frumiousb

Thankful for rainbows from a train.



( more )


(another little fugitive glimpse of my rainbow)

I had a dream last night that I was in some Democratic candidate focus group. Hillary and Elizabeth Edwards were asking me all kinds of questions about the view of the man on the street. I kept explaining to them that I could only tell them what the French thought about them. I was irritated, and wanted to leave. Bill Clinton was there, lying on a deck chair in the sun. I thought that he was kind of gross. I wanted to tell someone how gross he was, but was worried about helping the Republicans.

Early train. The polder shrouded in mist. Woman across from me on the train puts her coat up against the window and sleeps. She is almost unbearably vulnerable. Scuffed cheap brown leather shoes, faded at the tips. She has a white tee-shirt on under her thin blue sweater, but they have both bunched up around her waist. She realized at a certain moment that her mouth was open, so she pulled her pink scarf up over her mouth. Very typical Dutch type—body shape, big watery blue eyes and small metal glasses.

A bird soaring over the field next to the train. For one moment, traveling at exactly the same speed and hovering suspended.

The tulip fields flashing by, Candyland.

*****

Dream about work last night. I had to explain to someone that something wasn’t his fault.

Dream the night before that someone handed me a baby. Turned out that there had actually been twins, and while one died, the other lived. I was surprised and happy and thought that the doctors would be shocked that they had missed it. I left her with B. to take care of for a few minutes. She got smaller and smaller and when I looked again, she had turned into a roll of scotch tape—one of those that you see without a holder, so old that the roll is misshapen and the tape layers kind of fused together.

*****

I enjoyed reading my Clifford D. Simak book on the airplane so much that I started building a top 10 list of my favorite speculative fiction authors. I only came up with a provisional list. I also thought of a list of currently writing speculative fiction writers who I currently like enough to rush out and buy their books as soon as they go out of hardback.

Top five current:

China Mieville
Steph Swainston
Charlie Stross
Peter Hamilton
Michael Swanwick

Tentative top 10:

Philip K. Dick
Tim Powers
Gwyneth Jones
Patricia Anderson
Bruce Sterling
CJ Cherryh
Zelazny
Clifford D. Simak
Samuel R. Delaney
MZB

(excluded: children’s fantasy and speculative fiction. Also excluded is more borderline speculative fiction. I’m still not completely satisfied with this list.)

Dream that in an ultrasound, they revealed that my baby was actually a cat. I was shocked, but the nurse assured me that sometimes it just happened that way.

One of my very favorite comic artists, Julie Doucet, apparently has the same dream. I wonder if I got it from her.



Dancing Chicken Recipe

For archival purposes, last night B. made this recipe from the Delicious Christmas issue. Chicken with lemon and capers. It was easy, and great. As usual, scanned recipe is in Dutch, but I've translated it.

( recipe )

( translation )

Here I am, writing a sentence: "I am starting to feel more confident." Knock wood. Duck and cover. Cower at my daring. I may get struck by lightning for saying something like that, but I'm going to type it otherwise I won't let myself even believe it.

Some blessings:

• Spoke to my boss on the phone yesterday, and he told me that they had arranged things so that I could be gone until the end of next year, should I so desire. If I *can* return to work before the baby is born, they'll love to have me. But they want me to put our health first. Sometimes I am simply amazed with all the grace that there is in this world.
  
  
• nikkyb was over again last night and cooked dinner for B. and I. Again with the grace. I should be ashamed to ever call myself unlucky.
  
  
• Making fun of my own fear. This morning, I felt a hard spot a few inches above my belly button and I was sure that it was a contraction. This depressed me, since I generally don't get them in the morning. I've discovered that they respond to warmth, so I gave it a gentle little circular rub. Imagine my surprise when the contraction kicked my hand back. Not a contraction, a foot. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Also, it means that she's turned around again.
  
  
• Last night I had a dream that I was in a castle having dinner. Some guests arrived, and they rode their horses up the stairs. I felt validated since I had insisted this was the custom in the country. I did feel guiltily aware that not everyone lived in a castle, not even a brokedown one like this.
  
  
• Winter blooming flowers:
  
  
  
• B. has felt safe enough to get out of the house and do more with his friends. I'm so happy for him-- this has been as hard on him as it is on me. One of us needs to not be a shut in.
  
  
• Storm that swept in yesterday and turned the sky as black as night. I thought "tornado" when I saw the fell orange light all around the edges of the black. It was very beautiful. Later I read about the tornado in London.

I'm going to go for a little walk later today, and damn the rain.

Books

I've been reading a lot lately, and truthfully not finding much worth mentioning. I really liked Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. I had never read him before, since I had been told that his books were almost purely satirical, very mean. I did not have that experience with HC. I found it nasty in places, and very funny, but with some genuine warmth to the characters.

On a totally different note, I read Feast for Crows. Am still not sure what I thought about it, exactly, since while I enjoyed it I was a little bit dismayed that we get the cover the same time ground next year but with the other half of the characters. Hm.

Words of the Day

( from barbel to spital )

dreams

( click for vivid anxiety ridden things )

Found this bit of scarlet ribbon used as a bookmark in an old Mary J. Holmes book: The Rector of St. Marks. This is not one that came from my grandmother, but one that I bought at a later time. I wonder if it is a scrap from a dress, or whether it was always intended as a book mark. It is the same color as the book cover.


The Mary J. Holmes residence in Brockport, NY.

Films

Went with B. to see Miami Vice last night. I liked it or admired it or something stronger than tolerating it but falling short of loving it. The pacing gave me hives, at a certain moment. There were some really nice things done with the camera work.

Also got Dune from Moviemile. Boy, has that aged badly. We could not make it all the way through. I remember watching it and enjoying it-- and I generally like Lynch quite a bit. Perhaps I was just in a bad mood?

Dreams

Dream last night that I was dressing up like Wonder Woman and singing in bars. There was this other guy who dressed up like Superman and sang, and he had to sing with me. But he didn't like it, so he kept disappearing. I cheerfully admitted that I sang off key and made lots of jokes.