In Thanks

Thank you, Miss Em, for naming House of Dance one of your top ten reads of the year. I know how much you read. I know how graced that recommendation feels.

Mari, thank you for naming House of Dance as one of your favorite books of the year. I am in such tremendous company in your list. I'm ... astonished!

To Becca, who writes one of the smartest book blogs in cyberspace—her idea of a review being my idea of a review, her tastes often mirroring mine—thank you for giving me a set of butterfly wings in your latest post. To Lilly for so sweetly acknowledging me in her own blog, and for entering this community so gracefully. To Tapestry100, for being such a kind supporter of Into the Tangle of Friendship, and for naming it one of his favorite books of the year.

To Sherry, who not only raised the remarkable Miss Erin we all love, but who also leaves exquisite comments on this blog—thoughtful comments.

And thank you, Lenore, for your rocking yesterday honor. You are your own tour de force in this wide web world. I'm honored to count you as a friend.

Read more...

Forever Young

Sometimes when I'm out walking in the dark, as I've just been, I find myself in the company of K., who has lived seven full decades at least, but isn't a day over 33. She has spectacular green eyes and a jumbo turtle in her back yard, and once, when a girl in Philadelphia, she watched an entire circus come to town, unpack, surprise, then leave; let her tell you about the elephant when you see her. There are hats in her background and many children, two lost already, and K. will tell me about stews and how she makes them; zinnias and how she holds them over, year to year; an after-dinner drink that is hers alone.

She knows who has come and gone in the neighborhood, and we mourn together, as tonight we have, over the loss of a young neighbor—too soon, unexpected, unjust.

Finding K. in the dark is like finding hope on a day when hope is up to no good, has gone hiding. It is this promise whisper, these words in one's head: Beauty, true beauty, never leaves.

I've never photographed K., though someday I must, I will; I need those green eyes forevermore. But last week I was photographing my friend, Judy Evans, whose beauty will never leave her, either.

Read more...

Crash

All season long the birds have seemed exuberantly confused. The first smack of sun barely tears away at night, and they're out there racketeering, calling to each other from the limbs of the dogwood and maple, the gutter underneath the eave. The conversation is immeasurable and therefore private, but it's the early-morning flight that's got me worried for their sake—the way the birds crash into my windows, fall to the ground and stagger about like drunks until they regain their wits.

Sometimes it's the newly hatched chicks. Sometimes it's an old blackbird with a slight bald spot; the beast should know better, should have some shame. And then there's the male cardinal, that flash of arrogant, impossible red, discernible even in the low dawn light.

I have friends who sleep like I do, which is hardly at all. They write of standing at their windows, too—worrying bird flight and song.

Read more...