Fire!

Me: There was a fire in the library today! [Insert more detailed story.]

Joella: There was a vole in the office today. [Insert less detailed story.] It was about the size of a mouse.

Me: That was about the size of the fire.

Joella: Maybe. But a fire grows much faster than a vole.

Evening

A phone call for solidarity.

Do you still love me?

I thought I could make it in this big, big pond.

But my voice is quavering as I ask you

a question about something trivial.

Whatever you say, I will only hear:

you will make it, dear one; you're fighting against the tide.

You don't need one single thing.

You're mine, mine, mine.

Or

Your time is not now, your welcome worn thin.

You certainly lack what it takes.

How dare you bring home your wealth of mistakes!

Answer me as if I were bleeding.

But do not let me know that it is your compassion that speaks to me, heartsore.

I would rather believe it is the truth.

Literary Accountability

Instructions: Have you read more than six of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. Tag other book nerds.

Who can resist the occasional literacy accountability from the BBC? Not me. (I snagged this from Kendra Gehman.)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Morning

Lord,

I am so profoundly grateful for the bus that is on time, Author of Order out of Chaos.

I am so grateful for the coffee in my hand, the book on my lap, Author of Comfort in time of Distress.

I am so grateful for the hair that blows in the wind, feet that move in rhythm, Persistent Giver of Life in the face of Death.

I am so grateful for the clothes that more than cover my body--even fitting, hugging my waist, draping my ankles, You who give all that I can't believe I had the nerve to ask.

In Pakistan, are the floods receding?

In New York, will the homeless find warmth?

On this bus, will the travelers go home to a garden?

The sun is shining golden, making the sky blue, in Pennsylvania in November.

If gold can make blue

in Pennsylvania,

in November,

then perhaps we have reason to hope.

Beginning

Oh boy. I just spent my first day at the alternative school where I'm placed for this month. Oh boy. More to come. So far, I think I would like to teach there. The kids are quick. I saw a small altercation. I played two truths and a lie with twelfth-graders. They thought I had two kids and wouldn't believe that I had five stepsisters...? Most everyone guessed my age correctly. But they'll never know it. Everyone wanted to know if I was married. I tried to think of a witty response, but nothing came. They are so curious about your personal life!

Something Old and Something New

The New comes first:

I just finished the Praxis II test. It was so dang easy that I shouldn't even devote time to it in even this most casual of published media. However, it marks a movement forward in time for which I am very, very grateful.

I may not always be in search of part-time jobs. One day I may have a classroom where challenges will take place on a different level than those which I have faced this week. I just got a new job. Did you know that? I started this week. And it's over this week, too. They are closing. I'm back on the hunt. But the real tragedy has little to do with my job search. I may now be in competition for the same part-time job as the people who paid me just two days ago. Disappointing. But not a strange tale for our times.

Now, for the old. These are some poems I had written and first published on my xanga. (I haven't linked my xanga to this blog. I don't think I will.) I occasionally revisit it to see where I've come from.

Modern English

Fragmented.

Or poignant?

To Our Father in Heaven:

From what depths You cry!

Have cried to reach me!

Suddenly I am awake.

I have been crying too!

Awareness crashes in.

A child crying after a great fall.

And You. Emerge out of the darkness,

Calling my name.

It is my name because You have called.

I have heard it.

You have taken me in Your arms

And You have spoken it. Are You crying

With

Me?

Such tidings You bear!

Comfort and joy!

Bagel Shop

I work at a bagel shop. You hear strange phrases in any workplace which become commonplace.

"We have lots of everything. But we're running low on everything else."

A Student in Fall

Here is a writing exercise for creating smaller, more provocative prose. Think of a place, a time. Take all the words you need to create the picture in your own mind.

Here's mine:

Widget the cat

hot chocolate

sofa chair, striped

purring

peace

wishing for a snow storm

Now, add as few words as you can to create a picture of the moment for another reader.

Here's mine:

Short days have come with fall. I stay inside when the sun is out. I sit with a book, the cat, hot chocolate, and wish for a snow storm to give me peace.