I haven't flung out an English-y post in a while, but now that I am back in Santa Cruz and have a little time between job applications I'll get back to it. I missed our kitchen this year, with its bright sunshine and abundance of windows, homemade granola in jars, and the chalkboard and magnet board stretching across the far wall. As children we would draw in the corners of the chalkboard, creating game score sheets and tallies, "Happy Birthday" murals, and innumerable dusty flowers and swirls. Nowadays it is full of quotes, from books or the news or memory, and is a source of inspiration for me. When I came home, the following few were scrawled up there:
"You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both." Emerson
"Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." H.L. Mencken
"The earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes." E.B. Browning
Beneath the chalkboard runs a long strip of metal full of word magnets that my Dad screwed to the wood. There is an intriguing joy in creating sentences physically, with one's hands, from a specific set of words that are available to you. Here are a few of my favorites that have sprung up on our board from unknown grammatical artists:
"peache s & lazy summer sun"
"his gorgeous forest of boil ed drool is please ing"
"believe in purple dress of drunk petal s fall ing through shadow"
"let beauty manipulate them"
"bitter place s soar beneath tiny butterfly egg s"
"spray behind sweet sea mist show your raw shot"
"but winter is a lovely death"
Lovely and interesting thoughts, are they not?
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