Autem ("however" in Latin, but looks like Autumn in English)

Today I received a suspicion--not a confirmation, but a suspicion--that my character Donovan Din has curly hair. I'd always assumed it was straight, but as a writer you have to keep your antennae up for stuff like that.

So I doodled him with wavy hair, but then he looked not enough like Beethoven and too much like my sister Clair's character Blitzen Coves. And if you were to know Blitzen Coves and Donovan Din, you'd know that they'd work just fine together on a rap collaboration, but on a personal basis not at all.

It being Friday the 13th, we had to read some of Something Wicked This Way Comes, which we began last year and never finished. I wish I was Ray Bradbury. I come close to crying sometimes that I'm not him. And then I thought I'd invented Autumn People when I tried to put them as antagonists in my story, but it turned out that not only had he invented Autumn People, but written them so much scarier than I could ever hope to do that it made me despair. Ye gods, Ray, you dearly-departed writers really rip my skies. And when I think, when we began Something Wicked you were safely on the other side of the grave. Funny how life is.

And with all this happening I have to study for midterms. Cruel world, in it? But with second winds and pumpkin-spice lattes (which are everywhere, Clair says, this time of year) and the shrug of shoulders and the side of Latin that I like (more language and fewer smudges) and the fever of presidential debates in the air and the idea that I might be able to write a little something for NaNoWriMo after all--who knows, maybe turn out some halfway decent Autumn people?--I think I'll make it after all.

Grab Your Hat and Fetch a Camera

What website would any of you recommend for starting a photo blog on? Because I need to start a photo blog, and badly. I suppose it would make more sense to just upload stuff to Facebook like everybody else, but Facebook is greedy and I think it does Facebook good to be denied a morsel or two of my existence now and then.

See, when I got my new iPhone 4s with its perfect little camera perfectly smushed inside it, I really had this idea that I'd be a smart, judicious photo-taker. The perfect round of images from all the events I went to, and no more.

And now look at me. There are things I go to and don't take a photo at all, and then there are times when I let my camera get its hungry little mouth around every view I see. Today, for instance, with the sky too bright an Autumnal blue to be really feeling well, and the sun and the shadows making such a sweet contrast--I started taking photos off the top of the swingset, feeling vaguely that it reminded me of some Robert Louis Stephenson poem. And I had to get every angle of this little idyll, even with a guilty part of me knowing how much it filled up memory space.

And I can't delete photos, not even the bad ones. Because so what if it's blurry, it's a moment in time, a second in time, and if I touch that little trash can it'll be gone forever. It's a big responsibility I have. (This is also why I don't usually take video. Because I have a pathological fear of forgetting, and if once I let myself get too obsessive with the video camera, I'd never stop filming long enough to watch.)

This is the same side of me that ran around with mittens on when I was little, trying to catch all the snowflakes, because I'd heard no two were alike and I needed to save all of them that I could before they fell into that snow bank and got lost to the ages. I wonder if all writers feel on a pretty day that they're being dictated to, and that they're so busy listening that they're forgetting to write down every single word.

Two songs compete in my head right now. Panic! at the Disco, reminding me what I owe:

Go on, grab your hat and fetch a camera,

Go on, film the world before it happens.

And on the other hand, Matt and Kim insist:

No time for cameras, we'll use our eyes instead.

Sing, o muses.

Well, anyway, my camera's crammed and I need to start a photo blog.

"You're as pleasant as the morning and refreshing as the rain..."

Just got back from a beautiful, highly uplifting morning Mass in Latin. So, despite the influx of rain these past few days, I had to share more love for Mary and May. This little article inspired my mom to set up quite a gorgeous May Altar in our living room:

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: What has happened to May Altars?

Title of this post comes from "Scatterbrain" (alternately written as "Scatter-brain" or "Scatter Brain"), my new favorite goofy old 1930s song. Look it up on YouTube if you want it, I can't really pick a version. But don't confuse it with the Radiohead song "Scatterbrain (Dead as Leaves)", which is only good if you're actively seeking a depression injection.

"It is what it is, it is what it is..."

"I don't know if you know that sort of feeling you get on these days round about the end of April and the beginning of May, when the sky's a light blue, with cotton-wool clouds, and there's a bit of a breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifted feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean. I'm not much of a ladies' man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something."

- P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves

What? April 30th already? I could have sworn that yesterday was Easter. To anyone with a morbid mindset, life would seem to be beating a path out the door.

Still, good luck being morbid when May is upon you. Remind me to take a walk down to Youngs Farm before the day is out. Here's a song I listened to a lot around this time last year, and may it bring joy to you. (Haha. No, I don't deceive myself. That wasn't funny.)

Notice the statue of the Blessed Mother in the beginning? This is her month, too. My rosaries are at the ready. :)

Viva Brother - Darling Buds of May