Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I am so behind in my promos it's not even funny. So, the lovely folks at The Fabulist had this to say about my story, "The Skin Shop"....

You'd think Ms. Griffeth's home "on the verge of the Great Smoky

Mountains National Park" would give her work a pastoral bent. Yet

this wicked bit of flash fiction is sharp-edged, gristly and

grinning, packing some casual consumer biotech and a wryly

fashion-conscious narrator.

I loves me some blurbs.

The thing I love about The Fabulist is the edgy nature of the material they publish. It's not your momma's spec fic--it really goes more into the high literary, magically realistic, surrealist fiction. And when I jump into spec--that's usually where I'm going. When I found them, I was 99 percent sure I'd found the perfect landing place for "The Skin Shop."

I totally get why that crazy bastard Van Gogh was so nuts for them. I have to take pictures of mine every summer and it just never gets old. I especially love how the fat bumble bees dance around on them. They were particularly good this year. I planted them around the house and I expect them to draw the birds all fall. The heads are huge! They are big and droopy now, but I snapped this when they were really lovely--the petals soft, fat and lemon drop yellow.

I've been planting moon vines every season since 1992 and have only just now been successful in getting them to grow. No doubt, the lack of goats has been a good thing for my horticultural endeavors. But finally, I have these dinner plate sized blooms twining my porch rails. They start crumpled, like tissues thrown out after a crying jag, and unfold into the twilight. Very O'Keefey, don'tcha think?

I just found out through The Google that my chapbook of queerish themed shorts, "Dancing Dogs and Other Forgotten Tapes," was a finalist in Gertrude Press' 2009 Chapbook Contest. It's nice to know these things.

Happy Sunday.

Set your Tivo for the Travel Channel tomorrow for 10:00pm. If you aren't familiar with Samantha Brown, she's sort of like everyone's favorite BFF-girl next door--very entertaining gal. And she's going to be covering some places we all know and love--LeConte Lodge, Natahala Outdoor Center and Tuckaleechee Caverns to name a few.

Erin Pickard with The Travel Channel sends me the following release:

I work with the Travel Channel's online community team and thought you might be interested to know that Travel Channel's Great Weekends with Samantha Brown, will be featuring the Smoky Mountains in this week's episode, which airs Saturday, August 22, at 10pm E/P.

What is Travel Channel's Great Weekends with Samantha Brown?
This series serves as the definitive guide to the very best in weekend getaways. From Sundance to Montreal, or Philadelphia to Savannah, "Great Weekends" will have Sam traveling to destinations all across the U.S. and worldwide, and this weekend, she's in your neck of the woods!

Smoky Mountains Details

Sam’s tapping into her rugged side and trailblazing her way through the great outdoors of the Smokey Mountains. This weekend she’s joining a local outfitter and getting a Backpacking and Camping 101 primer in the most visited National Park in the United States. Whether it’s seeing the underworld that exists in the caverns beneath the park or taking a daring night hike in pitch black, Sam’s taking outdoor vacationing to the max. This is a roughing it weekend as it was meant to be. No cell phones or pots of honey allowed.


Some places Sam visits in the Smoky Mountains:

THE LODGE AT BUCKBERRY CREEK- Samantha stays and enjoys the view before a day of hiking.

http://www.buckberrylodge.com/

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK

http://www.nps.gov/grsm/

LECONTE LODGE – Samantha has a rugged stay here after hiking up Mount LeConte.

http://www.lecontelodge.com/

TUCKALEECHEE CAVERNS – Samantha explores the underground caverns and formations.

NANTAHALA OUTDOOR CENTER- Samantha goes rafting and kayaking on The Nantahala River.

http://www.noc.com/

Tune into the Travel Channel this Saturday, 8/22 at 10 p.m. E/P to catch the all-new episode.

And in case you haven't already, find us on our Facebook page or on Twitter. Hope to see you there!


Community

You can become part of Travel Channel's Great Weekends online community by becoming a fan of our Facebook page or following us on Twitter. Hope to see you there!

Thanks, Erin!

This is the best time of year--on into the fall--to spot insects. I've already seen the first Tuliptree Silk Moth. Anyhow, this huge fellow was munching through a weed I'd kept in the border because it had big, okra-like leaves. He'd eaten quite a lot too. I love the markings on his back legs. Isn't there a children's story where the fairies ride grasshoppers? I can really see that with this guy.

