#maybe someday i will write tha book. but not today

[daddys-littlewhitegirl]

Just a Little bit of Love

Dear @tilltheendwilliwrite,

I’m writing in here and posting this as a text ‘cause I don’t think an ask box would be enough. Today I read the last chapter of To Dance Amongst Stars, and as I usually do when you finish a book of this series I’m going back and I’ll read everything one more time (It’ll be like, the tenth time I do this, I honestly lost count), but honestly, Is never tiring to read it all again, every time I notice a new detail, I imagine a scenario with more realism, and every time It astounds and brings forward a new feeling in me. 

I don’t know if i can speak for all of your followers and non-followers, actually everyone that reads Blessings of Magic: The Norn’s Goddess, that this is the masterpiece of masterpieces, this books, this chapters, every line that I read, no matter how many times, always brings forward tons of feelings, like everytime I read it, the feeling enhances.

‘Till this day I remember when i found the first book, you were not even ten chapters in and I was just looking for another Loki fic or one shot, but instead i found the universe that I didn’t know that i needed, and ‘till this day and forward i know tha you’ll astound us with this series even when It’s over.

I hope you realize through this babbling how much I love your writing, how much I love this series, and how dearly they are for me, I will always hold It in my heart, in a special room with altars for all the books, surrounded by pictures of the main characters, familiars, everyone including you, the person responsible for my tears, my laughs that makes my family look at me like I’m crazy, my puppy eyes, my theory making at 3am, my fears when they’re in danger, my happiness when they’re where they’re supposed to be, my sorrow when certain things happen (you know what I’m talking about), and the pure awe and fascination when Lauren sings even though I’m not there to witness, but every single time is a blow to the heart and a longing that won’t ever be appeased ‘cause if one day you decide to publish them and the end up turned into a movie, or a TV show (which I, personally, think it would be better), It would never be the same, I think and maybe I’m wrong, but who knows.

I just wanted to let you know how strongly you make me feel with your words, and how dearly it is to me, someday I wish to give you a really tight hug, then look deep in your eyes and say Thank You, for everytime I felt left out, ignored, not enough, sad, not willing to get out of bed, your books were there to show me a whole new world, an escape of the real world and connect me with people who inspire me, even though they are fictional, live in my head, and occasionnaly their alter egos come out to talk to me hahahaha

But seriously, thank you SO much for being who you are, for having this gift of writing, and for deciding to share it with us. I hope one day I can thank you in person.

Lots of love, xoxo

P.S.: I’m sorry about this ginormous pile of babbling, I’m not good with words to thrill people like you.. sorry <3

P.S.S.: I just want to leave this quote here, ‘cause it express a lot of what i meant, in case you didn’t understand in the middle of all the babbling hahahaha

“Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.”

― Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

[molloaf]

Teach Me to be Brave Ch. 5

Read on AO3

The day whizzed by Manon in a blur of assignments and overheard excited chatter about Paris’ new dynamic duo. She moved from class to class without a thought, but the narrative of the students around her remained the same buzz of excitement and wonder. Before she knew it, the final bell was ringing, and it was time for her to take her leave and head home.

Emotionally, Manon was exhausted. Her body, of course, was largely unaffected by her gymnastic endeavors the night prior as a result of the magic in the suit. She found, however, that keeping up appearances and watching her every word very carefully to avoid any and all suspicion from her classmates was more weight than she was used to carrying on a daily basis.

“What’s for dinner tonight, then, Manon?” Remy elbowed Manon in the ribs to pull her from the mental fog she appeared to be lost in. The spunky brunette jolted and shook out her jumbled thoughts before turning to her best friend who was watching her pack up her things with a quirked eyebrow.

“Tonight’s menu features a Taleggio, Ham, and Cornichon baked croissant with a summer berry tossed salad accompaniment,” Manon declared in a fake fancy accent, putting on airs about her culinary creation-to-be. A strange, high-pitched, muffled whining noise was suddenly heard from the back corner of the room, and Manon turned to see Chris gripping something in the pocket of his black hoodie with all his might before he loudly coughed.

“What are you looking at, Chamack?” he bit, though the tips of his ears were tinging red with clear embarrassment. Manon rolled her eyes and turned back to her conversation without acknowledging the obnoxious boy.

“Chris, would you mind hanging back after class for a minute?” M. Agreste called out to him.

“Again?” Chris groaned. Manon couldn’t help herself, and she twisted around to stick her tongue out at him, hopeful that maybe their teacher had caught wind of his actions that day.

“God, my stomach is yowling. That’s either going to be really gross, or it’ll star in my hungry daydreams for weeks to come…” Remy grabbed the attention of his experimental chef bff again as he rubbed his stomach performatively.

“Who says you get any?” Manon scoffed, acting offended. Elise laughed her bright, sunshiney laugh as she hung off her boyfriend beside Manon.

“Your mom is lucky that she gets to try it! It’s definitely gonna be better than those bacon onion tempura lollipop abominations you brought for lunch yesterday.”

“When she bit into it, it brought a tear to my eye,” observed Remy. He dramatically brushed a finger across his bottom eyelid as if he were crying right then.

