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@mirthandmoxy
Mary Oliver, “Black Oaks” in Blue Iris.
transcribed for screenreaders or any other purpose:
Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another– why don’t you get going?
For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.
And if you are to leave, my love, then leave. Do not close the door on your way out. Let the world pour in to see the ruin you left in your wake, let the outside noise drown out the ghosts who no longer breathe your name. Open the windows, let the sunlight in to touch and soothe the shadows that sleep in the corners. Do not turn around, love, don’t you dare turn around. This is an existence that begins anew, devoid of you. You do not have the right to see what is left of me after you are gone. I am home in my despair, I will breathe in the summer air and allow new life to grow. I am stronger than you’ll ever know so you do not get to see my fall. No, you do not deserve any part of me, at all. If you are to leave, my love, then leave. I will not grieve for long.
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it's been so long words don't feel right. all of those bittersweet acid drops, pills like chalk and dust, were put away in boxes, sewed up in my chest and forgotten.
they were drowned out by happy heartbeats.
this - crawling, oozing ripped open wound- feels like an infestation, long dead ills come back to life.
it is not beautiful to reanimate dead things.
i thought this grief was gone silent, but here she stands a doppelganger starved and vengeful,
ready to devour all hints of mirth, every ounce of moxy, whisk away all sense of time passed, of stability earned, with wolfen jaws.
how dare you force me to use my hands this way. how dare you force me to remember where I belong.
Written 7/25/19
People talk a lot about how Harry Potter taught them about friendship and bravery and love overcoming evil etc and of course I think that’s very important but like…
Harry Potter also taught an entire generation of kids that the news media can’t always be trusted to tell the truth, that the government can often be corrupt or incompetent, that the legal system isn’t always right, that the people in power don’t always have your best interests at heart. That bad things sometimes happen to good people, that your heroes aren’t always as perfect as you think they are, that even those with the best intentions can be wrong, that everyone can make mistakes and that often in order to make things right it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
…and I think in a way that’s every bit as important as the more positive messages.
A Splash of Color
I really love nature photography. There are so many lines, shapes, colors and textures to take in. So many intricacies that we don’t get to see unless we’re looking super close. So this post is filled with some of my favorite photos taken at the botanical gardens in Stuttgart’s Wilhelma Zoo.
If you’re interested in more nature photos, check out my post on bees and blooms in Frankfurt.
Burg Hohenzollern
Walking up to Burg Hohenzollern made me feel like I was going to die. And we didn’t even start from the bottom of the mountain. You’ll notice there aren’t any pictures of the blooming hillside, and that would be because I didn’t have the energy to lift my camera and hold it straight. B made it without much complaint or heavy breathing, but I was very much not in shape during this trip. It was also July. If you want a gently sloping walkway, try elsewhere, because this climb is all super steep stairs.
Hohenzollern was our first real castle, and the relatively modern look of it belies the fact that castles and fortified structures have existed on top of this mountain since the 11th century. The current walls were built in the 1800s during the German Romantic period, but if you go down into the lower levels of the castle, you can still see portions of the old walls and ruins. The current structure is believed to be the third castle built on the location.
Once you make it up to the castle, and through the twisting walkways and tunnels that lead up to the main level and walls, you can get a pretty spectacular view in any direction. We walked all the way around and came across several statues of Prussian rulers. It’s not really hard to imagine why a noble family would want to build on top of this mountain (or any mountain, I’m sure) – everything seems small in comparison. And for those rulers who relied on the divine right of kings, it’s harder to connect yourself more with God than living on the highest point around while your subjects look on from below.
To get into the main castle courtyard, you have to pass under this tower [below]. But you can also climb to the top of it. The stairs were…interesting, and the rooms were small and hot, which was made even worse because the tower has informational videos that people stop to see in huge, heat-trapping clusters. The one advantage of the heat was that many of the windows at the top were open, giving me a chance to get a broad shot of the castle without glass warp.
[Statue of Jobst Nikolaus von Zollern]
We were able to spend time in a few different parts of the castle, including the tower, the cellars, the chapel and some of the rooms which have been filled with Prussian historical artifacts. And then we made our way back down the mountain which, for the record, was pretty much just as bad as the climb up.
Barcelona in Blue
Here’s a compilation of some of my favorite beach and water shots from Barcelona.
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Little grasshopper Crawling around the edge Of my tea glass, You’re the kind of green That reminds me of a pair of eyes That used to look so gorgeous When they smiled. Where did you come from, Little thing That brings back memories? You make me smile, And if I thought I could catch you I’d put you in a glass jar, Poke holes in the lid And make you my prisoner, So I could gift you Over-sized, magnified grins And blades of grass When I’m feeling lonely. Could you hate me, my pet, If I locked you up with love?
Gaudí Landmarks
Most people visiting Barcelona make a point of visiting some of Gaudí’s work even if, like me, they know very little about it - it’s one of those things you’re supposed to do. And it’s totally worth it.
La Sagrada Familia
This is probably Gaudí’s most recognizable and well-known design, and the church is actually still unfinished. Gaudí died in 1926, leaving the building incomplete. Work on the structure has been intermittent since his death, as it relies on private donations, but it is expected to be finished by 2026.
This image shows a side view of the Passion Facade (western side), with depictions and symbolism that makes a (very pointed) nod to Christ’s crucifixion.
If you walk around to the eastern side of the church, you can see the Nativity Facade, which is vastly different from the Passion. While the statues on the western side are stark and angular, the scenes on the Nativity Facade have a more traditional look and are exploding with details.
The inside of the church is also pretty fascinating, and extremely different than what I was expecting (Remember, I knew nothing about Gaudí’s style prior to the visit.). Personally, I was reminded of the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” exhibit at Disney World - the columns are very much like trees or large plants and it can make you feel like a minuscule bug. Gaudí loves using natural elements in his work, but I can’t say for sure whether making church-goers feel like ants was part of his intent. It is obvious, however, that the building was built to take advantage of color and natural light.