He's a Spur-Throated Grasshopper:

Category: Grasshopper or Cricket
Common Name: Spur-throated Grasshopper
Scientific Name: (Melanoplus ponderosus)

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Orthoptera
Family: Acrididae
Genus: Melanoplus
Species: ponderosus


I got punked at our little one room post office today. I dropped by to mail my netflix movies so I could get movies on Saturday. Our regular mail guy was not visible when I walked in and the guy who takes the outgoing mail was kicked back in Tom's chair. He goes into this jaw dropping story about how he was left there to keep the post office open because they came and trucked Tom away in a straight-jacket, kicking and screaming--how he'd gone completely crazy--and, well--it is the post office. And I'm thinking, damn, these people in Grassy Fork will gossip about anything and Tom's family sure didn't need this getting around (while simultaneously wondering who I would tell first). We all had a good laugh. He was really believable.

I've so lived here too long already.

Okay. I must interrupt my planned, Oh-gee-my-sunflowers-are-amazing, OMG, have you read Kim Crawford's book or what the editor of The Fabulist said about my writing made my nipples hard and my Hitachi Magic Wand jealous--to talk about effing Miracle Whip.
There are some ad campaigns I can't be silent about. No. Really. I will not tone it down. Miracle Whip, the white trashiest of white trash cooking ingredients--that secret ingredient to everything from seven layer salad (The Miracle Whip cooks the frozen peas...really!) to the mysterious Miracle Whip Cake--that erstwhile companion to lime jello has decided it wants to be hip.

Christ on a cracker, it's like watching your grandma take out her teeth to do some crunking. Can Miracle Whip ever truly be X-treeeeme? Cheese-Whiz, the beee-otch--yeah, I can see it making the crossover--it's got that slutty cheese in a can thing going for it--but Miracle Whip? I'm just not feeling you, MW.

They hired Hardee's slacker dude to do the voice over--which is even more embarrassing.

I'm relatively certain I'm not violating any corporate secrets by telling you that if you take a half cup of regular mayonnaise, add a teaspoon of sugar or high fructose corn syrup and an extra squeeze of lemon juice that you have Miracle Whip. It's mayonnaise. With sugar and extra lemon juice in it.

See, Kraft has this fantasy that Miracle Whip's demographic looks like this:



But see, Miracle Whip eaters are my peeps. They live in my hood. They look much more like Mickler's cover girl.


And you will find truly surprising uses for Miracle Whip in WTC--but, you know, it's never going to be Baconnaise or some shit like that. 'Cause, you know--it doesn't go well with Jägermeister.

This is another story I've got up right now. I already put a link up on FB so this note is for the blog readers--but some of you might have missed it first time around.

"Claude's Puppet Show" is live on LitnImage.

This is a fun, kinky little story I wrote prompting off an experience I had in Savannah once at the old Lamp Post. The Lamp Post was a legendary dive on Bay Street back in the day. You couldn't think of a better place to get knifed. Really. I've written at length on said experience and won't go further (you can read it yourself here if you like--it's long). My father was so incredibly furious when he found out I'd wandered in there. Furious like turned purple and had veins throbbing.

I'm sort of surprised that place has faded away without mention--it was infamous. There used to be so many odd little dives in Savannah. Anyone remember Jim Collin's? I know my sister does since she turned me onto it. Place didn't even have a sign. Was in the basement of this old dude's house downtown and had five tables. Pictures of Bob Dylan next to pictures of Jesus. Hank Williams on the jukebox. I went there years after my sister had visited and he still had the tape of her singing. It was just that sort of place. You'd end up there on the shank of the night and end up drunk and singing along. Had a really good hamburger, too.

Hope you enjoy this one. I was definitely going for that freaky Savannah vibe.

I have some writing to share with you. I've become a bit slack about my promos. Have been keeping up on FB, but I feel another hiatus coming on from FB.

"Kurosawa's Rain" is up on The Potomac. I really love The Potomac's combination of literature and politics and really hope they keep publishing. Please support them--this is a smart publication--not just arty.

