Edges, Palms

The Magician as a Boy

Good with his hands and fond
of edges, he collected bottle caps
that cut his palms, and speckled stones
he'd lick to shining, the polish
full speed in his rock tumbler.
Once he freed a feather, blue
and caught in prickly shrubs.
He held it to his lips: a little thrill
to wonder if the bird flew lopsided
or was lame and had bled,
would want him now tender.

Mary Ann Samyn

Nibble, Bite

I bite on my nails, but only when I am worried or reading a good book. It's extremely satisfying.

This girl in the new Toast catalogue is biting on her nail. I bet in her life people think "oh, she must be thinking or deeply content or a little worried if she's biting her nails. I had better not disturb her."

I bet nobody says "Would you stop doing that nibble nibble it's making me crazy." I'm fairly sure this is the case.

Attic, Spice

The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long winter. The pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic ... The attic was a lovely place to play. The large, round, colored pumpkins made beautiful chairs and tables. The red peppers and the onions dangled overhead. The hams and the venison hung in their paper wrappings, and all the bunches of dried herbs, the spicy herbs for cooking and the bitter herbs for medicine, gave the place a dusty spicy smell.

Often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But in the attic Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cosy.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
Illustration by Garth Williams

New Yorker, Lag

I'm living my fantasy reading life: I'm an editor, subscribe to the New Yorker and the Sunday New York Times, and use the library to get stacks of children's books. I subscribe to literary journals, am around children who love literature; really, this is my fantasy. But I just can't quite get through it all after editing all day. My new New Yorker arrived yesterday with a hysterical, terrifying cover only to be set on the stack, and Sunday's New York Times sits on my sweet little chaise, unrifled.

Possible Solutions:
1) Quit editing job, become a milkmaid.
2) Go to grad school, have no time to read anything elective ever again.
3) Get bitten by a bookworm, develop super reading powers.
4) Convince editors of the New Yorker to both hire me and put out their fine publication every three weeks instead of two.
5) Get bitten by a vampire, no need for sleep ever again.
6) Give up all media sources, read only the Epic of Gilgamesh.
7) Experiment with immortality.

{Photo via flickr.}

Gingersnaps, Stairs

Here is what I do when I am a little sad: Eat a lot of gingersnaps, run three miles, drink a glass of milk, wear socks, brush my teeth two times, think about reading the Everlasting Story of Nory, order stamps online, bite my nails, worry that I will tumble down my stairs because they are slippery and I'm wearing socks, check to see if the mail has come, look out of windows, wear the hood on my sweater up.


{Image from flickr. Thank you, flickr.}

Weep No More, Woeful Shepherds

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk thought he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high...
And now the sun had streched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

John Milton, from "Lycidas"

James Henry Trotter, Himself

There are lots of lovely things in Central Park. There is the enormous bronze of Alice, for example, and the children's zoo not so far away. A clock tower twirls with animals on the hour, and there are hot dog vendors and a Great Lawn. There are swings and large trees, and there is the lake where Stuart sailed, and a whole castle, and a pond full of crawly turtles. But there is NOT a bronze of James Henry Trotter's peach stone house in the park. If I am ever rich, I will have it made, and the plaque will say "James Henry Trotter, Himself."

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, Garlic Bread

Because it is nearly Halloween, you should all run to your library and take out Adam Rex's brilliant, hysterical Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich. All the way home, you can look forward to such treasures as "The Phantom of the Opera Can't Get 'It's a Small World' Out of His Head" and "The Invisible Man Gets a Haircut." Here's an illustration of Dracula and garlic bread from Rex's new book, "Frankenstein Takes the Cake."