white_oleander no reason i want to bathe in this book, drink it up, taste it, feel it, pour it into my soul, be all-consuming. this book deserves all the cliches it doesn't know. 050414 ... delial i can't bring myself to finish it... reminds me of her and then i can't concentrate. silly, i know. what i've read of it so far is beautiful(I last picked it up in the middle of last year...); "I knew we shouldn't have come. Now I wished she'd never broken any of her rules. I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you broke the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July." 050414 ... Piso Mojado Dear Astrid, Don't tell me how you hate your new foster home. If they're not beating you, consider yourself lucky. Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way." 050415 ... janet fitch The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon. "Oleander time," she said. "Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind." She held up her large hand and spread the fingers, let the wind trace itself through. My mother was not herself in the time of the Santa Anas. I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her. I wished things were back the way they had been, that Barry was here, that the wind would stop blowing. "You should get some sleep," I offered. "I never sleep," she said. I sat next to her, and we stared out at the city that hummed and glittered like a computer chip deep in some unknowable machine, holding its secret like a poker hand. The edge of her white kimono flapped open in the wind and I could see her breast, low and full. Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife. I rested my head on her leg. She smelled like violets. "We are the wands," she said. "We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental." "The wands," I repeated. I wanted her to know I was listening. Our tarot suit, the wands. She used to lay out the cards for me, explain the suits: wands and coins, cups and swords, but she had stopped reading them. She didn't want to know the future anymore. "We received our coloring from Norsemen," she said. "Hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees. We are the ones who sacked Rome. Fear only feeble old age and death in bed. Don't forget who you are." "I promise," I said. Down below us in the streets of Hollywood, sirens whined and sawed along my nerves. In the Santa Anas, eucalyptus trees burst into flames like giant candles, oilfat chaparral hillsides went up in a rush, flushing starved coyotes and deer down onto Franklin Avenue. She lifted her face to the singed moon, bathing in its glowering beams. "Raven's-eye moon." "Ritz cracker moon," I murmured, my head on her knee. She softly stroked my hair. "It's a traitor's moon." 080625 ... unhinged good old blather synchronicity i might just read this again 080625 ... jane i was thinking the same thing. 080625 ... unhinged i don't read a lot of fiction cause the quality of a lot of the newly published stuff annoys me, but i like the way that lady tells a story. 080625 ... phoenix I lose myself within it's pages. I see glimpses of a person I wish I were and of who I am. I am Claire's fragility, I am Astrid's strength, I am Ingrid's wrath. I am Starr's sexuality. I am a phoenix, whether you or anyone sees it. I burn my bridges I burn myself and everytime am born anew. No matter who you thought I was yesterday, I'm not her today. I am a girl you hurt deeply, but I'm also the one you loved. smoke and mirrors are the best way to see me... even then it's nearly impossible 080727 ... unhinged once i get unpacked in my new place, especially since i'm not sure if i'll have the internet to keep me company 080727 ... unhinged i felt like a painting of icarus, falling into the sea, all you could see was his legs, and the peasant and the cow kept plowing.. dear astrid, don't tell me how you hate your new foster home. if they're not beating you, consider yourself lucky. loneliness is the human condition. cultivate it. the way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. never expect to outgrow loneliness. never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. an intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. if you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. the best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way. mom 080809 ... unhinged (oops. i think that one is worth being here twice though) 080809 what's it to you? who go blather from