This is an intensely personal story about love, madness and failure. How you can’t always protect the ones you love from themselves and how maybe you shouldn’t and how you’re going to feel like shit about that anyway. The Kurosawa references are specific and if you come away saying “WTF?!!!” to yourself, it’s okay. One reader in workshop told me the story would be okay if I took out all the Japanese crap. But I didn’t. Because it was important to me. Anyway. I don’t usually explain what I meant when I wrote something, but I dug around in my marrow with this one.

It’s got two commas that don’t belong. See, back in the olden days we used to write our stories in notebooks and on typewriters (if we could type—not everyone could back in those days). I now have multiple drafts of the same story where I used to just have one dog-eared manuscript with many scribbles that would then be typed fresh. Anyway. Sent the wrong draft. Two commas. Crap.

Sometimes a curse is called for. You know what I mean. An invocation to the PTB to bring misfortune upon an evil-doer. It basically does jack-shit but there’s a trill of maniacal power that hums when you say it making you feel better at a time when you need to feel better. Threats, curses, self-righteous proselytizing—they all serve the same purpose. Give you the mistaken impression you have power over a person or situation.

So, I’m in the Dread Sigil Walmartus yesterday to buy white sewing machine thread. Since Walmart made the idiotic decision to do away with their fabric department, even in rural areas, it’s left a gaping vacuum. See, the fact that they even carried fabric put most fabric stores out of business and now I must drive two hours to buy fabric. Yet another reason Walmart is a purveyor of The End Times. The Reasonably-Priced Horseman of the Apocalypse. But they still have some notions. But they only had three small spools of white thread yesterday.

I snap up those spools and head with my cart to the grocery section to get some milk, but on the way have to stop to use the facilities. I dutifully leave my cart outside of the bathroom and when I come out, some tooth-sucking asshole has stolen my cart. With the only three spools of Coats and Clark white All-Purpose Dual Duty in the store. Fuck me.

I’m in a bad mood already so I go into a major whine and mobilize 10 managers to run around the store looking for the thread. I don’t care about the cart, I say, those are the only three rolls of white thread for sale in Newport and I must have them. I sit on the bench in the shoe department directing my minions with ill-tempered demands, deliberately becoming every retailer clerk’s nightmare. And I know the poor bastards don’t get paid nearly enough to put up with this sort of abuse. It’s not pretty.

Suddenly, my ire turns on the slack-jawed trailer trash who took the cart and I start to level a curse upon their no doubt mulleted heads.

I hope they….

At this point reason kicks in and says, for Chryssake’s woman! They stole your damn shopping cart—it’s not the end of the world and the poor dumb fucks no doubt live in a hell of their own choosing, far worse than anything you could think up.

So my vicious “drop dead” turns into a weak, noodley,

…have a really bad day…

Oh. Yeah. I told them. Have a really bad day.

It now occurs to me we need a wider range of curses. Something to use when the Old Testament is just overkill. Here are a few I think might work:

May inanimate objects love your feet.

May the hem of your skirt be caught in the waistband of your pantyhose without your knowledge and may you walk down the aisle of your church or some other public place with your ass hanging out.

May your Axe body spray offend the object of your affection. (Okay, that's sort of a given...)

May you have an enormous, disfiguring zit on your wedding day.

May you suffer bloating and gas in a no fart zone.

May your mother walk in on you masturbating...

So that's a start. I'm sure you can come up with more and invite you to do so. We really need some milder curses. After all, living is harder than dying.

The problem with dropping back into the world after dropping out is that you will never be quite the same. It changes you, making you a bit less able to navigate the so-called "real life." Think about the characters we know of the sort--von Munchausen, Crusoe, Gulliver...the message is pretty clear. Yes, of course we want to hear all about your fabulous tales, but you must be some sort of freak. Yeah. It marks you, if only with some sort of invisible, anachronistic rune.

Recluses are also weird in the public conception. Salinger, Hughes, the late great M.J. There's no doubt that nothing says "not like us..." like keeping your own company and much of that is just being out of touch.

I never wanted to be like any of these people, yet, here I am. I was trying to explain to teh therapist yesterday about how "sensitive" I was as a child and how the only relief I had from the anxiety of socialization was the moments I could steal by myself. (Luckily, this was not so difficult.) How I seem to have sought that peace for myself as an adult and how it seems now, ultimately, to be a source of regret. But at the same time, it was inevitable, a foregone conclusion. Fate.