“Sometimes they’re hits, sometimes they’re misses! You still gotta take the shot,” Manon winked. All laughed as they slid their respective backpacks onto their shoulders and made to leave the room.

“Have a good evening, M. Agreste!” Manon called as they exited. Their spirited homeroom teacher looked up from his computer to smile warmly and wave to the trio.

“Goodnight, guys! Good luck on problem #6,” M. Agreste flashed a devilish grin at them, and Remy groaned in response. “Ready, Chris?”

The bully nodded reluctantly and headed for the front of the room as the teacher stood to close the door. Manon was silently disappointed that she didn’t get to hear the beginning of her rival being chewed out by an authority figure. She decided to try to watch his behavior tomorrow to see if he’d really given it to him.

The group of friends chatted casually on the stroll towards home, as they did every day after school. They all lived within the same neighborhood, so they were able to walk together most of the way before diverting onto their respective streets. Manon expounded on her recent trip to the produce market across town in search of the perfect, crisp cornichons she needed for her sandwiches. Elise updated the gang on her latest modern dance routine that she was cooking up for competition, flip-flopping on which moves were too complex for her to pull off in a fast-paced sequence like that. Remy filled them in on how his twin pet frogs were currently in a fight, refusing to occupy the same half of their tank at the same time. Manon suggested couples counseling.

“They’re not a couple, they’re brothers!” Remy shouted, his voice reverberating off the tall buildings surrounding the group of friends.

“That doesn’t always stop a relationship in the animal kingdom….” observed Elise.

“You are not allowed near Erlân and Ramón ever again.”

“Aw, come on! They love me!”

“Nuh uh. You’re a bad influence with those utterly impure frog thoughts you just aired.”

Manon rolled her eyes at her lovestruck besties as they bickered good-naturedly beside her. She loved them so, but thinking of that fact reminded her that, since last night, she was keeping a very large secret from them. Guilt quickly soured her mood.

“H-have a good night, guys. I’ll let you know how the croissants turn out! Maybe there will be enough leftovers for me to bring them for lunch tomorrow.” Manon tried to keep her voice even and cheerful as she turned rapidly down her street, breaking off from the group to hide her conflicted face.

“Oh, uh, bye, Manon!” Elise called at her rapidly retreating pal with a confused wave. She shrugged to Remy, and they continued walking and discussing frog technicalities.

“Are you feeling okay, Manon?” Tikki poked her little bulbous head out of Manon’s backpack to speak into her charge’s ear. A look of concern was plastered on her adorable face.

“Huh?” Manon startled, almost forgetting she had Tikki in there. “Sorry, Tikki. I just don’t like lying to people. It makes me feel… dirty.” The girl frowned.

“I’m sorry to hear that you’re upset, Manon. It’s a tough job to be a superhero, and it’s a lot of responsibility to have foisted on you all in an instant. However, Ladybug chose you because she knew that you could overcome the obstacles and thrive.” The kwami patted Manon’s shoulder with her tiny paw.

“That’s right! Ladybug chose me.” Manon looked confused, struck by the thought. “How does she assume these things about me? Do I know Ladybug?”

Tikki shook her head dismissively, “I am not allowed to speak the name of my previous owners to those who don’t already know it. It’s a magical spell placed on the Miraculous to protect secret identities if a kwami is captured, so don’t even ask,” she chuckled. “And anyway, I think maybe you should just get inside and look in your physics book.”

“I promise I’ll get the homework done, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Manon replied, twisting her head to look at the little bug creature over her shoulder with a curious quirked brow. “Science is usually my worst subject, but M. Agreste is a good teacher.”

Tikki shrugged and nodded. As they came upon Manon’s building, the girl keyed her code into the pad next to the front door and took the elevator to her floor. Once inside her apartment, she flopped her bag down on the couch and set about getting her dinner ingredients out of the fridge.

Tikki watched her new Chosen as she worked, a look of determination and excitement on the teen’s face like a great artist struck with inspiration. Manon turned the TV on for background noise, pulled out a cutting board, and began slicing up deli meat, cheese, and tiny pickles while the oven preheated. The brunette danced gracefully about the kitchen, pulling armfuls of sauces and liquids from the refrigerator, several spice jars from a tall cabinet, bowls from the dishwasher. Tikki caught the sparkle in Manon’s eye as she made various concoctions from citrus juices, vinegars, creams, seasonings, and oils in little bowls.

Twenty minutes later, the sandwiches were in the oven, roasting the croissants to a golden brown while the cheese melted. Manon wiped sweat from her thick brows and took down her hair from the ponytail she had tied it back into, shaking it out to her shoulder blades with a sigh.

“Phew. I hope this one works!”

“You look so alive while cooking! Is this a hobby of yours?” Tikki questioned, hovering over to the tired girl.

“Yeah!” Manon perked up instantly at the mention of her special interest. “I’ve been cooking things by myself since I was little, because my mom was always gone at night working. Over the years, I think my tastes have strayed from the norm, though…” she trailed off with a light giggle, reminiscing about the strange dishes she had come up with just in the last month.

“I think you have great taste,” Tikki beamed, “and I can’t wait to try a tiny bite of that sandwich when it’s done.” The hungry kwami rubbed her hands together and licked her lips, looking at the oven.

