Fruits of Various Labour

This is a photo from a curry restaurant I go to most Saturdays. Someone had brought fresh strawberries and a young woman, another regular, arranged them into a heart. There were pink, red, and white ones but a tiny elementary school girl carefully picked out and ate all the pink ones. They were damned good strawberries.

In Japanese communities, some restaurants are known places for kids and tutors to congregate so I teach some English, get a free dinner, and feel like I get to know the community a little better.

On a very different topic, to-day I read "Pump Excursion", a story in the latest Sirenia Digest by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's not a new story, it was in a collection of hers called Frog Toes and Tentacles that I've always wanted to read, but it's a rare and expensive volume. So I was glad to be able to finally read one story from it in Sirenia Digest.

On the one hand, it's a simple story about a woman having sex with a prostitute. But the core of the thing is the strange biology of the prostitute and the weird, subterranean location. References to places and cultures not of our world occur without much explanation and the prostitutes gills and flaps are only mentioned as they become important to the first person narrator--organically, in other words. When blood is described engorging a body part, I was compelled to ponder the very concept of flesh and how it connects to the brain. And then the dirty talk between prostitute and customer, dealing with power dynamics of totally non-existent cultures, invites sociological contemplation as well as psychosexual. It's a really nice story and it reminded me of the days when Caitlin's online community commonly discussed such things, mixed in with generous doses of Farscape and Lovecraft commentary. Good times.

Twitter Sonnet #1570

The mellow moon divests the marsh of sweets.
The baker piles flour back in time.
To make a cake the mistress buries beets.
An ice addition mixed a drink of lime.
The extra spider legs could carry cars.
We timed the trip to make a bonus train.
The babysitter combed the Easter bars.
The thought of trees disrupts the ocean brain.
The back became a front for business lost.
A trade occurred when doors were locked at night.
With gentle damage, rain defrayed the cost.
A gathered crowd observed a tattered kite.
A sun was swinging mad for weighty rocks.
Ideas of days condemned the life of clocks.