Pre-aphoristic mood

Yes, I am back after a gap, a hiatus, a dratted aporia--on Earthlink, and Blogger seems a lot happier. Perhaps it didn't like my rural dial-up service.

I have a day to think about getting into the aphoristic mood. But I've at least decided that I will definitely start with tourists and fat people, because downtown Cooperstown has been awash in both--the Dreams Park expansion appears to be doing its best to destroy village life by bringing cartloads of teenage boys to our sidewalks, along with their parents.

At left you may see my mother's first scanned photograph. She is the youngest of many children, mostly boys, but here you may see her older sisters, Julia and Sara. They're smiling at the photographer on one of the many porches of the Queen Anne house built by my grandfather, William Leicester Morris. W. L. Morris was many things, among them a house builder, and many of his homes remain in southern Georgia. If you look very closely at the dandy little wristwatch on my Aunt Sara's wrist, you will see that it is actually a neat little ringworm.

Coming Attractions at the Palace

Upcoming project: aphorisms
12 months
12 categories
250+ chances to be an idiot

Rules for me:
--Never sound like Polonius.
--Do all the thinking in the daily shower, and no more. Don't steal writing time or child time.
--Feel free to alter any category based on whim, but once the month begins, the choice is made--doom, fate, and duty kick in, and there will be no more whimsical changes of mind.
--Skip the weekend.

The aphoristic muse:
Laura Murphy Frankstone is the official inspiration for the Palace Aphorisms. She has posted a drawing or more per day for almost a year on Laurelines. Being a tidy soul, she has organized her undertaking by sensible monthly topics--landscape, still life (see the sample above), interiors, food, animals, people, etc. I regard my more modest enterprise as a Child of Laurelines, a crepe myrtle twiglet magically sprouting from a live oak.

Why aphorisms:
Doing something firmly out of fashion always has a perverse fascination. I have picked a form that is old-fashioned, seldom practiced, and not particularly congenial to me--or maybe it is; I haven't the faintest idea. I prefer to try something I don't know how to do, and at which I may fail. Great thumping humiliations have their own interest and attraction...

My 12 categories, in no particular order:
--writing
--chickens
--the fantastic
--God & powers & principalities
--poetry
--fat people/tourists
--myth
--children
--cats
--stories & novels
--house
--the ultimate challenge of w-e-a-t-h-e-r, the boring topic with too many aphorisms already

Perhaps I should start with fat people/tourists--Siamese twin topics very much on my mind when I'm home, cheek and jowl with the varied visitors to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Glimmerglass Opera tourists never raid my cottage garden, swear at their kids on my scrap of lawn, or picnic and litter on my porch... Now don't get on to me about fat people, or I'll add "gimp" as a category. I hate the way that pithy little word keeps being carted off into the sunset by the p. c. police.

Rules for you:
--Comments, abuse, confessions, and general off-topic blatherings are always entertaining, but you may also tweak the original or offer your very own on-topic aphorism.
--Ideas for topics might be interesting. Might.

Start:
2:00 a.m.,
1 September 2006,
after the summer's kid-ferrying comes to a close.

That's Daughter of Frank-en-stone, soon to be playing at your local Palace Theatre.

This is Not a Post: New Books Alert!

No, I'm still taking a blog-sabbatical until after Labor Day. But I need to say that my friend Howard Bahr has sent me my very own copy of his brand new book, The Judas Field. Jump on the skateboard and fly down to your favorite independent and buy it! And if you hurry, you can be the very first soul to say a word about the novel on the Amazon River of book sale web sites. I met Howard via the horrid institution of The Blurb Request, but our penpaldom has brought me much pleasure, in and out of books.

In addition, another friend has a new nonfiction book that will be out at summer's close: In the Morning: Reflections from First Light, to be published in September by Mercer University Press. "This book of quiet essays is a very personal look at morning from many aspects—scientific, artistic, philosophical, and religious." I was supposed to meet Phil Williams at the Nashville Festival of the Book, but fate put his back out of joint. But we've been loyal penpals since then. Oddly enough, NFB is where I met Howard with his famous professor pal, Randy Cross.

Meanwhile, somebody I 'met' through magazine acceptances--the editor of Argosy Quarterly--has the first in a big fat series of young adult books coming soon: Apocatastasis, his livejournal blog, contains many of his pictures for Here, There Be Dragons. His plethora (and I mean plethora) of enterprises is featured on his Coppervale web site. You can even find Argosy there. I'm expecting that the dragons will bring him treasure and further issues of Argosy. That's James A. Owen, projector on a grand scale.

Oh, and be sure to go by Laurelines, where Laura Murphy Frankstone has moved on to the most delicious glass and silver and vegetable still lifes. Above is July 21st's watercolor, and you can even read what I said about Laura, Hawthorne, the Other, and the mysterious and infinite replication of artists--or something like that! Just don't take my story seed. Pilferage is mine!

And confetti and happy July 22nd birthday to B, my eldest! He's six-foot and seventeen, fresh home from Turkey and Greece.

Aporia, or The Gap

Friends, readers, passers-by:

I am going off line for the rest of the summer. Look for me after Labor Day, here and at some of my haunts like Giornale Nuovo and Laurelines and outside the windows. Since I have several large projects to do before fall and many summery interruptions scheduled--ferryings of children to camps and to workshops and to stays elsewhere, nights at The Pirates of Penzance and Janácek's Jenufa (directed by Jonathan Miller!) and the premiere of Stephen Hartke and Philip Littell's The Greater Good, as well as fêtes for returning Byzantine travelers and more fêtes for visiting twins and for my visiting mother and for visiting people-I-once-knew, and picnics and plays and music on the lawn and the great etcetera (whew!)--I am going to gather my shards and splinters of free time and make an airy chamber of them. Going inside and turning the key, I'll wield the scepter of a pen over a kingdom of paper.

Thank you for coming to visit me here--feel free to wander the remote and disused portions of the Palace. You may find a dusty old stuffed owl, a surprise behind a door, a box of treasure. Who can say, unless the journey has been tried?

I am re-posting the Fried Phoenix below this post, for those who are interested in hard-boiled acceptances, stewed reviews of stories, and meringue links elsewhere.

* * *

July 8 A Night at the Opera

The evening was pleasant and cool, just right for an opera house by a lake. And it was a delicious night at Glimmerglass Opera: Gioachino Rossino’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia / The Barber of Seville, based on one of Beaumarchais’ plays, so fertile for opera. We should all look so good, so joyful, so gleeful, so full of verve and style after nearly two centuries.

I’ve been veterinarian,
Egalitarian,
Heathen comedian,
Pious tragedian,
Orator, poet,
And pirate and prophet,
A man for the ladies
And father of babies,
Drunken and sober,
A husband and sailor,
Banker and brother
And barber and lover.
Diplomat, acrobat,
Teacher of etiquette, me!
Satirist, pessimist,
Surgeon and Calvinist…
Student and swordsman,
Spy and musician…
Spanish economist,
Clockmaker, pharmacist.
I’m Figaro!

--Figaro in John Corigliano and William Hoffman’s The Ghosts of Versailles