By Catherine Bowman
She loves to talk on the phone
while washing the dinner dishes,
catching up long distance or
dealing with issues closer to home,
the reconnoitring with the long lost
or a recent so-and-so. She finds it
therapeutic, washing down
the aftermath. And that feeling
she gets in her stomach with a loved one’s
prolonged silence. And under the sink
in the dark among the L-pipes, the confederate
socket wrenches, lost twine, wire lei,
sink funk, steel-wool lemnisci, leitmotifs
of oily sacraments, a broken compass forever
pointing southeast by east, mold codices,
ring-tailed dust motes from days well served,
a fish-shaped flyswatter with blue horns,
fermented lemures, fiery spectres,
embottled spirit vapors swirling in the crude
next to the Soft Scrub, the vinegared
and leistered sealed in tins, delicious with saltines,
gleaned spikelets, used-up votives...
In the back in the corner forgotten
an old coffee can of bacon fat
from a month of sinful Sundays,
a luna moth embossed, rising — a morning star.
--------
From this week's New Yorker. Bowman's last book was The Plath Cabinet.
My first day home from vacation naturally involved a lot of laundry -- five loads washed and dried, only one folded -- plus some other chores, including taking my kids and Adam's friend to the mall for crepes and so Daniel could get a birthday present for his girlfriend whom he'll be seeing tomorrow at another friend's farewell party, since the friend's family is moving to Australia. (He ended up getting her a pentacle necklace, apparently because they both play some video game with Goth Wiccan stuff in it, but that made me smile anyway.) I still haven't unpacked my jewelry or souvenirs except the Duke t-shirt I got my dad as a belated Father's Day present, but I'm working on it.
We had dinner with my parents, where I gave my dad the aforementioned shirt, then came home and I tried to sort out computer files while watching Chesapeake Bay By Air and Carole King & James Taylor Live at the Troubadour on MPT. We also watched the first two episodes of the new Futurama, which were reasonably entertaining -- not my favorites of the series as a whole, but not a big disappointment, either. My experiences in fandom lately have been such that I expect to be told I'm racist/sexist/abusive to someone just for saying I don't hate something as much as some other people do.
Last Week's The Friday Five: A Day At the Beach
1. Is your favorite beach at the lake or ocean? Ocean!
2. Do you wear a life jacket when you go swimming? No.
3. Do you enjoy water sports, such as skiing and boating? I've never been waterskiing. I've loved being on boats and I love canoeing, but I don't know much about how to sail.
4. Do you ever think about the animals that live in the water when you are swimming? You mean the mole crabs, blue crabs, fish, rays, dolphins, etc.?
5. Do you like to just lay in the sun or do you want to play in the water as well? I spend almost all my time at the beach in the water.
This Week's The Friday Five: Bedtime
1. When is your usual bedtime? A bit after midnight.
2. How many hours of sleep do you need? Ideally, 8. I can live on 6 1/2 when I have to but not for consecutive nights.
3. Do you usually remember your dreams? I used to wake up and write them down right away and then I remembered nearly all. Now I have boys and cats waking me and I forget them pretty quickly, though, for instance, I remember that the night before last I had a dream that JK Rowling wrote another Harry Potter movie in which Harry decided to become an archaeologist instead of an Auror and McGonagall was very disappointed.
4. How many pillows do you sleep with? One.
5. What is the wildest dream you've ever had? Do you mean the one involving Kate Mulgrew in a Bloomingdale's dressing room, or the one involving trying to get Michael Jordan's autograph for my grandfather on a plane?
Last Week's Fannish5: Five events in your fandom that made you happiest. If I must stick with one fandom, let's go with classic Star Trek.
1. "In a pig's eye." "Amok Time"
2. "It was the only choice possible. You would not have respected any other." "The Enterprise Incident"
3. "Not this time, Spock." "The Empath"
4. "Do you know why you're not afraid to die, Spock? You're more afraid of living. Each day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip and let your human half peek out." "Bread and Circuses"
5. "You? At his side. As if you've always been there, and always will." "City on the Edge of Forever"
This Week's Fannish5: Pick 5 characters from your fandom(s) for a World Cup AU story/episode/etc. I really must use Due South for this one, which means the team must be Canadian.
1. Benton Fraser
2. Buck Frobisher
3. Renfield Turnbull
4. Mark Smithbauer
5. Bob Fraser's Ghost
Sunset at the Carolina Beach boardwalk...
...and behind our hotel, which faced the Atlantic.
The sky turned pink over the water beyond the dunes as well.
Adam found this hermit crab in the ocean near our hotel...
...and this one in the Cape Fear River near Fort Fisher's Battery Buchanan.
There were laughing gulls everywhere -- flying overhead, diving into the surf, waddling up to people with coolers trying to steal food.
This carnivorous pitcher plant was growing in Carolina Beach State Park...
...which was also where we saw this skink hiding under the brush in the sand.
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