and again try to give it new life. This piece always comes back to me when I'm in this mood: slightly grumpy, verging on sad but for no discernable reason. I think I'd like to just be alone for awhile, be in the quiet until this headache is gone and then play my cello--which hasn't been touched since August--forget anything associated with work, friends, family, just be dead as far as the outside world is concerned. This morning I woke up at 7:30 despite the fact that I'd gone to bed at 3am...maybe I'm just tired.
Three burning bonfires blowing
smoke up straight, almost invisible,
as we pass by fast on the train.
I search hard for the people
who started those fires.
Look for the bottles of gas,
kerosene, lighter fluid—there is
nothing. Where is Dido, isn’t she
the one who burns on such huge,
quiet, flames? There are no
people, only emptiness. The train
rushes past so many piles of lumber,
dark with age and the wetness that turns
trees almost black, unburnable
in my woodstove. But those three
piles burn and no others. Vandals,
workmen doing their jobs?
There is fire in Brattleboro,
on the outskirts, some nameless,
dirty lumber mill. The silence
inside the train blocks out
the birds, or maybe they have fled,
terrified of the smoke, as I would
be, if I walked along the tracks
searching for bent pennies or stray,
rusty nail spikes to give to my brother.
And I would half-expect
to find Dido among the ruined
wood, burned alive for some man
that loved her but couldn’t stay.
The flames rise with no purpose or intent,
wasting a warmth that could be given
freely to so many hungry, cold
hobos or wanderers in the night.
And I smile inside as I imagine
the train whistling by hundreds
of tiny camps surrounded
by so many travelers and strangers
no longer cold.
I wrote this in 2006, revised it in 2007 and again try to give it new life. This piece always comes back to me when I'm in this mood: slightly grumpy, verging on sad but for no discernable reason. I think I'd like to just be alone for awhile, be in the quiet until this headache is gone and then play my cello--which hasn't been touched since August--forget anything associated with work, friends, family, just be dead as far as the outside world is concerned. This morning I woke up at 7:30 despite the fact that I'd gone to bed at 3am...maybe I'm just tired.
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