Manon laughed and felt herself relax slightly. She had really come to love cooking. Someday, she thought maybe she could open a restaurant, or maybe a bistro, to showcase her unique recipes. That is, if enough people actually liked them. She made a mental note to pinch off a tidbit of her sandwich to slip to Tikki during dinner later without her mother noticing.

Right on cue, Manon heard her mother’s key unlock the apartment door as the oven timer was about to ring out. Quickly telling Tikki to hide, Manon slipped on an oven mitt and pulled the tray out of the hot oven just as Nadja entered.

“Hey, Mom!” greeted Manon.

“Hi, Sweetie. How was school?” The pixie-haired talk show host replied to her daughter.

“Ah, nothing to write home about.” Manon shrugged, deciding not to vent about Chris and his goons today. She wanted to keep her spirits up to enjoy dinner.

“No new drama with that boy today?” Nadja asked anyway, like she had read Manon’s mind and decided to pry.

“Ahhh,” chuckled the girl, “He gave some trouble to Odette, the girl who got akumatized last night? She’s in my class.” With her face turned away from her mother, Manon frowned briefly as she glossed over the detail that she had been targeted by them as well, and may have even made herself an enemy of the group with just a few sentences.

“That’s a shame. I hope she didn’t let him get in her head. He seems too stupid for her to trouble herself with.” Nadja shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. She had heard plenty of earfuls about Chris Lahiffe and his jerky jock pals over the years, ramping up now that he and her daughter were in high school. Nadja had even had some talks with various teachers and Principal Mendeliev regarding the rambunctious behavior, but the problems always returned in time.

“Exactly, Mama. Plus, M. Agreste held him after school when we were leaving. Here’s hoping he got expelled!” Manon’s optimism was a bit misplaced in vengeance, but Nadja decided to let the girl have her fantasy. “And he seemed kinda jealous when he heard me talking about these sandwiches,” Manon grinned with pride as she plated the croissants and poured homemade dressing on the salad she had crafted. Nadja lit up, hunger in her eyes.

“You’re too good to me, Manon.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

The croissants were a success in Manon’s book. She may sometimes find out that not every idea was as delicious in execution as it sounded in her head, but lately she had been right more often than wrong. Even Tikki agreed, having eagerly gobbled up the bite Manon offered to her when Nadja’s back was turned during dinner.

After the dishes were cleared, Manon packed the remaining few croissants into a container and slid it into her lunch bag for the next day. It was time to start her homework, she realized with a groan. The teen slung her backpack over her shoulder and marched into her bedroom to begin.

Flicking on the light, Manon was greeted with the comfy, familiar sight of her room. Three of the walls were an ashen grey color, accented by the fourth wall which was almost neon teal. Leaning against the accent wall was her dresser, tall and white with several keepsakes and curios on top such as Ladybug merchandise and little Japanese keychains made to look like miniature foods. A bookshelf stood proudly next to her queen-size bed, full of fiction novels about girls who go on adventures and participation trophies from various sports Manon had played as a child, but never exactly excelled at.

Her desk was triangular in shape, placed in the corner with a large, plush rolling chair at it. The great window beside it gave her a view of the streets below and the buildings surrounding, as the apartment was on the 7th floor. Manon placed herself elegantly in the chair as she tossed her bookbag onto the ground beside her before slumping and groaning at the idea of homework once more. She flicked on her lamp, which was clipped to the bookshelf between the desk and her bed in order to provide light to both.

As Manon flipped open the heavy textbook to read her first homework question, a yellow piece of paper stuck to the page caught her eye. Lifting it to catch the light, Manon read the mysterious note curiously. It seemed to be an address, though Manon didn’t recognize it, and a time, 8 p.m. Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw the initials in the bottom right corner:

“-L.B.”

Her eyes snapped to the clock on her bookshelf instantly. 7:36, it read. Manon’s golden eyes blew wide as she glanced rapidly between the note and the clock, urging her brain to form thoughts. Once she managed to push through her shock, she flipped open her personal laptop on the desk and speedily hopped on a navigation website. The walk time to the address was almost half an hour.

Manon stood before she even finished thinking, twisting her long hair into a braid lightning fast, two strands of cowlicked hair hanging loosely over her forehead as they always did when her hair was pulled back. The frantic girl grabbed her backpack and tore through the apartment to the front door.

“Are you going out, Manon?” Nadja turned around from where she sat on the couch to look at her fleeing daughter.

“Oh! Mom! Ah, yeah! Remy is having…” her mind blanked briefly, “relationship issues? With his frogs! Not Elise. We’re gonna help him! But I gotta go right now so bye!” Manon blew a kiss to her confused mother as she tugged on a light jacket to face the brisk evening ahead, and then she was gone.

Tikki floated along behind Manon down the hallway of the large building as the girl decided the stairs would be faster than the elevator. The kwami looked sheepish.

“Oh, right. I did tell you to check your physics book, didn’t I? Sorry, I got a little distracted by the food.”

[shirlleycoyle]

I Need to Explain to You Just How Dire America’s Pokémon Card Crisis Is

It is possible, maybe even likely, that sometime during the pandemic you have heard that Pokémon card collecting is undergoing a sort of renaissance. Having large swaths of the world largely confined to their homes sends people searching for new hobbies, rediscovering old ones, and searching their closets for old collectibles. All of this has led to a scorching hot Pokémon card market. 

