Poem for Friday

The Right to Pleasure
By Jessica Fisher

You would think that I go mad with grief
when the white sails fill and the keel cuts
the waters like a knife honed on whetstone:
that's the way you're taught to interpret these signs—
matted hair, the salt-dirt lines where sweat has run,
hands that feed the mouth but will not wipe it.
But when my love decides to go and then is gone,
I can still taste him, bitter in the throat; I still
feel the weight of his body as he fights sleep.
I do not fight it: on the contrary, I live there,
and what you see in me that you think grief
is the refusal to wake, that is to say, is pleasure:
qui donne du plaisir en a, and so if
when he couldn't sleep in that long still night
you sensed it and woke to show him how
to unfasten each and every button, then it is
promised you, even when he goes—

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I've been fighting a migraine all afternoon that I suspect is related to the approaching low front and storms we're due to have Friday and Saturday, so I don't have a lot to report, even though it was a pretty day, not too cold. The news from Jerusalem to Times Square to various college campuses sucked, so I tried not to look at it or stress out about the Democrats eating their own and looking for ways to manipulate the voters of Florida and Michigan for their own ends. (I love -- not -- the people on my friends list threatening not to vote for Hillary or for Barack depending on what's decided about do-overs in those states; how can it possibly be "no fair" to give the voters in Florida and Michigan a say in the nomination, and how will throwing a tantrum and helping McCain win improve anything?).


This is a technique to create neat-looking inverse-color flowers that I learned from Popular Photography.


It's done in three steps in Photoshop Elements, first to create a negative image, then to normalize the dark and light parts of the image.


First you duplicate the background layer, using either the drop-down layers menu or the bin.


Then you press Control + i, which creates a negative image.


And then, in the Layers palette, you switch the blend mode from Normal to Color, which reverses the blacks and whites.


Purple flowers turn green and green leaves turn purple, which looks very cool...


...while yellows turn bright blue and vice versa.


And some landscapes look like they're from another planet.

Finally posted my James Cawley interview from Farpoint; took so long because the tape, which first gave me trouble at the convention by unraveling in the tape recorder while I was talking to John Broughton of Starship Farragut, absolutely shredded twice and had to be cut and taped back together just to get it to spool. So I have no idea how much of my Marina Sirtis interview will have survived. Watched the second episode of New Amsterdam which I liked better than the first one, particularly the dialogue.

Spoilers: Omar's his SON! Did everyone already know/figure that out but me? That was awesome, as was the story of John's unhappy romance with Omar's mother, although it is hard to believe watching John with his great-grandson that he has much experience with kids. I snickered a lot when Omar told him to read one of his books to the kid to put him to sleep (because Omar had a "romantic emergency" he had to deal with, heh), but then he dragged the boy out to a crime scene and potential danger. "You get to be a crime fighter." "Like Superman?" "Exactly!" and then he tells the kid he can't die, and of course the kid promptly tells his mom even though John did the whole "It's a secret" routine which every parent knows you never ever encourage a kid to believe -- kids are supposed to feel safe telling their parents things that freak them out for their own safety, and aren't supposed to be exposed to things that might freak them out so badly. So that part's rather cracked, but John is great with Omar and Eva and the backstory's been lots more interesting than the crimes of the week. I will be back Monday.