In the roads that never saw sun nor sky

[sovay]

cucumberseed drew me a haruspex:



His Autumn War is an extraordinary world.

I spent a portion of this afternoon in Harvard Square with lesser_celery, mostly looking at books neither of us could afford to buy. We did not talk nearly as much as I would have liked (for which I blame the fact that I disappeared first into A.S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories (1993) and then a monograph on Miyazaki's Spirited Away), but at least it was in person rather than pixels. We conversed about the important things, like swine flu and unnatural acts. I should still have brought a camera. He's like spirit photography.

Afterward, I took the bus home. Somewhere between Porter Square and Route 16, two girls got on; I thought at first that one of them had a tattoo above the collar of her T-shirt, but it was a port-wine birthmark that began on her chin and spilled down the left side of her throat where it vanished under the green-and-white cotton. Maybe I still have time_shark and Goblin Fruit on the brain, but I looked at her and thought of maenads. Will you drink out of the blood, the white wine and the red? I don't know if it's fair to steal her face for a story. She was beautiful.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's fair to steal her face for a story. Marked from birth as a Maenad? Definitely her story is worth telling.

I remember riding that bus daily, for a short period of time when I was staying with my grandmother and taking a summer course.

[rosefox]

His Autumn War is an extraordinary world.

I just spent five very confused minutes trying to figure out whether cucumberseed is Daniel Abraham.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

And the Provinces are just getting better all the time, now that there are three new Provinces full of fascinating people.

Tell it!

[tuppshar-press.livejournal.com]

Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone inspires at least one story. You should tell hers.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's fair to steal her face for a story. She was beautiful.

I reckon it's fair. Writers steal all other things and bodge them together, do we not?

And I'd love to read that story.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

How lucky! I wish I'd seen her. I love looking at people with interesting birthmarks, scars, unusual eyes, unusual markings. (This was probably obvious from the fact that I was very taken with the picture of Phineas Gage.) Actually, it's probably a good thing I wasn't there--I might have unintentionally stared to a rude degree.

Mining Disaster

[chomiji]

(And I never commented here on the strange shifting of contexts I experienced as I recognized the post title: In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia / Down in the dark of the Cumberland mine / There's blood on the coal and the miners lie ... .)