Parc Güell
Parc Güell has a lot going on, and we only visited a few of them. This house in the picture above was one of the two residences in the park. Gaudí lived in the park during the time that he spent working on La Sagrada (although not in this particular one), and his old home is now a museum. The park was initially intended as a living community built out of nature and away from the “cityness” of Barcelona, but the idea never really panned out and the park was opened to the public the same year that Gaudí died. He didn’t design this house, but he did design many of the architectural features in the park, using nature as his muse.
Because of long lines and time slots, we didn’t get to access the main terrace and its iconic mosaic benches, but we were able to see the area and still get some decent views (seen in the photo at the beginning of this post) without the terrace experience.
Parc Güell is built on a large hill, so it is a great place to get panoramic views of the city, and some pretty great exercise if you walk from downtown like we did. Stopping to smell the flowers was more of a necessity than a choice once we finally made it there.
I wish we’d had more time to spend in Florence - it was only about a day and a half before we headed on our way to Verona, and we didn’t really get a chance to take in everything the city has to...
[My online classes are finally finished (!) and now I have the time to fill you in on the rest of our Netherlands trip.] We set out from Paris on another bus. And this one had a wifi system that was...
Frühlingsfest is taking place in Stuttgart until about the middle of May, and since B had a day off, we decided to check it out. It was our first foray into local transportation, so it took us about an hour to find our way there via bus and train. And from the station, we pretty much just followed a large group of women wearing dirndls. Where we come from in Indiana, when you go to a county fair it seems like everyone is wearing cowboy boots. Here in southern Germany, Frühlingsfest spurs men and women to sport traditional Bavarian dress – like the previously mentioned dirndls and lederhosen. You can actually be fitted at the fest for your own set…provided you are willing to spend about 300 euros to take them home with you.
Since we made our visit to the fest late in the afternoon, we mostly made our way around to see what kind of shops, games and rides they had. And ate of course. It seemed like there was a biergarten or creperie every few steps. My favorite was the dessert I ordered – SpaghettiEis (pronounced: spaghetti ice). They run the ice cream through a machine that makes it stringy like playdough, and then top it with strawberry sauce, coconut shavings and a thin, round waffle cookie that looks similar to a meatball. Delicious!
Entrance to the fest is free, with non-alchoholic drinks and rides running about 3-4 euros each. We didn’t ride anything on this trip, but B did drag me into a glass maze. I got ahead of him and got to see him run into a wall thinking it was an opening to me. But he really got the last laugh, because they shot air up from the floor on the way out, and I screamed…startling everyone on the walkway in front of the maze.
Yesterday’s trip: Frühlingsfest! Give the blog a follow for more stories and pictures :)
Recently, B and I took a rather last-minute trip to visit a friend who is pursuing her Master’s in the Netherlands. Because it was so spontaneous – we bought our tickets about 4 hours before we...
Check out this post from my travel blog (which you should also totally be following)! The husband and I made a trip to the Netherlands to visit a friend and this post details (in striking color!) our stopover in Paris.
What joke hasn’t been on us?
SIX WORDS (4/1/16)
Female-Driven Genre-Fiction Wishlist:
Girl teams, all girl teams.
Female characters of color who actually represent their culture.
Less self-sacrificing, martyr girls more girls and women who do things for themselves without feeling bad about it or people judging them for it.
Mothers who do things other than parent and cook.
Mother and daughter characters who don’t hate each others guts.
No more “I’m not like the other girls”.
Girl characters who are good at math and science.
More poor female characters, who come from nothing, and exploring how that effects their heroism. And I don’t mean like middle-class poor, I mean, like having to chose between food and paying bills poor.
Girls who don’t like each other, but can still respect each other.
No more girl heroes/villains whose tragic backstory is getting raped.
No more female characters of color dying or sacrificing themselves for white female characters.
More fat girl characters in fantasy and other genre fiction who are the ones kicking-ass and taking names and being haled the hero. That are defined by something other than their weight.
More girls of various body-types other than “lean.”
More disabled characters in stories that aren’t necessarily about their disability.
More unattractive girl characters.
Girls that are not looking for relationships or losing their virginity.
More non-binary female characters.
More LGBTAQ+ female characters.
“Strong” female characters who actually do things other than fight all the time and have a personality.
More “strong” female characters whose “strength” is something other than fighting.
No more stories sold as “feminist” in which only the leading character is female and everyone else is man, and only other female characters are minor or antagonists.
No more using “like a girl” or being a girl as an insult.
Stop making female characters be “bitches” just because. Unlikable characters are still supposed to be likable, meaning: love to hate, hate to love. Just look at Scarlett O’Hara, she’s a godawful awful person, but she’s a fantastic character.
Feel free to add yours.
Some photos from our recent trip to the Zugspitze, Germany’s tallest mountain peak at 2962 meters. Unfortunately, it was rather foggy on the day we visited, so we missed out on the view of four countries that everyone was telling us about. I did manage to get one clear shot of the view above the clouds before more fog rolled over the viewing terrace. While I hear some people choose to scale the mountain, we thought taking the cable car from Eibsee (the lake right below the peak in the last photo) was adventurous enough for our first time.
Promotional plug! Come check out my travel blog about my adventures in Germany: anamericanwordsmithindeutschland.tumblr.com
Best way to cure writers block? 😶
What the faculty members at my school call ass-in-chair time. Just sit down and write.
But in all honesty, really assess WHY you’re not writing. There are so many different reasons people get “blocked,” (using scare quotes, because I don’t like the term “writer’s block”) you have to figure out what your reason is to overcome it.