They drug children such as I was now. Rightly so, I suppose. But I have to wonder if it is a bit like helping a chick out of an egg? Chicks like that fail to thrive and usually die. I wouldn't be who I am without that struggle. But at the same time, I know it would have been an unspeakable cruelty to allow me to founder in that emotional misery had there been some other choice. I was so lucky to be born to the mother I had--she was such a fierce protector of her wounded chick.

Anyway, what brings this ramble to the surface is pretty funny. Friend Patti and I went to K-town the other day to meet with a group of like-minded women at a local coffee shop. Friend Patti doesn't carry my stigmata since she is not here by choice exactly and fights the good fight to keep up with the outside world and its strange magicks.

We had a good time and it was the first time in years I'd been outside in a social situation in ages. And yes, I speak of Cocke County as though it were some hinterland shrouded in mist because that's exactly what it fucking is. Mist shrouded hinterlands-R-us.

Toward the end of the evening, we are listening to an attractive 20-something bemoan her attempts to connect with the object of her affection. It's a familiar tale, told again and again from caveman days. I love you so much I can't bear to talk to you and anything I say is going to be wrong anyway so maybe I shouldn't talk to you at all--whaddayou all think? Huh? Huh? Puhleeze??

Love sucks. Don't let anyone tell you different.

This discussion swirled around exactly what the perfect text message to send might be. So I say, "Hey. Look. What would be wrong with just calling her up and saying, 'Hey, would you be up for dinner tonight?'"

Everyone looks at me like I just intoned, "Yea verily, what say you to inscribing in cuneiform your sentiments on yon clay tablet and dedicating it to her honor with the blood of a virgin sheep?"

Someone rescued me by breaking the stunned gaze and saying, "Yeah, what's wrong with that?"

I haven't had a cell phone in seven years and apparently missed the point in polite society where a text message could bear the considerable weight and import of a heart, besotted, tortured or broken.

Old school, baby. It's how I roll.

The God of Blackberries requires child sacrifice, blood and scratches, owies laid open, knees scraped and elbows skinned. Walk into the brambles and shuffle the canes, picking as you go, but leave behind rich redness and pain. The God of all Blackberries demands a price, stinging skin pierced by thorns you didn’t know about until the lemonade spilled. And who is to say at the end of the day whether or not you lie when your red-smeared mouth proclaims you ate none, brought home all.

Did everyone have a fun Fourth? Have your fill of hotdogs? Damn, I loves me a skinless Nathan's, know what I mean? Me? I spent a pretty quiet day. Watched some episodes of Oz. Drank some hot tea. Mowed the lawn. Watched the fireworks.

Anyway, my buddy, Leslie, over at Leslie's Omnibus, lured me over to blog story writing with her Take Three exercise. It's a bit more constricting a prompt than I'm accustomed to working with, but I gave it the old college try. The prompt was to write a story in under 1000 words with the following three sentences:

I hate nature… and WalMart.

And that’s when Nana went commando.

Moments like this make me very, very nervous.

So...I give you for your blogging consumption...

Hippie Chick Gets Us Busted at the Walmart Parking Lot

Donnie threw a hand up to shade his eyes, looking across the Walmart parking lot and the four-lane highway to the county sheriff's depot. The wind blew just right, 10 mph the paper said, wafting right into the right-hand corner of the Wal-mart parking lot. The monthly marijuana burn was about to commence and Donnie was looking forward to a free contact high.

He squinted and spat, kicking some garbage left by the fireworks vendor who'd vacated that bit of concrete that morning. Walter and his hippie chick girlfriend pulled up in the parking spot next to Donnie's truck.

"They started yet?" Walter hung his head out the car window, his squinty ginger eyes fading into the freckles of his ginger face and ginger hair.

"Nah, but they moving everything out onto the bonfire."

Walter and the hippie chick joined Donnie on the tailgate of the Ford truck.

"Hey man," said Donnie, "You got any crack?"

Hippie Chick scowls. Walter rolled his eyes. "Nah, Sasha don't let me do none."

"It's not natural," Sasha the hippie chick said as she jumped from the truck and began dancing a jerky, inelegant dance, not at all inconspicuous.

