My Favorite Tiny Rock

That's a quarter and its shadow beside the rock. The rock is the correct size. I don't know what happened to the quarter.

Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler***

This is the selection for our next book club meeting. The protagonist and narrator is a light-colored black woman named Dana. Both she and her husband, an older white male, are writers. Dana is involuntarily drawn back in time to the early nineteenth century southern United States, where she learns hard lessons about slavery. This is a good book. The only things I noticed that I would quarrel with are three instances of using the pronoun "I" as the object of a verb.

Yesterday's Dream

I dreamed I was looking out the kitchen window, and there was Mama, pushing a great load of deep pink flowers up onto the deck. She was standing between the stairs and the wall, a distance of about 14 feet below the deck railing, but she succeeded in pushing the bunch of flowers over the railing. That suggests how big the bouquet was.

Then she walked away. She was wearing white ankle pants and a pink shirt, and her hair was short and curly.


Today I woke up in great pain and stiffness. My right hand was swollen and hurting like everything. I held it over the mug when I made coffee, and the heat helped. This happens often, so I've been trying to lift things and write with my left hand. My right leg also hurts a lot when I wake up. But I don't know how to practice walking left-legged.

The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber****

This is a very good book, which edges over into science fiction. Still, it feels very real. I don't want to say much more about it, in case some members of the book club--or any others--haven't read it yet. It's a very big book, exactly 500 big pages, but worth reading every word.

I haven't done anything very interesting lately. I dreamed someone left two half-grown kittens at my house. One was a thin and dirty tabby cat, not very healthy looking. The other looked okay, except it was a skinny tabby cat, too. Matter of fact, since I've been petless, Mo is the only good-looking cat I remember dreaming of.

Sometimes I miss Mo so much, I talk to him, even though he's not here.