also,

I was given a few books! To my joy and surprise, on the inside cover of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is written my name, Molly Stoddard, in feminine thirteen-year-old script complete with hearts, stars, and exclamation point. And even more worthwhile is the original copy of William Goldman's The Princess Bride, a truly exceptional book. I started it again last night and haven't stopped from smiling. The opening sentence: "This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it." Ah ha, intriguing, no? What else is here: Cat's Cradle. I read Jailbird and liked it but is it too late for Kurt and me? The cover art is brilliant, vermilion background with a small inset of pink hands holding the all-important cat's cradle strings, the going-off of an atomic bomb, and a confused psychedelic sun. "Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John." Mm hmm,  pretty Clever. Ah, well it's about twentyseven pages long so I could just suck that down. IF I WASN'T so busy sucking everything else down. You know! What else, oh if it isn't Percy Thrower's How to Grow VEGETABLES and FRUIT by god!! Depicted is Percy Thrower himself, wrinkled oldman brow and long elegant pipe... it appears to be unlit. He's fondling a large & impressive yellow onion, and showing off with this sort of licentious look on his face a wheelbarrow just full of delicious treasures from the earth. Mm hmm we have potatos, radishes, beets, tomatos of all flavors and persuasions... oh, and they're so damp and dewy with earth and newness! how hungry you've made me. This book is filled with images of hands using tools and breaking off beetgreens. In fact, there is a bookmarked page I've just opened to... the Beetroot. Just delights.

I have to go now, to rinse my hair... let the solemn ballad of poor Lonesome Susie leave you charmed.

I almost got lsst

I am in this sunny room in idaho where the sky doesn't change from perfect at all. When the sun sets a change happens, but within only bounds of perfect. I like it here. ida likes it here, her namesake place. I like this song called "my heart" by a band called wildbirds & peacedrums. in bed i sit, and here I am waiting with henna in my hair. I recently got my period, and am subsequently writing my first novel about womanhood.

This whole thing has a purpose, I felt it before. I felt it this time, too, after coming over the blue mountains. It must have been near north powder, and those were the little alps, all silhouetted with the sun still bright over the edges. undeniably alplike. I am writing this because Once, during summertime I was on the same drive, eastbound to idaho, and there to my right in a beautiful lush field of peagreen were two lounging llamas. And they dazedly, dreamily, admired a flapping butterfly above and around them... I couldn't see their eyes but I can only imagine the heavy lift of a lid, the twitch of an ear, the peaceful admiration.

I saw them this time, coming on dusk, but this place hasn't a dusk, or a twilight. I wanted it to be, but in the little alps the bright sun creeps behind a jagged peak, still leaking bright, until finally the sky explodes into every texture imaginable; purple lace lining vermilion velvet, soft pink silk and chiffon folding itself endlessly into unimaginable blue, neon flesh.

no v ember

the sight of leaves on street. the fold of my hand around one, veins transluscent through and towards a streetlamp, or the bright of the sun, or the shine of the moon. The wet sky making through the dark of the early night, visible only too by these orange and yellow lights. the size of one leaf, bigger than a face. the sight of a leaf appeared dipped bloody, or into the juice of a beet, or any other naturally staining intoxicant discharged by a wet autumn root.