Quodlibets

More than vaguely amusing

Read:

              HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
            You know, I love you with all the
            love one can love a lover with.

                      NATALIE PORTMAN
            Wow, that almost tops your 'wish'
            line from the last movie. Tell me
            again on the balcony while I brush
            my hair and look vaguely hideous.

Don't say that I never gave you nothing.  This is brilliant.

Via Fables of the Reconstruction.

Colorbook Idea

My sis and I are thinking about doing a colorbook exchange in the next year, so if you're interested, please e-mail one of us. 

If you don't know what a colorbook exchange is, but you're curious, go read this at her blog.  And then if you have questions, e-mail one of us and we'll get back to you.  (She's doing one right now, so it might be best to ask her.  If you don't have her e-mail [it doesn't seem to be at her site] e-mail me and I'll do my best or I'll forward the e-mail to her.)

This could be really fun, potentially, so if you think you might even be the teeeeeniest bit interested, e-mail!

HOLY JESUS IF ONLY I WAS THIS FUNNY

If you do one thing for yourself tonight, go read Dooce.  I don't know when I've laughed that hard at a blog.  Maybe never.  Brill-i-ant.  Absofuckinglutely brillant.  It's about poop, but it's the funniest shit ever.  Really.  The funniest shit ever.

My contribution to National Poetry Month

I probably won't post too many poems (though I love them--ooooh, maybe I'll post one of my own poems at some point this month), but this might be my most favorite poem.

The Pomegranate Eavan Boland

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

I love Boland. Her poems are gorgeous. This one is from In a Time Of Violence.