By Anthony Carelli
We weren't speaking. It was snowing, temps dipping
into the teens. You and I were playing Frisbee
because we'd fought all day, and it's a tonic
to get outside and throw the sharp disk at one another
with cold dumb hands. Then the animals appeared.
Horses—male, I think—a pair of grayish steeds climbed
the man-cleared path to the softball field
in Prospect Park, where we stood at a distance.
"Wow," you said, "horses," but I missed them at first.
I was chasing down the disk that overshot, banked
above, and hissed in the sky, a flattened apple.
I had had it. "Baby," I almost said, "I'm trying
to make a catch here." But I was stopped instead,
lofted like the Frisbee. It was the word "horses"
in Brooklyn air. It was their bodies in Brooklyn in 2007.
Though what is the good of horses in Brooklyn in 2007?
As the first came he bowed his head with one step
and hoisted with the next, nodding like a drunk to nobody
he knows, so slowly that, within the machinations
of a single nod, I revised this scene a dozen times
and made a fine behind-the-back Frisbee snatch
to boot. And yes, I remembered the horses of Achilles,
the chariot of Israel, and Emily's toward Eternity. . .
Sometime I'd like to discuss the horses at length.
Meanwhile the second horse did whatever I say
the first horse did, which is walk, and smoke breath,
glimmer, and gloom. They both shouldered through
the intermittent aeons of twilight as mitigated
by black tree shafts. There were riders, too—
there must have been. They wore fancy sweaters—
red, or was it blue? I even thought to go to them,
gently, and stare into their eyes (the horses, I mean)
to see the candles on the horse-shaped altar inside—
horses are, perhaps, more lovely than a Frisbee—
but that's not what happened, honey. This
is our life: we fought until dark, we mastered
our timing, you made that magnificent cartwheel toss.
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Another from this week's New Yorker.
My kids had another good day on Friday. Adam's friend from Venezuela returned, along with his local best friend, to go swimming at the pool and explore the neighborhood -- the three boys apparently went for a hike, discovered a crevasse, played with the fish in the creek that runs through our town, found a turtle, and saw lots of bugs before coming here to play their favorite video games from second and third grade, when they were last all in school together. Meanwhile, my father took Daniel out to lunch and to play miniature golf, where apparently they were pretty evenly matched.
I knew I had only the couple of hours they were all out of the house to use the treadmill down the basement and get the bulk of my work done, so I wrote a somewhat rushed review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's terrible "Liaisons". Adam was bummed when his friend had to leave, but he is planning to film for Life in a Day tomorrow, so he spent quite a bit of time preparing for that. We had dinner with my parents and had a fairly quiet evening, since we're getting up early on what's expected to be a record-setting hot July day in Baltimore for Breakfast with the Penguins! Here are some more photos from the colonial market fair at Claude Moore Farm last weekend:
Visitors can buy 18th century style cloth and clothing at the colonial fair.
And they can watch wooden goblets being created by craftsmen...
...track down herbs and spices...
and eat chickens cooked over an open fire.
Tobacco is the farm's main crop.
There are also chickens and geese to provide eggs...
...sheep to provide wool...
...and piglets, because they are adorable.
Fannish5: List 5 works (where work could be a series, movie, book, episode, or even a character) that you feel are misunderstood, and why.
1. Deep Space Nine. It's hardly a new or original complaint, but I know Trekkies of every stripe -- original series fans, TNG fans, Voyager fans, reboot fans, plus B5 fans and BSG fans -- who are all to willing to dismiss this series, which I think episode for episode had the best long run in the history of television and still has my very favorite female character of all time.
2. The Sarah Jane Adventures. I've lost count of how many Doctor Who and Torchwood fans have told me they don't like it because it's for/about kids. It's the only installment in the franchise that has women first and foremost at all time, and rather than having gratuitous kids who serve as plot devices like Torchwood does too often, it has young people with intelligence and agency.
3. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. For reasons I don't quite understand, people forgive Xena for being ahistorical and just plain ridiculous at times (not to mention sexist at times) yet ridicule Herc mercilessly. I must admit that, episode for episode, I loved Hercules just as much, and if that makes me a bad feminist, so be it.
4. Dawson's Creek. People complain that the characters don't talk like real teenagers. They aren't supposed to talk like real teenagers; they're supposed to be the teenage selves who live in our heads, who actually have the perfect comeback, two decades later. Yet they still don't have all the answers. I really loved this series all six seasons of its run.
5. Relic Hunter. I think a lot of people thought it was supposed to be Tomb Raider, or at least a female Indiana Jones, which it never was, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable. And Sydney Fox is awesome.
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