palace of winds

Since returning from Kirksville I’ve been listening to David Guterson’s Our Lady of the Forest on cd. On ten cds, really, so that’s been roughly two weeks of commuting, plus the time spent listening up through Iowa. Anyway, yesterday afternoon literally just as I was pulling into the driveway the gentle the-story-is-ending music rose, and Blair Brown spoke the last words as I slid neatly into the garage. And that was that.

I’m taken with this idea now, though, this books-on-cd idea. So this morning I put in the only other one I own, and bathed in Ralph Fiennes’ beautiful voice and Michael Ondaatje’s beautiful words all the way to work. The English Patient is unfortunately abridged and only four cds, but it is lovely all the same, and familiar, and I think I’ve needed that this week.

I finally saw Mystic River last night. It wasn’t what I was expecting. I’m…not sure what I was expecting, really; I think somewhere along the line I’d confused it with — Mulholland Drive? I don’t recall. Something else I also hadn’t seen. (As if that list isn’t miles.)

Anyway, it was good. Not my typical sort of movie. I think because it was so — masculine? It was a little Godfathery, I guess. Which…I also haven’t seen. Anyhow, it was quite compelling — Sean Penn in particular, and… I don’t know her name. The dark-haired wife of Tim Robbins’ character, the boy who gets in the car.

And really I don’t think I can comment beyond that, since I wasn’t paying very good attention while I watched, and was interrupted a few times. One of those times with oreo cheesecake, from the Cheesecake Factory, which I ate much more of than I ought, and which was utterly perfect, and which I think I do not quite regret enough.

This morning the world looked all ridiculous, like an overdone Christmas display, the ground dusted with big frosted feathery snow, all air and glitter. Everything literally glittering. But it all finds me fresh out of holiday spirit. It is March, not December, and I prefer to think of the enormous sweet strawberries I had for breakfast and the bright yellow daffodils blooming in the jar on the kitchen island.