I see great things in baseball.

cdeacon — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:27:42 GMT

Good poem of the day:

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

-Wendell Berry

Which is to say, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms on my flist. Also, I know this isn't an easy day for some of you, and I'm thinking about you too.

cdeacon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:07:51 GMT

Good poem of the day:

End of Winter

Bare-handed reach
to catch
April's
incoming curve.
Leap higher than you thought you could and
Hold:
Spring,
Solid,
Here.

-Eve Merriam

cdeacon — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:23:04 GMT

Good poem of the day:

The Bat

I was reading about rationalism,
the kind of thing we do up north
in early winter, where the sun
leaves work for the day at 4:15

Maybe the world is intelligible
to the rational mind;
and maybe we light the lamps at dusk
for nothing...

Then I heard the wings overhead.

The cats and I chased the bat
in circles - living room, kitchen,
pantry, kitchen, living room...
At every turn it evaded us

like the identity of the third person
in the Trinity: the one
who spoke through the prophets,
the one who astounded Mary
by suddenly coming near.

-Jane Kenyon

cdeacon — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:38:08 GMT

Now that the Yuletide authors are up, I can thank inlovewithnight more officially for her abovementioned amazing Life fic, which was a real joy to read. Thank you so much!

I wrote this Life fic about Ted and Thanksgiving and stuff for agonistes, and had a lot of fun doing so.

cdeacon — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:43:39 GMT

Happy New Year, everybody! Here's to a delightful 2009.

cdeacon — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:41:55 GMT

Good poem of the day, from today's Writer's Almanac:

Song of the Wonderful Surprise

Start with the fact of space; fill it up
with snow. There will be snow in the sky,
snow on the ground, snow in the mysterious courtyards.
You taste snow's tang, smell snow, feel snow on your face.
If you walk forever, you will not come to a place with no snow,
but one day, looking around, you will find
a green apple hanging from a spray of snow.

-Kelly Cherry

cdeacon — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:47:47 GMT

We actually ended up with a pretty nice Christmas - since my parents were in pretty bad shape, I wasn't sure if we were going to have our extended family over as we usually do, but we ended up going through with it, which I think was the best thing for everyone. My aunt, wanting to do something to help, brought over about fourteen giant plates of every kind of cookie known to humankind, so yay for that.

My favorite present was a membership to the Art Institute, so I don't have to go only on free Thursday nights with all the creepy people. As for Yuletide, I received this flat-out wonderful Life story. Feel free to try and guess which story I wrote; I feel like it's a glaringly obvious window into my soul, and I'm sure the fandom is easy to guess based on the limited amount of fannish stuff I've talked about here this year.

I also want to thank you guys for the wonderful messages I got yesterday; they helped very much. I'm beyond lucky to have such good friends.

cdeacon — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:54:54 GMT

Well, earlier today our dog started acting very strange, and we realized pretty quickly that something wasn't right and that he was getting worse, so we took him to the emergency vet. They aren't exactly sure what's wrong, but right now they think that he's probably had a stroke. They told us he isn't in pain, but he isn't conscious either, and they're don't know if he's going to wake up or get better. He'll be there overnight and then I guess we'll see.

I wanted to let you guys know, but I also wanted to post because I may not be around for the Yuletide reveal (I don't really feel up to online interaction at the moment, although I guess it might be a good distraction), so I hope my writer checks here and sees this - if any of you guys happen to know her/him, could you possibly direct them here? Yuletide writer, thank you so much in advance for the story, and I apologize that I may not be able to give you more specific feedback for a while. I very much appreciate your writing for me.

cdeacon — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:41:19 GMT

An Advent/Christmas-type poem:

Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

--Jane Kenyon

cdeacon — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:20:06 GMT

Going on hiatus. Probably back soon.

Yuletide, yay

cdeacon — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:21:19 GMT

Hello! Thank you so much for being part of this. I'm very easy to please and will be thrilled to death with any story in any of these fandoms, I assure you. :) I hope this will be a lot of fun for you.

