Tidbits and TMI about Fireblossom!

Recently, I made a new friend who calls herself Blueroses and Stardust. She came up with this group of what I think are very interesting and fun questions, and as I am a notorious meme whore fan of questionnaires, she graciously gave me permission to blog them along with my answers. Here they are!

1. Would you like to be a mythological creature and if so which?(mermaid, fairy, dragon)

I would like to be a siren. I am not a good singer, though I wish I were, and if I were a siren, I could sing so beautifully that sailors would wreck their ships trying to get closer to me. Did I mention I like a little mischief?

 

2.What’s in your purse right now

Just work stuff. Bare essentials like a tube of lipstick, a mirror, nail file, blah blah, a paperback book, my little notebook full of bus schedules, a couple of hair bands, and two nice pens cos i am fussy about my pens. Just things I would be lost without.

3.Which is your favourite Alice in Wonderland character

Alice herself! It would be just like me to follow down the rabbit hole and have all those odd adventures. 

4.Would you like to be forever kid like Peter Pan

No. If I thought I had to relive my childhood,  I would jump in front of a train right now. But I do think that I have retained the imagination of a child, and it serves me well.

 

5.Next to which nature phenomenon (aurora, lagoon, grand canyon) would you rather live

A woods. I love the woods! I find it restorative and beautiful. 

 

6.Do you like cooking?

I love cooking, though I am nobody's gourmet chef. It relaxes me and I like to do it.

 

7.What is your favorite book

"Keeping You A Secret" by Julie Anne Peters. Close second: "Pages For You" by Sylvia Brownrigg and "Lessons" by Kim Pritekel. Honorable mention: "Madeleine's Ghost" by Robert Girardi.

 

8.Would you paint your house an unusual colour like orange or blue (inside or outside)

Outside, I like earth tones. But inside, I love unusual colors! No beige walls for this girl.

 

9.Do you watch series?If yes what kind (drama, fantasy) and give an example

I have recently been watching "Major Crimes" on TNT because I like Mary McDonnell. 

 

10.Do you play a sport?If so, which?

I don't, but I used to love to play softball. I was one kick-ass hitter! (I was, unfortunately, not so good in the field.) I used to be good at bowling, too. And darts. I threw them wrong, like a baseball, but they went where I wanted!

11.Do you (still) watch anime-cartoons?

No. I don't care for anime at all. Except Derpy Hooves. Does Derpy Hooves count? Save Derpy!

I hope you enjoyed this. Be sure to visit Blueroses and Stardust at her blog! 

Mental Case Jane

It is Mental Case Jane's mother's birthday--
this is sort of like tax day and some sort of Chinese earthquake
all rolled up into one big ball of whee.

Mental Case Jane puts down her paint brushes, puts on her boots, and drives her 1998 hunk of shit up to the drug store.
The cards say
"For a mother who is also my best friend..."
"Thank you for always being there for me..."
Mental Case Jane can't find one that doesn't lie its head off,
but sits cross legged in the greeting card aisle braying like a donkey at the preposterous sentiments,
tears of merriment rolling down her cheeks as if she were at the circus watching the clowns' fire wagon routine.

"Mom, being your daughter is like..."
...like death by a thousand cuts, thinks Mental Case Jane,
but she was raised to observe conventions and so she keeps searching.
However, she is distressing other customers by moaning like a cow caught in a fence,
and finally a clean cut young man wearing a name tag asks her to leave.

Back home, Mental Case Jane goes back to her paints. 
Her long black hair and the bow of her eyeglasses are speckled and streaked
with saffron,
magenta,
and indigo smears
from adjusting and swiping at them with her hand as she works.
When she was five, she drew her mother a birthday card.
Astigmatic, near-sighted Jane, with the lines going all over the place,
and the "I love you" scrunched mostly up at the right border,
received instruction and art criticism from her mother, who laughed and asked,
"Is that the best you can do?" then walked away.

Mental Case Jane resolved never to make crappy art again,
and became a master, a creative angel of whom thousands are jealous.
"The bitch just drops a brush on the ground and it bounces up and makes masterpieces by accident," carps an admirer.
Her mother, distracted and barely paying attention, asks "Oh,
are you still doing that?"

Mental Case Jane has filled a thousand canvases;
she has slept with dozens of older women, searching with both
for something to plug her leaking heart.
It is Mental Case Jane's mother's birthday--
Jane is sober,
talented,
self-sustaining,
and buried under a ton of rubble like a Chinaman,
calling.
______

The Old Angel

The Old Angel
shakes bits of September from her wings
and stands at the gates of the prison from which she
has just been paroled.