As I said, you have maybe heard about this already. But I need to explain to you how out of hand things have gotten. The story here is not “Pokémon cards are kind of popular again.” The resurgent interest in Pokémon cards has brought multiple major, well-respected companies to their knees, has caused Target stores to consider calling the cops, and has led to shortages and/or price increases of basically anything even remotely attached to the hobby of collecting cards. However wild you might think any of this is, it is wilder than that. 

I know this, because I collected Pokémon cards when I was a child. I played in weekly tournaments at my local card shop. I competed (and did well!) in a national tournament sponsored by Nintendo in 1999. At that tournament alone, I won a series of cards that are now worth thousands of dollars. I had a First Edition Charizard, one of the most sought-after cards of all time, when I was 10. I sold it on eBay when I was 11, for $150. It was a huge sum of money at the time. One of these sold for more than $300,000 a few months ago. Like many other people, I have spent much of the last few months digging through my old cards, identifying which ones are valuable, and selling them on eBay. I have not even begun to sell my most valuable cards and have already made more than $3,000. I sold a First Edition Eevee, one of the most common cards in the Jungle set released in 1999, for $40. I sold a First Edition Magikarp, the most impotent Pokémon that has ever existed, for $70.

A good way to check the prices people are selling Pokémon cards for is to check eBay’s “sold items.”

The prices people are willing to pay for Pokémon cards are very high, but to be honest that is pretty normal collector stuff. I kept these cards in the first place because “they might be worth something someday.” It is now “someday,” and they are worth something. 

What is NOT normal is what is happening at the higher ends of the collecting hobby and, specifically, in the “graded” card market. There is a “grading” industry in the collectibles world whose purpose is to authenticate and determine the condition of a card, or a comic book, or a piece of sports memorabilia. For Pokémon, Magic, and sports cards, graders consider the centering, coloring, edges, and general condition of a card, and assign it a score between 1-10 (1 is considered “poor,” 10 is considered “gem mint.”) Scratches, bends, creases, pen marks, printing errors, etc. all affect a card’s grade. Grading is done under special lighting and with magnifying glasses and other tools to really put a card through the proverbial ringer. This is a very serious enterprise. Once a card has been graded, it is not only considered to be authentic but it also means a professional has looked at it and, in the case of a 10, determined that it is perfect, the ideal specimen of a card that was made in limited quantities. 

Prices of PSA-graded cards that have sold at auction recently. Image: PSA

Getting a card graded at a high score affects the price of that card on the secondary market by many orders of magnitude. An ungraded, holographic First Edition Charizard card from the base set (the very rare card I sold on eBay when I was a kid) is worth a few thousand dollars. A First Edition Charizard graded a 10 is worth, as I mentioned, $300,000. For less rare cards, this price magnifier effect is still in place. A card that might sell for $10 ungraded could sell for $200 or more if graded a 10. There are dozens of Pokémon cards that are worth between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars if they're graded an 8, 9, or 10.

With old Pokémon cards in particular, there are a lot of damaged, low-grade cards because they are literally children's toys, designed to be shuffled and handled repeatedly and traded back and forth. I distinctly remember playing with cards that would have been worth a lot of money today at recess in elementary school, laying the cards in the dirt. A search on eBay will show many cards that would be very valuable that are selling at relatively low prices because they are bent, scratched, written on, or otherwise half destroyed. This means there's a huge incentive to get cards that are in good condition graded, because there are relatively few of them out there.

Over the last few months, as people have been raiding their closets for their old Pokémon card collections, they’ve been mailing their cards to get graded at one of the three major companies that does this. The companies are Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), and Beckett Grading Services (BGS). Each of these companies has been grading collectibles for decades, though CGC made its name grading comics and only began grading trading cards about a year ago. Under the weight of the resurgent Pokémon card hobby, each has been completely crushed by demand and COVID-related backlogs, to the point that, from the outside, it seems as though they are barely functioning (It’s not just Pokémon cards, there has also been a resurgence in sports card, Magic card, and Yu-gi-oh! card collecting).

PSA, the most popular grading service, has published card grading wait times of up to 10 months but collectors say they have at times waited for more than a year to get certain cards graded. BGS’s published wait times are “Approximately 9+ months.” CGC claims that its wait times are “144 working days.” These long wait times do not come close to showing the inner workings of what seems to be happening at these companies right now, however. 

Both PSA and CGC have posted increasingly alarming blog posts and updates about the current state of the grading industry. All three companies seem to be making a lot of money despite being completely unable to keep up with demand. In March, Joe Orlando, the CEO of PSA, wrote a blog post called “an avalanche of cardboard” in which he noted that there was a “tsunami” of cards submitted to the company: “At the time of this writing, PSA was receiving more cards every five days (over 500,000 per business week) than what we used to receive every three months.”

Orlando noted that there were “some who questioned my sanity” after an earlier post explained why card collecting survived the financial crisis, 9/11, and would survive the pandemic. 