Baseball RPF: Any (gen) Cubs-related story would make my life for all eternity. It's that simple. I have another blog here in which I've rhapsodized about my non-sexual love for Mike Fontenot in great detail, if that's helpful. I found this year's team deeply, insanely adorable, mostly because they genuinely seem to like each other, and I'd especially love anything that plays up that friends-outside-of-baseball aspect. As an example of the kind of thing I would like, my friend jesshelga suggested a story about how "Fontenot was sort of sad about Theriot getting married, but then Theriot and wife started having kids, and he realized he could teach them how to fish and have an excuse to come over and play video games and eat Fudgesicles..." Obviously I wouldn't demand that you write that specific story, but that kind of domestic cuteness would certainly be amazing.

Life: As I think I mentioned in my prompt, I love Ted. I really, really, really love Ted. If your story involves Ted in any way, I'll be delighted with it. If you're looking for something more specific, I'd be really interested in a story about how Ted and Charlie met in prison and what their relationship was like there (although I'd prefer no slash between them). I also love Ted/Olivia a lot.

Tam Lin: This book is really dear to me, partly because I went to another ACM college and my college experience was very similar to what Pamela Dean describes here - well, minus the fairies and stuff. :) Which is to say, the day-to-day details of their college experience are really my favorite part. Janet and Thomas are possibly my favorite literary relationship ever, so I'd love to read more about them; really, though, I kind of have to leave this one open, because I'm fascinated by all the characters. So basically, just write what's easiest for you. How's that for general?

Thank you again! I appreciate this so much and am very excited to see what you come up with.

cdeacon — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:27:39 GMT

Good poem of the day:

The Continuous Life

What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? O parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost—a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don't really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
Small tremors of love through your brief,
Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

-Mark Strand

cdeacon — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:22:00 GMT

This poem seems to be following me around lately; it was in yesterday's Writer's Almanac, and I keep turning to it in books of poetry I pick up for no reason. Clearly someone is trying to get my attention, so here it is:

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

-Stanley Kunitz

cdeacon — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:16:28 GMT

Good poem of the day:

One is One

Heart, you bully, you punk, I'm wrecked, I'm shocked
stiff. You? you still try to rule the world--though
I've got you: identified, starving, locked
in a cage you will not leave alive, no
matter how you hate it, pound its walls,
& thrill its corridors with messages.

Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl
in your cell but I'm deaf to your rages,
your greed to go solo, your eloquent
threats of worse things you (knowing me) could do.
You scare me, bragging you're a double agent

since jailers are prisoners' prisoners too.
Think! Reform! Make us one. Join the rest of us,
and joy may come, and make its test of us.

-Marie Ponsot

Heart, You Bully, You Punk is also the title of a good novel by Leah Hager Cohen.

cdeacon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:49:55 GMT

Good poem of the day:

One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day

1.

Fat,
black, slick,
galloping in the pitch
of the waves, in the pearly

fields of the sea,
they leap toward us,
they rise, sparkling, and vanish, and rise sparkling,
they breathe little clouds of mist, they lift perpetual smiles,

they slap their tails on the waves, grandmothers and grandfathers
enjoying the old jokes,
they circle around us,
they swim with us-

2.

a hundred white-sided dolphins
on a summer day,
each one, as God himself
could not appear more acceptable

a hundred times,
in a body blue and black threading through
the sea foam,
and lifting himself up from the opened

tents of the waves on his fishtail,
to look
with the moon of his eye
into my heart,

3.

and find there
pure, sudden, steep, sharp, painful
gratitude
that falls-

I don't know-either
unbearable tons
or the pale, bearable hand
of salvation

on my neck,
lifting me
from the boat's plain plank seat
into the world's

4.

unspeakable kindness.
It is my sixty-third summer on earth
and, for a moment, I have almost vanished
into the body of the dolphin,

into the moon-eye of God,
into the white fan that lies at the bottom of the sea
with everything
that ever was, or ever will be,

supple, wild, rising on flank or fishtail-
singing or whistling or breathing damply through blowhole
at top of head. Then, in our little boat, the dolphins suddenly gone,
we sailed on through the brisk, cheerful day.