The clerk had said,
"Here's your harp,"
but the Old Angel told her to pitch it.
She took her big drug store sunglasses,
her mood ring,
and allowed herself to be escorted outside, though she could have flown.

Where did the 90's go?
And the decade after that?
She wants to talk to God,
but there are no pay phones.

Stopping in front of a store window, she sighs.
"Look at me,
I am nothing but dry skin and split ends."
She almost cries.

The Old Angel is like any other angel--
She would like to be pretty,
would like someone's face to light up and for them to say,
"Well look at you."
She would like to have angel babies
and a garden.

Oh well.

The Old Angel is out on parole.
She sits down on a dirty bench and talks to the pigeons,
her fellow winged creatures.
"I was innocent, I tell ya."
They coo.
Bless them.

On she goes, into a little coffee shop called Danny's.
The waitress watches her walk in and she tilts her head.
"Well look at you," she says,
just as if she knew her well,
just as if they were old friends
and she had been waiting.
_______

Sevenling (Noble Steeds)

Time was, you loved my riding boots,
My jacket snug,
My crop;

Our busy lives have made that moot,
No time for bridle or bit--
Our noble steeds reduced in needs,

Just eat and quarrel and shit.
______

Photograph taken by the fiercely talented Mama Zen

for Real Toads mini-challenge: sevenlings. 

Book Review: "Enemy Women"

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If I could give this six stars, I would. When I chose this book to read, I expected just another of my western novels centering on some interesting female character. Such novels follow a pretty predictable formula, and though enjoyable, one is always aware that one is just reading a story. "Enemy Women" is much, much more than that; it is an ambitiously researched novel that feels like life itself, raw life in a place and time where society has broken down.

The story takes place in southeastern Missouri in the final two years of the American civil war. The main character, eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, lives with her sisters and brother and their bookish, kind father, Judge Colley. All of this is shattered when the Union militia ( a rag tag collection of river rats from St.Louis and environs, basically doing what they want to whomever they want) arrives and sets the Colley house and barn on fire, takes their horses and belongings, randomly destroys things like an heirloom mirror just because they feel like it, and after beating Adair's father in the face with a wagon spoke, they take him away under arrest for "disloyalty."

Adair and her sisters set out on foot, northward, to try to find their father. Upon arriving at the Union headquarters, Adair finds she has been denounced as a spy by a fellow traveler, and is thrown on to a train and taken to a dismal prison in St. Louis.

Jiles opens each chapter with quotes from contemporary diaries and books on the war in Missouri, and in fact, women were imprisoned as Adair is.  Major Neumann wants Adair to write out a confession. Adair writes a rather amazing account of her life which, while useless militarily, fascinates the major, but not as much as Adair's dark eyes, long black hair, and spirit do. With the Major's help, Adair escapes, but faces a long hard road back to a home which may not even still be there.

Jiles is a poet, this being her first novel, and her poet's voice runs all throughout "Enemy Women." The language is gorgeous, without being intrusive. When describing natural scenes, or animals, Jiles puts me in mind of Thomas Hardy, also a master at these. Then she can turn around and describe the most vicious, terrifying occurrences of war without blinking. She does not sugar coat; this is war up close and unvarnished. There were times when I had to close the book and gather myself, it was so immediate and visceral.

Throughout all of this, Adair is someone I fell utterly in love with, cared deeply about, and strived and suffered with. She is not perfect, she is human and unforgettable. I became absolutely emotionally engaged with this story and this character. In fact, it seems odd to refer to her as a character...the best fiction doesn't seem like fiction at all.

There is no neat happy ending, but neither does it disappoint, as I felt that "Cold Mountain" (a book this one is sometimes compared with) did. This is a beautiful, horrifying, wartime love story that I simply cannot recommend enough.



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Song Of A Mad Girl

Where have you been, girl?
Down by the root-rot black-barked trees;
Walking in the bad water up to my knees.

Why, girl, why?
To carry these tarantula babies in my hair,
So they don't sink slow with their bellies to the air.

You know I love you, girl.
The road is flooded where the water snakes slide;
They feel like the arms of the devil going by.

Come back home, girl.
In my room is a hat pin long and sharp,
Like the scorpion tail hidden under my heart.
____
 

2012 Doomsday Theory

I carefully constructed a doomsday theory
with bible quotes, Mayans and graphs;

I told a cockroach my doomsday theory
and the cockroach

laughed.
_______