keeping time
I put time away.
I locked it in a cabinet. An old cabinet, painted to look older than it is, with a lock and a key. I put the key on a chain around my neck.
The cabinet has a glass door so I can see inside to check that time is still there.
I want to be sure it doesn’t get away from me again.
I put time away so it would stop.
So everything will remain just as it is.
As it was.
So you can stay.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
So the post-holiday post has been delayed until now because, as I mentioned on Twitter, my grandmother passed away last week.
She was 95 years old and until recently was still going up & down her stairs in South Boston. It was not terribly unexpected but that does not make it any less sad and I will think of her when I have cups of tea, which is frequently.
I looked through my computer for photographs and while I don’t have any recent ones, I did find this, which I love (I never knew my grandfather but apparently he had fabulous hats):
Thank you to everyone who sent kind words and condolences via Twitter, they are much appreciated.
So, probably obvious but I lost most of my post-holiday, pre-Book Expo week to catch up on things. I will likely not catch up on emails or Twitter replies or things like that any time soon, my apologies. I have to do things like pack. And unpack, I’m not even properly unpacked yet.
Regarding Book Expo America next week: yes, I will be there. Last I checked I wasn’t on the list of authors on the website but I really do have a signing on Wednesday at 11:30am in the Random House booth. Haven’t signed things in a while, maybe more letters will be legible in my signature. Probably not, though.
If you hadn’t figured it out from the periodic palm trees popping up on Twitter, I spent the last few weeks in Florida. Mostly around Fort Lauderdale with a few excursions to Miami for art deco architecture research. I will try to post more photos at some point soon(ish).
I read and I wrote and I flounced around on beaches and I actually got to relax for a change which was splendid. Proper book-centric post forthcoming but the book I enjoyed the most was Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. It’s fascinating and also has a very pretty cover.
Speaking of books, while I was away the circus was chosen for the Huffington Post Book Club. I am delighted, of course, though I feel slightly bad as it was the only one of the nominated books not yet out in paperback but I hope all the book club readers enjoy it. Also in UK book club news, the circus was chosen for the Richard & Judy Summer Book Club which is also delightful and flattering and I hope everyone reading it in the summer finds it an autumnal sort of escape.
I will likely not manage a proper Florida recap, but I did have one of the loveliest meals I’ve ever at Market 17 (the dessert involved this, it was magic!) and I would totally go back to dine in the dark. Also I saw more butterflies than I’ve ever seen before in my life and I narrowly escaped an attack by a small pink lizard and I watched ducklings learn to swim. Not all at the same time.
And I watched the sunrise from the seashore while wearing a matching dress. I miss the sound of the waves already.
wish dish
I blame Dr. Seuss.
It’s a belief that solidified in my head after all the rhyming, the fish wish dish stuff.
I was easily influenced by rhyming things. My mother says I used to try to put a hat on the cat and cry when he wouldn’t wear it.
(My mother can’t stand Dr. Seuss. Or Curious George, but I never cared much for him either, with that weird yellow hat guy.)
I don’t try to force fedoras on kittens anymore but that dish wish thing stuck in my mind.
It stuck without the fish, and with a technicality: you have to break a dish to make your wish properly.
I know it sounds silly, but broken dish wishing works.
Though it means I constantly have to stock up on dishes.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
a saturday afternoon quest for power
It’s a stupid thing to search for, she tells me, for about the hundredth time since we started walking.
I ask her if it would be better to search for Knowledge and she says that it would.
Well, Knowledge is Power, isn’t it? I ask, and that shuts her up for a good half an hour but after we find the next marker (a rock this time, engraved instead of painted and half-hidden in the grass) she starts up again.
How do you know you’ll get to keep it if you find it? she asks.
I’m not sure but I don’t tell her that.
We’ll figure that out when we reach it, I say.
Then she asks if we have a big enough bag if we need to bring it home and I worry that I haven’t thought this through properly.
I suggest that she look for shapes in the clouds, distracting her while I search for the next sign with another arrow to point the way.
She finds a pirate ship and a dancing bear.
I start to wonder what it is I’m looking for.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
accidental poetry
It’s the easiest way to compose a poem, he tells me.
I don’t believe him, but I nod in what I hope is a thoughtful-looking way as he throws the letters up into the air. I make a silent mental note that he used the word compose and not write.
We both watch as the letters cascade to the ground in random patterns: a W overlapping an R, a zig-zag that could be a Z or a sideways N.
An O joins an M for a momentary meditation before they separate again.
Once the letters settle they’re all nonsense and I can’t find any proper words.
I try to tell him that I’m still not sure I understand how it’s supposed to work but he shushes me, already scribbling in his notebook.
I stare at the pile of letters, searching for words though there aren’t nearly enough vowels.
There’s a B next to an R with a Y that reminds me of a girl I once knew named Briony who laced her shoes backwards with the bows near the toes.
And now I think I get it.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