"Moments like this make me very, very nervous," Walter said, as shoppers turning into the Walmart rubbernecked at Sasha's dance, her hairy armpits all exposed. He passed a few hydros into Donnie's silent palm while Sasha wasn't looking.

"She's gonna draw a crowd."

"No shit. Rentacops too, prolly."

"So where'd you get these? I thought your uncle had your granny?" Donnie popped the hydros.

"We done got her back. Unc let her get away from him in Home Depot. She got one of them lawn tractors started and that's when Nana went commando."

"Christ, man! Shut the hell up! I don't want to hear nothin' 'bout your granny's va-jay-jay!"

"You perv!" Walter shoved Donnie in the arm. "I mean she went crazy! Mowed down half of lawn and garden. Put three guys in the ER before they stopped her. Anyway. Court ordered her back with us so Momma's got control of her meds and social security again. Unc's madder'n'hell."

Sasha pirouetted, bare dirty toes gripping the concrete as a cloud of blue, marijuana-flavored smoke rose from the depot and came roiling across the parking lot. She spread her legs wide, picked up the hem of her blouse and fanned the smoke into her face. She wasn't wearing a bra.

"Let us thank Gaia for her bounty!"

"Fuck me, what the hell is she on, Walter?"

"Mushrooms. Jimson weed. Tree bark. Christ, I dunno. She don't take nothin' less'n it grows in the woods."

Sasha stripped her top completely off.

"Make her stop, man! Woah--that's more 'nature' than I need. Shit man, Walmart done called the cops," Donnie said as the city cops came peeling into the lot.

"I hate nature," Walter said, "and Walmart."

I'm sitting sewing and watching the second season of Dexter. The rain is pelting down hard and the dogs are laid out sleeping in that way they do in the summer--you can see them soaking up the air conditioning through their skins, spread out as though they could unzip their fur and lay it on top of the vents. Wave it around to catch the breeze. There is a calamitous knocking coming from the laundry room like someone is hammering. Jesus Marimba, I think, what fresh hell might this be?

I go into the laundry room and the racket continues. I see nothing out the window--my first thought being the electric company geniuses have arrived with some insult. I walk outside and there is a great fucking woodpecker dismantling the house near the utilities connections. In that short amount of time, he's done an impressive amount of damage and revealed a carpenter bee nest.

So, I guess this means I need to put "paint the house" on the long list of crap I can't afford to do. Ack! Splpppt. Now I'm wondering if this is retribution for the yellow jacket holocaust I brought about recently.

June has sort of snuck up on me. The rabbits are everywhere and bold as Jehovah's Witnesses coming into the yard to bring me their good rabbit news. My poppies and hollyhocks are blooming. There's a slider turtle big as a turkey platter down in the frog pond--it's been wet enough to keep water in the pond for the first time in two years. Still needs dredging but there are tadpoles jetting around the willows that sprung up during the drought. Willows love wet feet.

An unfortunate casualty of the rains has been my ancient walnut down in the glade where the sentinel chimney stands. I need to see if it took out the chimney. It most likely did. Looks like the ground got so wet that it couldn't support the tree. I asked around and there evidently isn't much call for walnut wood anymore. They used to make gunstocks from it--it's a beautiful wood--but now they use maple. Still, I'd like to find a way to get the massive tree lifted out of the little holler so I could at least cut it up for firewood. Wouldn't mind having something carved out of it. It was my favorite tree on the property.

I've been sewing, making nightgowns. I like to sleep in Victorian chemises. I'm about to cut up an old favorite to pattern it. Or maybe I'll try to pattern it without cutting it up--takes a while for cotton to reach that tissue thin, soft as puppies state. It's right before it shreds into nothingness leaving us naked and exposed to the rough muslin of life.

about Tennessee doctors.

The most ironically named healthcare organization in the world, Mercy Health Partners, has granted me an audience after a year of them refusing to return my phone calls and, notably, of them leaving me to writhe in agony in a pool of my own feces for five days. That, you may remember was back in September (my birthday week) and I've been in therapy for PTSD ever since. I had begun to find a sense of peace with that when they called asking me to come kiss their ring or something. But of course, it all came roaring back and now I'm back to not sleeping and major crazy time burning in effigy and calling down curses upon the Assholes and the Assholes they rode in on (aka Rural Medical Services).

