My Oedipus complex ncluded in iIn praise of mothers anthology is hilarious. The anthology also includes Jane Goodall's story Mothers and daughters about chimpanzees. A quirky behavior.Its amazing that studies have been done on chimpanzees to the extent we know how the mother-daughter relation saga plays out with different personalities of daughters.

The war was the most peaceful period of my life - kid character in the story by Frank O Connor.

The Leap by Louise Erdrich has a hook with 'My mother once said that I'd be amazed at how many things a person can do within the act of falling'.

Fenstad's mother

Happiness

Songs my mother taught me - Hortense Calisher
The Good Deed by Pearl S Buck.

With few letters

wilderness, wildness.
Thinking of wilderness, the moment I like to recall is the time I was birdwatching at Catalina mountains where I heard a Bewick wren sing. It was on a branch at my eye level. I felt like a giant led into the toy city.

The other day I was thinking about lighting and lightning.

Assassin bugs
Spinner bugs. Thinking about this I was reminded of a story where a drowning ant's life is saved by a leaf thrown into the water by a friend.

Walking is almost an ambulation of mind. - Gretel Ehrlich.

Miners lettuce
Cirque

windsounds becoming watersounds - Gretel Ehrlich

I like the word meltwater.

A ticket to Tanzania
Terrazzo
Makonde art
ngoma
Mohamed Amin
Wilfred Thesiger
Mirella Ricciardi

Traveling anyhow

Traveling is fun when you are in the best of your health and no luggage. But if a kid is in the car, in or out of your body, its a different scenario.

Granny shoots the rapids

Baby on board. Taking months baby on a long drive. When my friends took us visiting to las Vegas, I appreciate their willingness to tackle all the hassles that go with it.

'Going your own way' is the real adventure section in this travel book. In 'Alone at Sea', Tania Aebi, looks back on the day she started her voyage and finds her erstwhile self 'a frightened girl'.
Helen Thayer's account of a 'polar bear' visit is a gripping tale. You can feel the polar bear pass you by. I can almost feel kicking myself for not having a way to interact with the bear in a friendly fashion for lack of a common language to communicate that I mean no harm. The author did learn a lot about wolves by letting her dog Charlie interact with them.
In 'Endurance on Ice', Anne Dal Vera finds that 'skiing to the South Pole provided her with the challenges she needed to learn about herself in relation to the land, and in relation to a small group of women'.

Two quotes I liked by Mary Russell about
women risking the life they nurture and the challenge that women see in single sailing

Story line not up to writing style

Several perceptions

If you can dissect a book, and enjoy a group of words, for the way they have been framed and not expect these sentences to lead into an interesting or usual, expected occurences, then this book is for you.
The writing style is impressive, despite the lack of purposeful action expected in a novel.

Aug 20, 2005
3/5

Learning to bike

Reading of bike sharing system, I was reminded of how we rented bikes before we learnt how to ride them. We stayed at one end of the town. To get to a rental place we had to walk a good mile. And after returning the bike, we had to walk it all back. I dont think this ever deterred us from renting them. At first we rented tiny bikes so we could put our feet on earth whenever we felt we were about to fall. When I looked at a big rock in front of me. Instead of averting it, how much ever I wanted to, I realised that the bike would only go in that direction.
Its remarkable how some kids learn to ride bicycles bigger than them by managing to put their feet on the pedals but without sitting. Its referref to as 'kainchi' or the scissor style.

Home what it means and why it matters

good pictures

Far and Away
Vimy memorial

Making

sitting out beneath the moon again, nursing
I will introduce you
to the sun, moon,
winds,clouds
feel the pride
of the creator

Rama holds the moon pg378
Many moons

The one not to flee

A prisoner of love
needs no locks
no bars

A safety pin
On a white paper
traces the
black magnet
moving underneath

Shaping

At a 1yr old's birthday
party, an expecting lady
in maternity clothes is
greeted with
'you look symmetrical'from A
'when would you not look symmetrical' from B

when you wear only a
lower body fat suit
like Amy sedaris.

***********
Shiner like a Diamond, David Sedaris - also included in 'Scoot iver skinny'.

Motherhood and childbirth

women are born twice - Anne Sexton

But its like childbirth. The results erase
the process and you cant remember a before.
- Marge Piercy, The diminishing addition.

Another poems book by Marge Piercy

Mars and her Children

In Applesauce for Eve, Runt Vigor, Core memory, the fruit apple, tree and its core are the connecting images.

'Cast skins' poem begins with an indifferent snake casting its skin and then going about with its new bright skin. Worn out gloves recall the mos absent hands. The poet progresses onto clothes at thrift stores and the invisible but present voices of the erstwhile wearers of the clothes.

'Up and Out', '1. The foot gnawed off', what you cant leave even when you think you are leaving your place of past for good.

'3. when I was a caddy'
Mehitzah

'4.Toward a good rooting Medium' -
'I've known families who farmed their soil
and gave their bones to it .'
Lenni Lenape


author's article

In 'The ex in the supermarket',
I cannot walk the dog of the past at my
convenience.

At a two year old's birthday party, during dinner one young lady was trying to figure which dishes had onion in them, so she could relinquish them. She was trying to follow Sattvic diet. Another lady swore by onions and garlics in the dishes. Bite into the onion is a homage to the onion.

Tin House

Volume 12, Number 1. 'Class in America' is an uninteresting theme like politics. But Peasants by Geoff Nicholson, deals with food of different classes and how fast food is flooding away those boundaries.

In 'A typical Japanese Woman' essay, Cathy N Davidson says that she read of one hour bath having the same physiological effect as four hours of sleep.
Sento

Alaska Quarterly review, Fall & Winter 2007

Hemicorporectomy

Peter Selgin,
trying to decipher those mysterious blue shapes floating way out there in 'Playing It Out'.
when we are in a new place, we take a moment, silent, watch whats around, sort the clouds, mountains and then we speak.

I found further reading difficult. No poems.