Art and shiny things…
When her sister moved across the border
there was no border, not even a line
like the one they’d drawn in chalk
down the centre of their bedroom,
dividing walls and window, the light
parsed out between them
like a parent’s love. Only the door,
its point of entry and exit, was shared.
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Marjorie Lotfi Gill, Cura Mag
What was it he needed to read? There was a book on one
of the shelves. He only remembered the cover was green.
88 keys, 11 octaves. After daily exercises,
the lid came down on a felt runner of green.
The first year is paper, the eighth bronze, the twelfth
silk or linen; the sixteenth, a candlestick silvery-green.
What trees grew in front of our first house? One
shed only flame-colored leaves, the other green.
One arrow struck the girl, the other struck the god. He pursued her,
even as her feet grew roots, her arms leafed over with green.
Near the water, there used to be a house of quarantine. On a short
stretch of road, broken shells in the gravel amid tufts of green.
Should your mind quietly open that side door and leave, what
will you remember of us, of our days greener than green?
-Luisa A Igloria, Via Negativa
In memory of Jonathan Crombie, here’s an absolutely lovely video from Sullivan Entertainment, the production company behind the much-loved miniseries adaptation of the Anne of Green Gables books.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, you must watch Green Gables Fables, especially the final episode of the first season, which I highlighted in my Literary Web Series Roundup
I could not predict the fullness
of the day. How it was enough
to stand alone without help
in the green yard at dawn.
How two geese would spin out
of the ochre sun opening my spine,
curling my head up to the sky
in an arc I took for granted.
And the lilac bush by the red
brick wall flooding the air
with its purple weight of beauty?
How it made my body swoon,
brought my arms to reach for it
without even thinking.
-Susan Glassmeyer
Mjölk is a design gallery featuring work from Scandinavia and Japan, located in Toronto, Canada. Mjölk (which means “milk” and is pronounced Mi-yelk) is the branchild of curators John Baker and Juli Daoust, who strive for an aesthetic that is “pure, honest, and essential.”
I completely adore the stripped-clean minimalism of their pieces, with the beautiful lines and calming focus on functionality and ease of use.
Here is what they say about their store:
“Mjölk is both a gallery who exhibits work by both arists and artisans from Scandianvia and Japan, and also a lifestyle store; we look to our everyday life to find inspiration for the products we carry. Our smaller products can be used without thought, or quietly admired. In our eyes just the simple satisfaction of functionality and durability, is all you need for a successful product, but when you can derive beauty from the uttermost simplistic tools, then you have something special.”
As your resident webseries lover, it is my duty to inform you that The Misselthwaite Archives, which has been pleasant but mostly uninspired so far, finally introduced Declan Sower, based on Dickon of the book, and there are sparks and cuteness.
The Chinese truck driver
throws the rope
like a lasso, with a practiced flick,
over the load:
where it hovers an instant,
then arcs like a willow
into the waiting,
gloved hand
of his brother.
What does it matter
that, sitting in traffic,
I glanced out the window
and found them that way?
So lean and sleek-muscled
in their sweat-stiffened t-shirts:
offloading the pallets
just so they can load up
again in the morning,
and so on,
and so forth
forever like that—
like Sisyphus
I might tell them
if I spoke Mandarin,
or had a Marlboro to offer,
or thought for a minute
they’d believe it
when I say that I know
how it feels
to break your own
back for a living.
Patrick Phillips
We used to overturn rocks on the shore
and expose them to the belly of the sun.
I knew that some rocks should not be moved
but you picked them up to skip pebbles
and slice fountains in the sea
where they were lost
and you were satisfied
because yours had skipped the farthest
and the deepest
while mine grew steam in my palm.
Your hand in mine was sandpaper.
When you closed your fingers I was a bottled neck
with no wings flapping but the heartbeat
of one chipped stone against another.
read more at Cadence Collective
-Robin Dawn Hudechek
Fox Searchlight released the first, gorgeous poster for the upcoming adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, starring Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts.
In news that had me gibbering with nerdy glee, Steven Stielberg is to direct an adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a hugely popular sci-fi/dystopia novel that is a blast of inventive good fun as it follows the adventures of Wade Watts, a brilliant, somewhat overweight pop culture fanatic (I mention this because I wonder if the film will be true to this or replace him with someone who looks like, I don’t know, a Hemsworth) who spends his life, along with most of humanity, inside a massive virtual reality game.
The Flash‘s Jesse Martin, Carlos Valdez, and Rick Cosnett sing a gospel, acapella version of The Serenity Ballad and it is everything you want from life. Apparently it was a big thank-you to Joss Whedon for donating a large sum to their Kickstarter project.
Coffee and Irony 