It's not good for me feeling rage like this. So, I deflect with humor as much as possible. But with all things truly hilariously funny--there's an edge to it. After all, it's only funny if the baby carriage actually does fall down the stairs or if the pain patient actually gets poo on themselves in my case. Anyway. I agreed to go to the appointment and now I find myself wondering if I'll be able to get through it without erupting into a Medea-esque crazy bitch rage. Or making unending references to their soullessness, lack of medical ethics or insatiable desire to kill kittens.

Do you remember the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers? If you are too young to remember this, go find it on YouTube. In it, Germans are staying at the hotel so no one is supposed to mention The War. So Basil (John Cleese) spends the entire episode making Hitler references.

How am I supposed to get through this appointment without mentioning The War, for God's sake?

My friend, Brad Green, asked me to submit something to The Legendary, a journal he's joined as editor. Brad has one of those strong, flavorful and most definitely virile Southern voices--the sort you expect from Texas. If you haven't checked out his blog, Elevate the Ordinary, I encourage you to do so. Read A Visit to a Tittie Bar. I like that one. A lot.

Anyways. I sent him a selection of what I had coming off the burner at the time and they chose The Adamantine Heart and Love Cats.

The Adamantine Heart (excerpt)

It's easier than you might think to turn your heart into Adamantine. It sneaks up on you while you are trying to get love right. It blindsides you when your teenage boyfriend drowns in a freak accident. It slides into you when your steady fellow in college smacks you around. It happens when your mother dies, then your father dies. It happens when you walk in on your best friend, hanging nude from your gravity boots while your husband, in a hood, whips her with your riding crop--the one you actually use on your horse.

Love Cats (excerpt)

Out on the pier they'd stand, looking out to the ocean with opal eyes, boding bad luck. They'd throw things into the sea from time to time. Someone said it was the ashes of their vanquished conquests. Someone else said it was the tiny bones of their hearts. And still another said it was a stack of handwritten valentines delivered into their hands by scores of damaged lovers. No doubt they were a couple, slinking through the night, all black eyeliner and sadness.

Many other excellent stories from writer friends-- Tim Yelvington-Jone's "Grace," Dawn Allison's "No Fear for Flowers," Frank O'Connor's "Raindrops," and many more. Go read!

****

In other news...if you are whining because I'm not on Facebook more often--well, it ain't gonna happen until I get high speed something or other. Takes me six hours every two weeks to do what it takes most of you 20 minutes to accomplish on FB. Facebook's interface is about as elegant as a pile of dog poop--so, I've got better things to do than watch the swirling beachball of death and rebuilding my permissions every 20 minutes. But I love you guys and have no problem answering emails.

God, I love Spike TV--I can't be the only woman who'd rather watch Spike than Lifetime, am I?

Anyway, I've become addicted to Deadliest Warrior, which is basically Jackass with reenactors, computers and ballistics gel brain cases. It reminds me of being 12 and sticking firecrackers in metal tiki torches we'd put tin cans on to watch them go "boom." The epic pre-pubertal exploration of "gee, what can I blow up next?" Or later, as a teenager, launching bottle rockets by hand out the back of your friend's hatchback at night and that wonderful screaming sound they made--especially when you were really high. If you grow at all nostalgic for those more innocent, stupid times when gunpowder and marijuana went together like cake and ice cream, Deadliest Warrior is the show for you.

The basic premise is to match two historical warriors who would never have met each other in real life, rate their weapons then run computer simulations on who would win. The pairings are hilarious and unlikely: Apache vs Gladiator, Viking vs Samurai, Spartan vs Ninja, Pirate vs Knight... Here comes the funny part. They invite experts to whack the ballistics gel torso with their chosen warrior's weapons. A doctor comes out and explains in detail what just happened to the dummy and how terribly dead this guy now is. No, really, the funny part is getting the two teams of experts together and watching their faces when their warrior loses. Some of them actually whine at each other. I'm pretty sure if the show's producers allowed it, things would turn into an all out brawl. And if you want some real entertainment, check out the show's blog and read the comments.

Anyway. That's my guilty pleasure for the week.

Our first true, wet, Tennessee spring in two years has set the forest afire with flowers. Far up in the reaches, beyond the reach of dirty-foot dryads, are the poplar tulips. The blossoms are heavy like magnolias but not as big. Green, yellow and orange, you usually only see them on the ground after a big blow or a heavy rain. As luck would have it, I came across a huge limb blown down by a recent storm.