-Mary Oliver

cdeacon — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:14:28 GMT

Good poem of the day:

Analysis of Baseball

It's about
the ball,
the bat,
and the mitt.
Ball hits
bat, or it
hits mitt.
Bat doesn't
hit ball, bat
meets it.
Ball bounces
off bat, flies
air, or thuds
ground (dud)
or it
fits mitt.

Bat waits
for ball
to mate.
Ball hates
to take bat's
bait. Ball
flirts, bat's
late, don't
keep the date.
Ball goes in
(thwack) to mitt,
and goes out
(thwack) back
to mitt.

Ball fits
mitt, but
not all
the time.
Sometimes
ball gets hit
(pow) when bat
meets it,
and sails
to a place
where mitt
has to quit
in disgrace.
That's about
the bases
loaded,
about 40,000
fans exploded.

It's about
the ball,
the bat,
the mitt,
the bases
and the fans.
It's done
on a diamond,
and for fun.
It's about
home, and it's
about run.

--May Swenson

cdeacon — Mon, 05 May 2008 04:05:15 GMT

Good poem of the day:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

--Wendell Berry

cdeacon — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:32:58 GMT

Good poem of the day:

Leaving Kansas City

Kansas City depends a lot on the way
You look at it. If you approach from the West,
It takes on a certain weary beauty:
Misguided, uninspired, familiar.
But driving through from the East,
It's just another group of grubby people
After you thought you'd passed all that.

Lying partly on ground that considered
Being a bluff, and partly on the plain,
It's a city where different states are possible
For people who don't often get that kind of choice.
In the middle, running nowhere from nowhere,
Is the Missouri, a river that moves off
Like a lake that got a little restless.
There are a few office buildings, from the late
Thirties, which is when the government stopped
Giving them away, and when folks here stopped
Worrying about keeping up with the times.
The city pumps out smog, absentmindedly,
Because that is what big cities do.

You don't know you loved it till you left it;
From now on there isn't much of anything:
Several towns like Abilene, which mean a lot
In the movies, and one or two ghost towns,
If you want to be where other people
Decided not to be. Steadily, inexorably,
The desolation opens out in front of you...
There is some satisfaction in realizing
That it's just as bad as you heard it was.
The sun burns everything jackrabbit brown,
And nothing grows high enough to be noticed.
Infrequently, and in questionable taste,

There are garish green spots of irrigation
Where someone just gave it up and stayed.
Before long you have travelled to the point
Where it would be pointless to turn back.

The next point of reference is twenty miles off,
An ill-defined part of the horizon,
A slight rise like the one twenty miles back.

You find so much ground to pass over
That covering it quickly isn't much help.
On the only radio station, a voice explains,
In an accent you wouldn't have thought possible,
The most practical way of doing something
It would never have occurred to you to do.
The voice is distant and doesn't seem aimed at you.

By now you've lost track of precisely
What you had in mind. You move on because
For some reason you have come here to do that,
Although what you are doing is completely
Unremarkable. You wouldn't know to look around,
But they take this route every day; incredibly,
People far worse equipped than yourself
Did the same thing a long time ago.
You move on because somewhere up ahead,
If you remember right, if you're going the right way,
If everything they told you was true...
There is a place called Colorado where you will,
Of course, be very glad to arrive, where the others
Wanted to go; and you will sit smug in the shade
High up on a mountain, feeling the wind
Send shivers over your body, looking back
At the great sickening swoop of the plain
And think it part of a grand design:
Satisfying, necessary, even beautiful.

-George Bradley

cdeacon — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:28:48 GMT

Good poem of the day, one of my favorites:

Easter Morning

Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
“Repent,” and you say, “Come on in,” and it’s
Jesus. That’s when all you ever did, or said,
or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
sings out,“I’m still here,” and you know it’s true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing
there suddenly brought to account: saved.

Except maybe that someone says, “I’ve got a deal
for you.” And you listen, because that’s how
you ’re trained – they told you, “Always hear both sides.”
So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
Hell, which is what you’re getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I’d say always go to
the door, yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
and say carefully, “Jesus?”

