…The art of gifting and giving…that makes a holiday….
…and recognizing gifts that are given all the time, like the flock of birds at the 6 am feeder, the two-line email from your son, the sigh of the congregation after Joy to the World has been sung and the notes still ring through the cathedral, the mailman walking a small package to the front door, a friend who shows up on your doorstep and pitches in to help decorate for a party, the music in your car on the way to work, the sincere and sharing words across the miles and universe that bind the bloggers together in so many wonderful ways.

And this gift? It’s from a blog friend who just happens to be, among many other bajillion things, an artist!
Chapeaux, Jeanie!

(bet you wanna know what’s inside! next post…)

Light on grey nearly-snowy days…

Hello and Happy Holidays!
Pictures and words to follow – just saying “hey!”
Did not finish Nano (wisdom creeped in when freelance ops arose and I made some choices) and we’re holiday-ing the house now but where’s the camera? Somewhere beneath the Christmas boxes, I suspect.

Happy December 2, already!

Doin’ the writing thing.
Nano-ing  and full bore on other stuff, too.
Not to mention a day  or two off to go larking about..
Back later!
You didn’t think I’d miss blogging once nano wraps up and Christmas harks!

hugs, Oh

Sure, autumn has its “warts,” like leaves to be raked, confusion over appropriate garb, frosty mornings requiring a scarf and afternoon sun that forces removal of said scarf,  the shift in bird population (cardinals are still here, but these are now the northern cardinals from Michigan and Minnesota, not the cardinals that criss-crossed the pool all summer),  a mix of comfort food and the letting-fo of summer salads and certain fruits, the pushme-pullyou of buying decorations (for Halloween, Thanksgiving and/or Christmas?) and the desire to stay home and read a book on the couch or do the fall cleaning before winter sets in and the fireplace becomes the aesthetic choice over the TV or romps by the pool, now totally and officially closed.

Gotta love it.

It also bring a change in blogging as holidays near, deadlines arise and nanawrimo whispers “yes, participate, write, pick up your pen at midnight on the Oct 31-Nov 1 and do it, do it, do it!” in the background.

This is no time really for shorter days and yet, the blessing of it all, of the seasons and reasons!

This is not  Jane Austen’s “Emma.”
It is a graphic novel by Ms Mori. I’ve read it for Dolce’s Japanese Literature Challenge III.
It was my first experience with reading “back to front” (as we would consider it), and left to right.
The book had instructions on the inside cover for neo-readers.
Nice touch.

The story:
It’s Victorian England and Emma is a maid, a beautiful maid by all accounts (tho’ we see her be-spectacled and be-hatted). She receives letters and invitations from all manner of young men and writes her regrets back to them.

Along comes a rich young lord who was nannied by Emma’s boss.
He has a friend from India who happens to show up on the scene as well.
Life goes on with the leisure class visiting one another while Emma worries about how she will afford new eyeglasses, goes shopping, visits the library.
Will the young lord win her heart? Will his Indian friend usurp Emma’s affections?
Does Emma have a clue?

The story is genteel.
The artwork is wonderful, rich with detail and accurate (for all I know!) to the architecture and costume of the time.
I took my time reading this.
I didn’t want to read it quickly, like I might read an Archie and Friends comic book.

But then, this is a book. A real book. A nice book.
The paper is nice. The covers are nice.  There is plenty to look at, to stand around and stare at and appreciate.
Slow down, look around, enjoy, was my sub-mantra as I read.

Interesting how Mori chooses to use her cartoon squares.  She gives us close ups on character’s faces. No hurry. She knows her art. The street scenes are wonderful. Then, with the Indian entrouage arriving, we see a certain bejeweled pomp including elephants and servants. There are also crowd scenes and street scenes where everthing is sketched, right down to lit streetlamps but sometimes, Mori leaves faces blank, undrawn.

Mori always labels the end of the chapter (except chpt 3 in my book does NOT have “end”) and follows the “end” page with a one-page  “epilogue.”
I like her style.

Is the story stunning? Not yet. Is the reader intrigued? Yes, by the combination of all the elements. 
Yes, I have ordered volume 2. (be careful; it’s a multi-volume story and brand new, it retails at $9.95 for each volume and there are at least 4.)
So, yeah, I would like to get the entire set…but there’s no rush.

