save the words!

I just realized what I need to be doing with my life. I need to create a preserve. A place for words, for the abused words of the world, where they have meadows to frolic in and shade to lie in and plenty of hills to roam and hide behind, far from the prying eyes of this world, this cruel world that maltreats them so. Kristin and I were discussing our empathy for "random" and "literally," respectively, and that was when I realized what I should do. I need to create the equivalent of the San Diego Wild Animal Park for words. 

Join me. Donate now.

why not, indeed

My housemate Annabel asked me over dinner, "Why don't we dance everyday?" and I said "I don't know"  to which she replied "We do!"

cauliflower cake

Who even knew there was such a thing? I love my home. Kristin made this for dinner tonight, and it was scrumptious. And so fluffy! And it held its texture so well, just look!

Am I the luckiest girl on the block? It's arguable.

grasses

I don't have a lot to say to flatter my hometown, but I do enjoy the train ride from San Francisco (really, from Richmond) up to Sacramento, along the bay and through the marshlands. 

The marsh grasses are unreal. I have seen the colors in all seasons. This being fall, there are tall and short grasses in colors ranging from lime and sage green to cranberry, burgundy, and lilac, and matte silver, and lion's mane gold. And pampas grass with creamy, feathery tufts that wave in the breeze. (This is all just before Fairfield, if you're heading northeast.) All set off by pools and slow, winding streams, slate blue. I'm not making this stuff up. Fairfield itself, of course, a terror of a town. Telephone wires and concrete block buildings and housing developments. Gas stations and storage units. But those fields, marshes, somehow unsung.

satisfaction

"Early on the first day of summer, I found myself sitting in the middle of an impossibly green pasture, resting. 'The longest day of the year' is what I would jot down in my notebook in bed late that night, followed by 'literally,' which was then struck out and replaced with 'figuratively.' What can I say? I was tired."

           – Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

I'm always pleased when someone tips their hat to one of my pet hates. Thanks, Michael Pollan.

biscuits

"Overcome by these perspectives Murphy fell forward on his face on the grass, beside those biscuits of which it could be said as truly as the stars, that one differed from another, but of which he could not partake in their fullness until he had learnt not to prefer any one to any other."

                – Murphy, Samuel Beckett

sight

Last night I finished reading Jose Saramago's Seeing, the sequel to Blindness. While I loved the latter,  Seeing left me feeling like I'd been punched in the gut, then kicked in the face. Even so, there's this:

He walked through the garden and stopped for a moment to study the statue of the woman with the empty jar, They left me here, she seemed to be saying, and now all I'm good for is staring into this grubby water, there was a time when the stone I'm made from was white, when a fountain flowed day and night from this jar, they never told me where all the water came from, I was just here to tip up the jar, but now not a drop falls from it, and no one has come to tell me why it stopped.