“The sheer volume of orders that PSA received in early March has fundamentally changed our ability to service the hobby”

“Even I didn’t think it would be THIS good,” he wrote of the new interest in the hobby and the 10-20x increase in prices some cards have seen during the pandemic. “During the past year, our company has hired, trained, and onboarded dozens upon dozens of new employees … In October of 2020, we doubled the size of our headquarters to accommodate for increased operational capacity.”

Barely a week later, though, Steve Sloan, PSA’s president, announced that the company would temporarily stop accepting cards for grading unless collectors pay $300 per card for “Super Express” service or $600 per card for “Walk Through” service. It said in addition to the new warehouse it bought it would be buying yet another warehouse and said that it was desperately looking for new graders to keep up with demand. 

“The sheer volume of orders that PSA received in early March has fundamentally changed our ability to service the hobby," Sloan wrote. "The reality is that we recently received more cards in three days than we did during the previous three months.” 

CGC, meanwhile, announced in early March that it has “experienced extraordinary growth in demand for our expert and impartial certification services” and as a result had hired 70 new employees in three months, bought “an additional 21,000 square feet of space, implemented comprehensive training programs, brought in efficiency consultants and worked thousands of hours of overtime.” It also claimed it was investing in “cutting-edge technology, including AI, robotics, advanced software, and more” and said that it would give a $1,000 start bonus to any new employees to incentivize people to apply to work there. 

Now, a little over a month later, CGC has announced it’s increasing that start bonus to $2,500 and that it is “seeking to immediately hire dozens of employees … for nearly all positions.” This week, it announced that prices for its cheapest grading services would increase substantially and set a Wednesday deadline for submissions before the price increase. 

That new deadline led to yet another surge of submissions and seemingly led to its submission website having major difficulties; the CGC forums are currently filled with very angry people who seemingly weren’t able to meet the deadline. I submitted a few dozen cards to be graded by CGC in early February before I understood just how dire this situation is; it took more than a month for the company to even acknowledge it had received the cards. They have still not formally entered the grading process. What this looks like on a collector's or consumer's end is that they are taking some of the most valuable collectibles they own (if you are getting cards graded, they are almost definitely worth thousands of dollars on eBay or on the secondary market) packaging them up, and mailing them into what is essentially a black hole, with little idea of when they will come back. 

“Knowing that we sent our cards out and they were supposedly delivered but have no confirmation that they received is very unnerving,” one CGC forum poster wrote Thursday. “Waiting months to get confirmation that actually received an order is very unfair.”

“I am wondering what happened to my stuff :(,” another wrote.

CGC, PSA, and BGS did not respond to a request for comment. 

Meanwhile, prices for things that are ancillary to trading card collecting, including cheap plastic sleeves, hard plastic “Top Loaders,” and another type of card protector called "Card Savers" which are required for submitting cards to be graded are also skyrocketing in price. A collector I know has begun to simply buy Top Loaders from Chinese wholesale websites and sell those on eBay rather than deal with Pokémon cards at all. Target stores around the country have lines around the block every Friday morning and the company has begun to consider whether it might have to call the cops to prevent people from camping out overnight. 

This is all to say that, yes, Pokémon cards are popular again. But that is underselling it. The popularity of Pokémon cards and other trading cards are leading to a situation in which hundreds of people are working "thousands of hours of overtime" and companies are offering massive bounties for new hires to keep up with demand, and are still failing to do so. 

“We are extremely excited about the future, not just for our company, but for the entire industry,” Orlando said in his blog. “You should be too.”

I Need to Explain to You Just How Dire America’s Pokémon Card Crisis Is syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Mac Ruaidh - Part Six

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Willie was excited as he retrieved extra blankets for Da and put them on the bed to be piled into the pack with their extra layers of clothes and the few crude toys he possessed. Da said that they’d done the same last year, Willie had just been too little to remember but now that he was four he’d be sure to remember for next year.

“We’ve got to stop in the kitchen to see Cook and get some supper before we go over,” Da explained as he secured the pack and its contents.

“How long’re we stayin’?” Willie asked.

“As long as it takes the three mares to foal. It could be a day or two but it could be a week or more. It’s no up to us but we must be there to help them through it.”

Willie nodded and led the way out of their room and down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen where Cook already had a basket waiting for them.

“Mac,” she said warmly, dusting her flour covered hands on her apron before wiping at the sweat on her brow with the back of her hand. “Molly went to the market for me earlier today and while she was there she stopped in to see Widow March.” Cook shuffled over to the counter where some of the things Molly had retrieved for her remained in their basket. “The widow gave her this for you,” she pulled out a folded and sealed bit of paper and squinted at the direction above the smudge of wax before shrugging and holding it out for him. “She said it’s for you from that lass Sabrina what was wet nurse to your boy.”

Willie cocked his head as he watched Da take the paper, glance at it, and tuck it away in his shirt.

“Thank ye,” Jamie said with a nod.

Cook frowned at him and briefly crossed her arms over her chest before realizing she was smearing the flour that still clung to her hands across the dark wool of her bodice. She grabbed a nearby rag that wasn’t a whole lot cleaner than her hands and used it to wipe at the smudges. “I’m supposing that there is her lettin’ you know she’s off to be wed again.”