Manga. Emma. Try it for your bedtime read.

National Novel Writing Month approaches and having listened to the summons from founder Chris Baty, I have once again signed up. People prepare for marathons; writers prep for Nanowrimo, signing in, fattening up their author profiles, looking with some excitement and some joy at the word count scale and thinking, though not yet writing, about their work, the story they will trudge through to reach 50,000 words in 30 days.

Ah, November.

Why that month? so many ask. Why not wait ’til January or February when there’s “nothing to do?”
I have no idea how November won the writing olympics-of-sorts, but I do know this: if you can write when you might be shopping, planning, working, cleaning, decorating, visiting and partying, yea, if you can do these things AND write, then by jove, you’ve got some  serious call to write. 

It’s a heck of an exercise, one I love.

And so we stand at the starting line, pens, PCs, laptops at the ready, ready to write our way through a story.
Join. It’s a friendly place whether you get 3,000 words or 50,000.  Check out nanowrimo.org.

Your blogging friends will understand if you “drop out” for a couple weeks. 
Come as you are. Wear what you like. Choose your hours.

Bells bling-a-ring-a-sing the sweet weekend morning.

(Yup, bling-a-ring-a-sing is one word.)

It was like buying magic beans.
HM found the moonflower seeds in a shop and struck by the name and the hope they would really bloom at night, he bought them.
He planted them in a huge pot in the front of the house. 
The vines began, huge green leaves.
And then the deer discovered them.
HM  put some ratty old wire mesh around them as protection.
I waited for a note in our mailbox from the neighbors. (None came.)
The spindly vine continued but the leaves looked to be fainting in the summer sun and so we moved the pot near a tree by the pool.

Suddenly they thrived. I shouldn’t say “they.”

There was no “they” yet.
There was only more and more huge broad green leaves, very nice, very ordinary.
About three weeks ago, as I stood on the patio just after dark, wondering whether to stay in the balm or go inside and “do” something, I caught sight of something white and shining.
I would say that it called my name, but it didn’t quite.
But it said something, because I turned suddenly to see it.
It was the first moonflower.
We had heard that people have moonflower parties, set up their chairs and wait and watch for the bloom to open. It happens in a minute.

I ran indoors to get HM and dragged him outdoors.
Flower drama.
Yes, the moonflower blooms late afternoon, early evening and all night long.
It’s over and done by daylight the next day.
It is said to be fragrant although we didn’t notice that particularly.
It is huge, the size of a small plate.
It is silken and can barely hold it’s own, nearly draping over itself.
If I wrote a children’s story, it would be in it.

I examined the vine the next day to see how many more blooms might happen.
There were about eight “buds.”
The weather has cooled considerably.
The plant has slowed down, though there are about 12 possible blooms to go.
However, the frost threatens and the moonflower, like other flora, does not like frost. 

Next year, I”m plunking my chair next to the vine and watching.
It is a magical thing to have a night-blooming flower.

Got that Fall thing going on
cleaning up and cleaning out
sighing over memories
memorizing them again
then, tossing the bits and binders of paper on which they’re marked

awash in photos of then and now, however,
I cannot be so blithe
and so will change the way of working te photo albums and journals,
marrying them,
allowing them to become totally non-chrono

because what is a life?
It is not a stream straight from here to there
it’s layered and zigs and zags.

This picture, though, of a kitchen towel and three limes?
It’s to be future ephemera, lost on a CD of saved pics
or
maybe I’ll print it and pile it up and later sort, on a someday, sort the photo pile
and we’ll laugh and remember the moment
at the store when HM and I purchased the towel
much needed (we use them like crazy in the kitchen)
and thought we’d get just one, just one at first,
to see how it held up, to see if later in the wash, the color would run out of it.
Just to see, we bought one.

And the limes? they smack of summer.
We’re on the verge of ignoring them.
They’ll make it into a fajita dish.

We’re on, going on ahead, on to the apples now.

BOOKS
Soon there will be something to report.
I am reading the ARC of CLEAVING, Julie Powells’ new book.
Oh, are you all in for a surprise!!!
And reading concurrently Eleanor Lipman’s THE WAY MEN ACT.  I haven’t read her before. I like her writing.
More on both  later.

Oh, and there are all those New Yorker magazines to catch up on.