So I go to the bead store in University Village. Every time I go there, I'm reminded of the old king, Kaspar, in Amahl and the Night Visitors, because the place is like Kaspar's box, writ large:

"This is my box, this is my box... I never travel without my box ( Read more... )

Alas, my vanity won out over Friday's good intentions. All last week, the heat index was over 100 F, and with the water restrictions still in force, I felt too guilty about washing my nasty, reeking clothes and taking a shower on the same day. And putting on clean clothes after marinating in sweat for three days was out of the question--so on ( Read more... )

We had torrential rain the night before last. There've been thunderstorms about every other night, all summer, but this one dumped four inches of water on us in four hours. And the ground is saturated and the rivers all in spate, so we have a flood now that's worse than the big flood of 1993. The street outside my house was a lake for a couple ( Read more... )

How did it escape me that Dan Simmons' Drood has already been out in paperback for three months? For three days, I've eaten with this book in front of me, I've slept with this book in my bed, and I've deliberately picked a bus that takes me to the library by a circuitous route--all so I can devote more time to plumbing the secrets of Charles ( Read more... )

You decided that the introductory ecology course was a waste of your time, and pronounced both the class and its instructor "idiotic." You persuaded your advisor to let you take one of the advanced ecology courses instead. Given that you lack even a bowing acquaintance with the basics of population ecology, you expected this to go well...exactly ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young PoetDear You ( Read more... )

Ganked from quietladybirman.

When you see this, post your favorite poem in your journal

The CycleDark water underground ( Read more... )

...because I'm feeling particularly crotchety today.

( Dear Mr. Self-described Pariah )

Suppose you are an aspiring writer, with a published story or two to your credit, and you want to know whether you've taken the literary world by storm yet. So you Google yourself, and the first thing you find is a one-line review on somebody's LJ--one that doesn't do much for your ego:

...a bad opening crippled this story for me, plus the ( Read more... )