Willie watched Cook’s eyes watching Da even though her head was still directed down. The boy’s head whipped to follow the direction of Cook’s gaze and see what Da might do.

“And what leaves ye wi’ that impression?” Da asked.

“The Widow March were friends wi’ Sabrina’s late husband’s mother. It’s why she left it wi’ the widow knowin’ she’d find a way to get it to you. Shame if you ask me. All that time she was nurse to your boy and you just let her leave like that… Should have spoken up but it seems you’ve lost your chance.”

Da’s eyes narrowed and his mouth twitched but it was the kind of narrowing and twitching that meant Da was trying not to laugh, not the kind that meant he was angry but not in a position to say as much.

“And ye thought I ought to have…” Da trailed as his lips continued to twitch towards laughter.

“Married her, yes,” Cook pressed. “She was that fond of your boy and certainly seemed fond of you as well. I don’ know what you noticed of her when she was leaving but she seemed sorry to be leavin’ you two behind, of that I’m sure. She was a sweet lass and you’d have been lucky to have her.”

Da pressed his lips together and nodded. “I cannae disagree wi’ a word of that but I dinna know that I’d have things other than they are now wi’ just me and Willie.” He grinned down at the lad and ruffled his hair until Willie laughed and reached up to shoo Da’s hand away. “Ye ken I was married once before,” Da continued, turning back to Cook. “I’ll never love another the way I loved my wife and I dinna think it would be right for me to wed a woman I loved less. It wouldna be fair to her.”

Cook made a strange face at Da before looking down at Willie. Da frowned and put a strong hand between Willie’s shoulder blades, guiding him towards the door leading out to the yard.

“Let’s go, Willie. We need to settle our things in before we can tend the horses and they’ll be impatient for their breakfast.”

Willie followed his father to the barn and waited at the bottom while Da carried their things carefully up the ladder. When everything was up in the loft, Da came back down and let Willie climb on his own following behind to catch him if he fell––he didn’t fall.

There was one large pallet in the corner for the two of them to share and a smaller pallet along the opposite wall where one of the other grooms slept throughout the year. Da pulled out their blankets and started laying them out while Willie pulled his toys––a hand-carved horse Da had made him, a soft ball made of kitchen twine scraps wrapped around a wooden core and sewn tight up in burlap, and a small book of nursery rhymes that had been a gift from Lord and Lady Dunsany, just a little something they found when they were in London (Da had been quiet when they gave it to him but agreed with Lady Dunsany when she said that he ought to be taught his letters and informed Lady Dunsany that in fact, he had started teaching Willie to read and write several weeks earlier).

“Da… Who was it Cook was talkin’ about? The woman who was wet?” Willie asked as he lay back on the pallet and tossed the ball into the air.

“Take care ye dinna miss and have that hit ye in the face,” Da warned. Willie only tossed the ball higher above his face. Da sighed and settled onto the pallet next to Willie watching carefully as the ball’s upward track slowed before dropping back toward Willie’s head. “Ye’d likely recall Sabrina if ye saw her again but it’s been near two years since she left the house to live wi’ her sister. She helped me to take care of ye when ye were a wee bairn.”

“And Cook says you should have married her?”

Da snorted. “Aye, I suppose that is what Cook said. But she didna ken Sabrina so well as I did nor does she ken me so well as she thinks either. I’m happy to hear Sabrina’s to be married but I’m no sorry it’s no to me.”

“Cause ye still love Mam, right?” Willie’s hand missed the ball and it hit him right between the eyes. He winced and Da pulled him upright pulling his hands away from his face so he could see the place where the ball had hit.

“I hope that knocked a bit of sense into ye,” Da remarked as he set the ball off to the side.

“You said ye never loved another woman like ye did yer wife,” Willie pressed, ignoring the incident with the ball.

“I did say that and I meant it,” Da answered with a somber intensity.

“What was she like?” Willie asked. He’d overheard speculation from some of the servants up at the house over the years about the kind of woman his mother had been but it had only occurred to him that morning that his father almost never talked about her. “Am I like Mam?”

Da sighed and leaned back against the wall of the barn, the straw in the pallet crinkling under his weight. He reached over and drew Willie to him, pulling him onto his lap and waiting for Willie to slump against him.

“Ye have a bit of yer mother’s coloring,” Da started, resting a hand on his head and ruffling his hair. “And some of her spirit, too. Ye ken the way ye manage to get Cook and the kitchen maids to sneak ye extra bits of food when ye think I’m no looking? Yer mother had her own ways of gettin’ folk to do her bidding and a knack for finding trouble––though yer Auntie Jenny would say I have plenty of that to have shared wi’ ye myself.”

“Did you marry here or was it back home in Scotland?” Willie had never seen Scotland but Da promised that someday they’d go back and he’d get to see Lallybroch. Willie had fallen asleep to stories of Lallybroch, the beauty of the land, the people who lived there, what things had been like before a war had changed it all. He didn’t understand it all––sometimes Da started telling one story but then change part way through and tell a different one instead. Maybe he’d understand when he was older.

“I married in Scotland,” Da said quietly. “I didna know I’d be getting married until the day before––neither of us did. We neither of us had much choice in the matter.”

Willie lifted his head and stared in shock at his father. “You mean ye didna want to marry her?”