– William Stafford

cdeacon — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:03:17 GMT

Good poem of the day:

What's In My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

--William Stafford

cdeacon — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:05:28 GMT

This was my first year participating in Yuletide, and it was a lot of fun. And now I can officially thank my authors, glaikery and scribblemoose. I hope you both had fun writing my somewhat oddly-phrased requests, and I adored your stories. Thank you!

cdeacon — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:55:55 GMT

This is still not the post I want to be making, but just quickly: my parents got me one of the This American Life compilations for Christmas, and it included the famous segment on The Best Phone Message in the World, which is Act One of this episode. (In case you're not quite sure you know what I'm talking about, it's the message about the Little Mermaid.) If you've heard this before, you should comment immediately and share your experience of how hilarious it was. I feel I will not recover from that for quite some time.

cdeacon — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 04:43:04 GMT

There are several posts I want to make soon (note to self: my three favorite Chicago stories right now and what books should I buy with my gift cards), but I'm just going to make this one. I know I've posted this here before, but I like to be reminded of it at the end of the year.

Three years ago now, my friend aspasia82 made me the most beautiful book, still probably my favorite gift I've ever gotten, and inside the front cover she wrote this poem:

Glass

This is a cheapjack gift at the year's end.
This is a double-glazing hymn for wind.
This is a palm frond held out to a friend
Who holds her lifeline lightly in her hand.

As fine sand filaments the unclenched hand
Or leaves the palm grit-filmed but crazed, lines end
Across prismatic windscreens. Every friend
A meteorologist's diagram of wind.

Blow smoke into the fist of either hand
And pull it tight and loop it round the end
Of every night held up by wine and friend,
Sootflecked and leaning on a London wind.

Then say our ribboned smoke's erased by wind,
Our glass is sand. You start, but in the end,
Somehow, I stay. You stay, somehow, my friend
Who grips me tightest in her open hand.

--Michael Donaghy

Merry Christmas, everybody.

cdeacon — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 09:51:34 GMT

Yuletide!

I was lucky enough to get two stories. My main story, Curiosity, (Scott Lynch - the Gentlemen Bastards Sequence) was so good that it actually brought tears to my eyes. All I can say is that this is a fantastic piece of writing on every level, and I'm so glad it exists. If you have any familiarity at all with these books, you really must read it. I definitely want to say more about this when I'm more awake and vaguely articulate.

My treat, First (Sarah Monette - Melusine series), was also totally delightful, and fulfilled the scenario I have most wanted to see since I've started reading the books. How often do you get to say that? In fact, it fulfills it so well that I suspect it was written by somebody who knows me, and if not, I'm even more impressed that this person apparently has amazing mind-reading powers. She also has a truly awesome Mildmay voice that I love. Go read!

If either author is reading this, thank you again, SO much. I really feel like the luckiest girl around these parts right now. My recipient also wrote me such kind (and prompt!) feedback that it makes my fingers itch not to be able to respond and thank her right away.

cdeacon — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:32:38 GMT

Good poem of the day. I usually post these without comment, but I have to say this is probably one of my favorite discoveries. I just saw it on today's Writer's Almanac, but I feel like I'm going to remember it for a long time.

Farewell to Teaching

Knowing what I now know
would I have consented
to be born? Next question.
When it comes time to go
will I go forlorn or
contented? Ask again.
Anything in between
should be easier. O
K, what made up my mind
to come to Carleton? Work.
My kind of work was not
easy to come by, I
came by it at Carleton;
it was simple as that
and lucky, plain lucky.
I cannot account for luck
but I can be grateful.
What was my kind of work?
Presumably teaching,
whatever that may be.
Teaching is a kind of
learning, much like loving,
mutual goings-on,
both doing each to each;
mutual forbearance;
life itself, you might say.
Whatever teaching is
did I enjoy it? Yes.
Am I glad to leave it?
Even of life itself
enough is enough. Good-
bye Dow's Lake, goodbye Tower,
essays, papers, exams,
you I can bear to leave.
But how shall I improve
the swiftly-dimming hour?
I shall deteriorate
amid bucolic dreams
and gather in my fate;
there's lots worse ways than that.

Goodbye good friends. Alas,
some goodbyes are like death;
they bring the heart to earth
and teach it how to die.
Earth, here we come again,
we're going out to grass.
Think of us now and then,
we'll think of you. Goodbye.

--George Johnston