I miss this lady.

Jessica Farris 1/25/07 2:52 PM
i just heated up the cat
Karen Farris 1/25/07 2:52 PM
that sounds so awful

If I ever got a nose job, I would not ask for Nicole Kidman's.

I'd ask for the perky little ray of carmel polkadotted sunshine on Sean's face.

The best part of my day...

Sometimes you read things that crack bad days apart and blow away the pieces. I did today.

From Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees and rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prism, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water-- peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing-- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is to all but feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries



I know, I could do without all the "for"s too, but seriously, doesn't that make you want to call someone you love and read it out loud?

La la la la la la laaaaaa (to be sung like a corpse) or Sure, parts were pretty, but maybe I should have read a synopsis first.

Hey do you want to see a guy's face get smashed to pieces with a wine bottle while he's standing next to his poor dad? What about a smattering of people getting shot about the head and neck? Are you aching for a creepy-ass lullaby to stay in your head for hours? Good news! El Laberinto del Fauno is out now. Run to the theaters, everyone. Now you know what to expect.

I will love and have pity, he says.

I found a book of Michael Hatnett's poems, finally, on sale in the basement of a Dublin bookstore. I brought it to Cornucopia where I ate a plate of fantasticicity as usual and read the first 20 pages. He reminds me of Neruda in that he aches to be accounted for romantically, but then he reminds me of nothing but what I want more than anything to be reading right there, in Cornucopia on a Thursday, when nothing else would suit the happenings of the day, my mood, the food or the weather so perfectly. I was in there for too long, I thought, and rushed out to catch a bus when I realized I had nothing to do. This delicious gift-received feeling came into me, like when you think it's 4 PM then find out it's only 2:30. I bought a french pear tartlet and watched people walk by at a cafe in between more pages of poems.

I turned in Yeats today. Sean will turn in his paper too and we will both be free at last, free at last, hallelujah, free at last for the 10 days before classes start.

Going through the travel journal...

We consume Utrecht and Amsterdam. Our noses feast on the lilies in the flower market. Our mouths chomp Oliebollen. Our eyes cover and devour the canals. The Netherlands is in our bellies and shooting from our pores. We're still filled with it, alive with it, living off the memories it provided. We're in a deep love affair. Deep. Poor Ireland will never be enough.

In Girona everything is quirky, from the train car in which we eat our crepes to the long stairs up and up and up to nowhere. People drop things 50 feet from their windows to waiting hands below. A man sells me the most beautiful necklace for 8 euros. The Romans built a wall around this city to protect it but Sean and I jumped on and above and through the wall and ransacked Girona of her goods and memories.

On the road to Barcelona we buy prosciutto, crusty bread, cheese, crackers, spicy sausage for Sean's ill throat and airy cookies with coconut, walnuts and tiny bits of chocolate. Sean communicates his head cold in charming Spanish to a woman at the Farmacia and receives a box of orange effervescence for his efforts and money. Once in the car, I rip the chorizo with my teeth into pieces and set them on cheese and crackers for the sick driver. We arrive and drink sangria and drink sangria and drink sangria and arrive.

Valencia clementines. My favorite food? Yes. A man my dad works with left a box in our hotel room. We simply happen upon everything here- the street our hotel is on, the Mercado Central, the silk market, the most delicious candied popcorn. A serendipitous city for Sean and me, though it fails to take his sickness away. He has no color in his cheeks for two days.

No color still in Pisa, but we eat ravioli and rabbit, sleep well and in the morning Sean tells me he wants to climb the Tower. We do. And from the air and view he gets his color back. I take pictures of it. The camera loves you, Sean.

All the pics are at the flickr site, so go on and click that link to the right. Go on.