Da laughed. “Tha’s no what I said. I said I didna have much choice when I married. But I wanted to marry Claire verra badly. I didna tell her then––and no for a while after––but I loved her long before the day I married her. She was my choice whether it mattered or no. And by the time it mattered, she loved me too and chose me… my Sassenach,” he murmured quietly like he was talking to someone else though he and Willie were alone.

“Sassenach? Mam was English?”

Da started and blinked before replying, “Aye. Yer mam was an English lass.” He braced himself against the wall and pushed back upright with a groan. “We canna be wasting the day up here. Let’s feed the horses, check on the mares, and then come back for a bite ourselves. Ye can bring yer book down to practice while I reshoe the horses Lord Dunsany wants to show the buyers next week.”

Willie let a small whine slip out before his father turned an impatient eye his way. “Can I help ye with the horses’ shoes instead of reading? I can do that later.”

“If ye read me a page, I’ll let ye hold the nails for me,” Da offered as a compromise.

[subtextures]

Narcissus Talks to Echo

The Interview apologies to The Paris Review Context:  Why poetry? Subtext: (Laughs) What else is there? No, really I don’t know.  It is what has come to me.  I have tried to write fiction and I don’t seem to have the attention span for a sustained narrative.  Not that poetry doesn’t require precise attention, because it does.  But it requires a different type of attention: attention to the moment.  Fiction requires attention to the end, the resolution.  Everything is focused on how the story will end.  Poetry’s focus is in the word by word movement; the unfolding of the moment, which is what makes it so hard to read and write well. It requires one to attend to everything, all the possibilities in a very intense focus, knowing all the while that one is missing most of what is happening: kind of like life.  That kind of attention is hard to maintain in fiction: maybe a Proust, or Melville, could pull it off.  I think one almost has to be ADHD to follow the leaps and psychic shifts when writing poetry.  You know:  Look! A chicken! C:  But you also write essays. S: Yes, but essays are as Virginia Wolfe said, “the mind tracking itself.” Much like poetry. I find myself leaping along after my thoughts in both poetry and the essay.  Neither, initially requires plotting out what I am going to say.  I can rely more on the moment to moment flow of my thinking.  In both forms discovering what I have to say as I write and focus on the play of words and ideas is part of what makes writing exciting to me.  Not to sound Romantic, but it is as if I am possessed by something greater than me that is leading me toward some revelation.  Eratos, I guess. C: You just said you don’t have to plot out what you are going to say, yet in several of your long series you have fairly complex writing structures.  I am thinking here of  “My Book of Changes,” “115 Missing Days,” “Primogenitive Folly,” and in your most recent, “Sonnet.” S: True, but in all of those poems, I used a number system to either create a limitation, either small or large, to help me, or maybe better to say, force me to either write very tightly in the case of  “Book of Changes,” and “Sonnet” or to expand on my thinking as in “115 Missing Days.”  I did not have a direction, or even some kind of idea in regards to what I was going to say, I simply wrote.  Again it is more of a chasing after an idea, or image that is just out of reach constantly.  Kind of like Robert Browning’s pursuit of love, in “Life in Love:” where the speaker is always, like a hunter, in pursuit of his love, but never quite capturing his prey.  Browning is more interested in the pursuit than the capture, it seems to me, and I see that now as analogous to how I write when I first sit down to write a poem. As I said earlier, I am much more interested in where the poem will take me as I am writing it, rather than having a set idea of what I want to say and then figuring out how to say it. C:  So, if you don’t know what you are going to write about, how do you start? S: I start with a phrase, a word sometimes, or an image, then go from there.  I don’t mean to sound so willy-nilly.  I write all the time.  Or I, at least, get out my notebook and stare at the page.  Sometimes I will re-read snatches of writing which led nowhere at the time they were written and find something there to salvage or something to prod me on in another direction.  Somedays, I just write badly, but other days I can re-read the bad writing I abandoned weeks or months before and find something, some fragment of an idea, which leads me into a larger world. Last year I even found several partial poems in notebooks I abandonded at least ten years ago.  I have learned over time that anything can start a poem; so I have tried to enable that by making a conscience effort to pay attention to everything: the short arc of a bird from one branch to another, trash caught in a whirl of wind, the beauty in the everyday occurrence.  Of course, for the most part that is a failure, but I do try. C:  Do you write everyday? Do you have a routine? S:  I try to write everyday, but I rarely ever do.  Even when I was writing “My Book of Changes,” I didn’t write everyday, although that was the intention when I started it, to cast the I Ching then write a six line poem using the hexagram I cast as a palimpsest through which to read my life in that day, and to do that every day for a year.  But that fell apart quickly because of work and having three children under the age of 5 in the house.  However, it made sense to try to write one everyday but to let chance operate allowing for some days where I just didn’t have time to write.  I wound up with 250 poems over the course of the year, and that led to the next series of poems, “115 Missing Days.”  But I am not really answering your question, am I?  There goes that chicken again; one thought distracts me from my original intention.            No I don’t have a routine. No I don’t write everyday. There, that is the short answer.  I used to worry about not writing, the actual putting pen to paper kind of writing, but over time, I guess as I’ve gotten older I don’t worry so much about that anymore.  I think that as I go through my day, trying to pay attention to stuff, I am writing.  I am filtering out the ephemera, collecting images and thoughts, which I will later use.  