The flowers are pretty in the way I most like pretty--twisted with the colors off just-so. Like the pretty part of death or the pretty part of a dreadful calamity. I'm told not everyone is capable of appreciating such things. How pitcher plants and some orchids look like something from a dark place or a planet we couldn't possibly cohabit. But poplar tulips are like that, a delicate sickly green touched by jaundice with a splash of dangerous orange in the center. They look like something a clever fey would concoct a precious poison with--a poison fatal to inconstant lovers, perhaps. Or people who speak without thinking. Or the pompous. Or maybe not the pompous because they are just funny. Annoying sometimes but generally funny. I mean, it's funny when someone thinks they are better than you for whatever reason, since you can hear the thundering bootsteps of hubris clomping along behind them and the whistling displacement of air as said boot kicks the pompous in the arse. (As it always does...)

And poplar wood breaks with the exact brittleness of human bone. How cool is that?

So, Max is once again barking his frantic--OMG! OMG! OMFG! Lookit! Lookit! Lookit!--and that can mean only one thing--Snake. Or trapped something.

Anyway, I find he is yapping at a black racer snake living behind my heat pump. The racer has caught a baby bunny wabbit and is squeezing it to death. Not sure how the bunny got there--unless the bunnies are living there and the black racer came upon them. Or Max chased the bunny into the snake's opportunistic reach. Not sure, but squeezing was well under way by the time I found them.



I'm actually sort of glad to have this sort of snake living around the house because they eat mice and rats and all sorts of things I don't want around. But I've kept snakes before and I would have sworn this was a much more ambitious meal than a snake this size could handle. I found a big one in the chicken coop once that had eaten the fake easter eggs I'd put in the nests to encourage the hens to lay. Had to kill that one since it wouldn't have survived with all that plastic in its gullet.


I gave him some privacy to concentrate on consuming the bunny and when I came back out he had stuffed himself in the hidey hole between the heat pump and the house. So I didn't get a picture of the lump. But it might have looked like this:


Except with a bunny rabbit.

Well, since I no longer have the goat herd keeping the vegetation down, the snakes have arrived in spades. This morning, I go out and Max is having kittens over near the drop off. I go over because I know how a dog behaves around a snake before it has been bitten--and Max is doing just that happy dance. The one before they become intimately aware of what a massive envenomation feels like. I call him off and there right in front of him, reared up like a cobra and coiled in four zig-zagged, snakey neck springs--OH NOES--it's crotalus horridus! A Timber Rattler. Actually, it's the only rattler I've seen in the wild here, not counting Pastor Jimmy's church snakes. I stand there clapping my hands to keep Max's attention--he's scared because he thinks he's pissed me off--until the rattler backs down. Max and Shadow get frogmarched into the house where we wait for the snake to find a better place to hang out and for Max to lose interest.

Speaking of venomous reptiles, I ran into Pastor Jimmy and Pam outside the library last week. It reminded me how much I've missed their company and I think I should make an effort to go to church. Perhaps it will pull me out of my funk. And Jimmy should really come snake hunting up here now, especially now that the snakes are back.

The story I've been writing this week has not been going well. Primarily because I got sucked into my research. There's something about the late 18th century that calls to me in a very personal way. Anyway, I've been rereading Sade--yes, as in the Marquis de...and feeling very sympathetic towards him. I've actually shed a few tears for him this week. His life was such a train wreck and the deeper I delved into his life, the more I realized he reminded me of Scott--I think because Sade lacked filters like Scott does. And if you are reading this, going on what you think you know about Sade, then you may be a bit horrified I feel so sad for him. But really, if you compare him to the monsters that surrounded him--beings like Robespierre and Saint-Just--he comes off as a kitten. A sort of screwed up, self-involved, control freak kitten with issues needing serious therapy, but certainly not the boogie-man history painted him as. I think he was pretty much robbed. I hope he got a do-over without the maniacal monster-in-law.

Anyway, I started writing a story using Sade's voice but realized I wasn't ready. Sometimes you have to wait until you are ready to write a thing and no matter how much you force it, it won't come. I know that story is in me, it's just not ripe yet.