Tremblings of hidden remembered things.

Winter dreams made their way to me last night. Darkness and boxes filled with stories and cards and the cool warmth of some unknown lover's skin and it took me a while to remember.

These are dreams that have slept for a couple of years. Perhaps they were waiting; perhaps there was no room for them; perhaps I simply did not remember and they left no mark on a moving soul.

The season changes soon, and my dreams reach out to me to give comfort that the sun will fade and I will know again the feel of warm air against cold and find something like a blanket in the change and the dreams will be dark and terrifying and filled with blood and water and boats and impossible feats of violence and embrace.

In my winter dreams I do not need to fly. In my winter dreams the world holds me at its own distance. Warm long days lift my feet in sleep and I do not need the wings I learned to grow. The green smells of birth in spring hold me hovering between rooms. The spice and wood and burning of winter open something that needs only stars and wool and honey to feed it through long nights of worlds unremembered.

The rhythms of my heart will change. I feel again this strange and terrible peace. The smell of me begins to alter, and something new makes its way into the world. This is an entirely different sort of bear, living here in the warmth with a short dark breath between the heat and the weight of water.

Perhaps the dreams return because they are remembered. Perhaps I am less out of control of their presence than all this would make it sound.

The days are shorter without any assistance from me.

Winter is coming.

The Bookseller stays home

I’ve not been to work for three days. I’ve not stepped on public transport for that long, either, although I did buy my March bus pass, but that’s not even close to being the same thing. My laundry is done, my fridge is cleaned out, although it is not clean and there’s been some sweeping around the place that pleases me.

It occurred to me, when this vast open space of workless days all in a row presented themselves, that I would have no idea what to do with the time. Ha. Ha!

I read a lot. So much that I am not in a place where I can read anymore right now, or listen to music or lectures or even feed myself, because I’m Just That Full.

Homer has been with me this entire time.

The entire first chapter of ExtraVirginity features Odysseus and olive oil and the questions surrounding what that means to people in our version of the here and now. At the end of the chapter, someone made scented oil with roses: it smells of the Mediterranean.

Jerusalem was bound to bring the bard to mind with its layers of tragedies and homecomings. Leaders deposed, peoples massacred, livelihoods destroyed under the orders of army leaders not even attached to the city’s people or land; these echo.

I’d sort of hoped that Blood, Bones & Butter would lead me away from the violence and harshness of olive oil and sea travel and a world filled with instability and fragility and I was wrong. It left me full and vulnerable and the mere mention of oil from Puglia cast a net over this incongruous reading list and day-to-day living that I can barely begin to imagine.

Even the mystery that I read did not let me be in peace; ideas of responsibility for actions over time and human behavior and the traps of class and how education does not always allow people to get out of them finding their way through the muck of London sewers and into my nice little world view.

What is here is not what I wanted to say, and that’s alright. My feelings are definable, what they relate to is not yet real in words. I remember The Loss Library and its central story and the shelves of books that would have been written but for confidence or silence or carefulness and I must re-think my audience and consider the shape of my walls and perhaps the words that overflow will land on them.

Random Love Blog

There are a few things I really miss about life in Nebraska.
Sunsets are big on that list.
Scroll down to see why.


Other people's calendars are really interesting.

I heart Wooster Collective.

we make money not art has a piece about Don McCullin's photographs of the homeless in the UK.

snerk

So this happened. Hunh. Would be jealous. Can't really comprehend it, though.

WANT. *drooolz*

That's all for now.

Love!

The way to give it up

Yet again, it is Lent.

For someone who is not a member of any Abrahamic religion (a book person who is not one of any of the People of the Book, go figure), I take this pretty seriously. Actually, I take it pretty seriously even for one of the faithful. There is no dogma between me and my reading of similar experiences in the lives of four of the most profound religious leaders of human history.

1) Moses went to the mountain to speak with God. He stayed there for a really long time. 40 days. He came down with the 10 Commandments and a life path that was not a question, or temporary. He knew what he was about, and God needed no more burning bushes to get him to listen.

2) Jesus went into the desert for 40 days. There, we read that he was faced by the Devil who offered him every enticement he could think of to move this leader of men from his path. The Devil failed. Jesus returned to the world of the everyday and did not, we read, veer from His life path, even though it led Him to death.

3) Gautama found himself seated under a Bo tree for 40 days, contemplating the nature of his purpose and path. Demons came and attacked him and as their arrows flew through the air, they were turned to flowers and fell harmlessly at the feet of the Buddha. When he opened his eyes and turned his gaze outward once again, he lived his life with clarity and purpose and did not veer from his life path.

4) Mohammed went into the desert. He stayed there for 40 days. Allah spoke. He listened. He understood. He returned from the dessert and gathered people together and spoke to them of the teachings of Allah. He became The Prophet and lived that path without question.

Rama was banished to the forest for 14 years.

That seems a bit much, if you ask me. But, I am young and have no sense of the meaning of time, and I do not always understand what the world means to mean.

Two years ago, I began to work to change my life. It worked. It is time to finish that work and learn to see that 14 years in the forest is only a short time.

So. We focus. Although: Got no desert or big beautiful tree or local mountain. Also: Got a job that I feel is pretty vital to life.

So. We focus in a different way: give up the distractions of coffee, booze, eating out (with specific social exceptions), big grocery store shopping, late rising, no yoga and no writing. Also, I’m not in the mood to be as cranky as I usually am when I start getting all healthy and feeling good. So, I’m going to give that up as well.

Just FYI.