Not necessarily consciously, but I find when I finally find time to write that often these thoughts and ideas flow back into my thinking sometimes from a few days before, other times from years in the past, in a non-temporal flood of memories.              I do carry a notebook with me at all times. I have done that for more than twenty years.  I like unlined sketchbooks.  I write in the book whenever I can catch a few minutes, or if I have an idea all of a sudden. Once on the way home from dropping my oldest off at college, I wrote an entire sonnet as I made the eight hour drive.  I stopped finally at a truck stop and wrote it down. So I guess my routine is to write whenever I can, but not on a schedule. Does that still qualify as a routine, if it is not in a routine manner? C: Yes, I think that would qualify.  Let’s talk about your “training,” as it were, how important do you think poetry classes are, or MFA programs? S: I don’t really have anything to say about MFA programs, since I have not been in one.  The two people I know who went through a MFA program, one at Iowa and the other at the New School in New York, seemed to get a lot out of the programs.  How much they learned to write in the programs, I am unsure.  At least one of them was a fine writer before he went through his MFA program.  I think like any school, a person gets as much as she puts into the program. I found the poetry workshops I took as an undergraduate and in graduate school allowed me a unique environment to write and talk about poetry with a very diverse group of people with different aesthetic visions.  It is rare, at least for me, to have that kind of environment after school.  I have written and thought about poetry on my own since I finished at Bread Loaf almost twenty years ago. I was lucky from the very beginning to have several people who took the time to read and talk about my work with a kind attentive eye.  It helped me learn to write on my own. C:  Talk about these people. S: Well, in high school when I first started thinking of myself as a poet, I had the good fortune to come into contact with two teachers, one a writer, the other a visual artist, Cliff Berkman and Ann Lockstedt, who took my poems seriously, or at least pretended to well enough to make me believe they took me seriously.  Berkman gave me books of poetry to read, probably the best thing any young poet can do; read voraciously, as Dylan Thomas said, “until my eyes fell out.”  Lockstedt introduced me to Art with a big A.  Something that was out of the realm of the milieu of small town south Texas, she took a bus load of kids to see the Cezanne exhibit in Houston, as well as several buses to Dallas and Ft. Worth to see the Kimball and several other art museums.  That kind of trip with today’s lack of funding for the arts in the public school system would be unheard of now. As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I was lucky to be in several workshops run by Albert Goldbarth.  In the late 70’s and early 80’s, he taught there before moving to Kansas.  Again he talked to us as if we were poets, not as dumb-ass students, which we were.  He was sarcastic and cutting, but he also found something good to say about everybody’s poems.  What Katherine Bomer calls the hidden gems in students writing.  It takes a very patient mind to do this well, and Goldbarth made us want to write better, or at least made me want to write better. As a graduate student in English literature at the Bread Loaf School of English, I had one poetry workshop with Carol Oles, but just being at Bread Loaf was a writing workshop. The conversations about literature and writing with the professors and students that I had over the course of the four summers I was in Vermont were life altering, as far as my thinking about poetry was concerned.  Lunch conversations with David Huddle, Robert Pack, Ken Macrorie and others over everything from the weather to literature, to politics is indescribable in its influence on my literary life. C: What about your own teaching, how does that affect your poetry? S: I would say in an indirect manner.  When talking to my students about the “great” works of English literature I have come to see it in deeper more meaningful ways, not just because I have to explain the poem in ways the students can understand, but also because of the ways of knowing a poem the students bring to the work.  Also as I try to teach my students how to write, I garner insights into my own writing processes.  Teaching has deepened the initial training I had through the university, and taken my understanding of poetry further, I believe, than if I had gone off to sell insurance.  But that is because I am able to think about poetry on an ongoing basis, and have discussions with fellow teachers about writing and poetry. C: How important is having a community of writers? S: Very important.  Writing is such a solitary activity. So much of the time is spent in your own head, wrestling with your own demons, caught up in self-evisceration that just being able to talk to others who have some common understanding of what it means to write becomes a balm to the doubt and insecurity that comes with being a writer. Even if all you talk about most of the is how the local sports team is doing, or how crappy your job is.  You also have the love of words and writing, which brought you together in the first place.   C: Do you think about your readers when you write? S: Yes, in the very real sense that I am one of my readers.  That makes me think of a line from Tom Raworth when he said he started to write because he liked reading what wrote. But as for making it easy for my readers, not really.  I write what I write.  I like it when someone says they have read and liked what I wrote.  I often wish they would be more specific about what they liked, but any kind of  positive response is welcome.  I think any writer who tells you she doesn’t care what people think of her writing is lying to you. As human beings we all want to belong, and writer’s want people to read what they write.  I think that is why so many writers seek out workshops, so they can have someone read their work.  The danger becomes that you change your vision to better conform to others’ view of the world.  That is also the horror of writing that no one can see the way you do, and you wind up screaming into the wind.  I haven’t sent out anything for more than 20 years, but I post on my blog in hopes that someone will read my poems, and maybe even respond.   (March 2012)