Peter's Cross Station

Inspiration for InSoWriMo!

It's not a sonnet, but it's one of my favorite poems ever.  I discovered it when I was twenty and loved it for its multiple internal rhymes and lovely, creative imagery.  Now, on the brink of forty, I get the theme at a visceral level.  Love it even more.

The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold; When all is told We cannot beg for pardon. Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances. The sky was good for flying Defying the church bells And every evil iron Siren and what it tells: The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying And not expecting pardon, Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden. Louis Macneice

Introducing: InSoWriMo!

International Sonnet-Writing Month, that is.

I'm going to write a sonnet per week in the month of December.  Wanna join me?  Will post the results here.  If you have a blog, do the same.  If not, post yours in the comments on mine.  Come on, you know you want to!  Who's in?

Adoption Awareness: A First Mom Talks about Parenting after Placement

Go read Firemom on her first parented child's fourth birthday.  More consideration of the after-effects of adoption on first parents needs to be part of any discussion of adoption.  Firemom is always great for these things.  If you don't read her, start now!

Overheard at Nat's School

Cole reports this conversation between little boy, E, and his mom:

E's Mom: who do you play with at school?

E: (names off three or four boys)

E's Mom: why do you only play with boys?

E: Because Nat and J (Nat's BFF, a girl) only play with each other!

I love it that my kid is the obvious go-to gender line crosser in this kid's head.  We love E, by the way.  He does play with Nat sometimes, but it must be admitted that nothing comes between Nat and her J (or J and her Nat--it's a mutual adoration fest with those two).

Gender Fun with the Daughters of Lesbians

A couple of weeks ago before I got hit with the Pig, I was in a bit of an Una Troubridge mood.  Una, it seems, while more or less a femme--or a "false invert" in Radclyffe Hall's terms (which she basically took straight-up out of Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion) dressed in various gender-troubling ways on and off throughout her life/relationship with Hall (aka "John"), but basically was dressing like a girl most of the time toward the end of Hall's life.  Then, when Hall died, she had all of her (John's) suits tailored to fit her (Una) and wore them until she died.

So Cole had gone to work for the week and I was missing her, and I decided to don a shirt of hers and a tie I recently got her and cut down to make it skinny--the way she likes ties--and put a vest over it (a vest I bought long ago in the boy's department at Nordstrom's) and some trousers (girl trousers, but still) and was off to my cafe writing appointment when Nat spied me and said, "Mama Shannon!  What are you wearing?"

So I turned it back on her and asked, "what am I wearing, Nat?" to which Nat responded promptly, "You're wearing Cole-Mom!  That's silly, Mama Shannon!  You can't wear Cole-Mom!"

Now, what to make of this?  Nat gets the gender in our household and feels its rules must be followed as much as any kid of hetero-parents might?  I want to crawl into her tiny little genius brain and figure out what she sees when she sees gender.  Does she see more than two genders? She must, because she knows there are boys and there are girls.  There are moms and there are dads.  And she knows she has two moms who are both (loosely) girls.  And yet, she has developed rules for each of those moms that are at least sartorial--though then again, maybe not gender to her mind at all, I suppose.

I'd love to see what she'd say to Cole wearing a dress of mine.  Cole would love to see it too, but not nearly enough to actually put on a dress!

Tweet

I've been forcing myself to use Twitter (yes, Tweetdeck has helped a lot, thank you).  I won't say I love it, but I'm coming to terms with it.

So follow me (lilysea).  And tell me who you are so I can follow you, okay?

Darts in the Dark and Bullet Points and Completely Random Snippets of Prose

I now have five outstanding agency queries.

I have about 150 pages of a sequel.

I have so completely revised the first section of the first book that it's practically unrecognizable (in a good way) from the earlier drafts.

I have contracted whatever the rest of the family has--but so far in a much milder form (knock wood!).  Thank you, flu shot.

Finally, I just really, really need to share this paragraph with you, because I wrote it two weeks ago and it still plays over and over in my head because I am just so delighted with it:

Sophia Abington had always known she would never marry.  She knew it in the same way she knew the birthmark on her left ankle would never wash off in the bath.  It was neither a sad nor a happy thing.  It was simply an indelible fact of Sophia.

See?  Isn't that lovely?