Peckenpaugh

What grows when you think of it and hurts when you truly know it?

[.....]

[Aris]

I don’t have anything to say. I’d just like to talk to you.

[Desmond]

Happy Birthday, Des.

( BREAKING IN THE BOWLING ALLEY BASEMENT! )

'Cicadas at the End of Summer'

Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,
As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of
titanium;
They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern
slowing into town.

But all you ever see is the silence.
Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.
With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do
just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space
museum —

What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;
The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned

The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk
in the bottom of a mug.
Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with
lineman's pliers.
A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry
in Brighton.

Martin Walls

[.......]

Will someone please tell me the steps to unlocking the memory inside of a cicada shell? Succinctly.

( Seance at the ol' Iron Horse )

Mr. Qualls' son was named Lionel.

[.....]

I think he died in a fire.

[...]

[Adrian]

Do you remember those messages from LQ back in February? [...] Could CARDe have been [...] manipulated? Like our muggle studies projects?

'The White Rose'

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips

John Boyle O'Reilly

Your parents are going to make out with each other tomorrow.

[Aris]

Congrats on the big win. [...] Are you busy?

[Imogen]

Is your cicada still boring?

( WANDERING THE WOODS )

'Sloe Gin'

The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
rising through the pantry.

When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-
black sloes, bitter
and dependable.

Seamus Heaney

Aster sent me a bottle.

Who wants to go into the woods with me tonight to find Lukashenko?

Or maybe to find out how we die.

( WINTER FORMAL! )

'Numbers'

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—
add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication’s school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else’s
garden now.

There’s an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mother’s call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

Mary Cornish

What I like about numbers is that they remind me I'm an absolute moron and I think that's good for a person (from time to time).

[Wyatt]

How do you feel about numerology?

Who was that boy in the punky leather jacket at Patronus practice yesterday?

[Wizard Lit Students]

Why can't we just have free-writing time when Mr. Crockett is out sick?

VERCOER

vs

PECKENPAUGH

( QUODPOT GAME #4: Peckenpaugh vs Vercoer )

( To Harrison from Viola )

Excerpt from 'New Year's Resolutions'

I am resolved—to flirt no more,
It leads to strife and tribulation;
Not that I used to flirt before,
But as a bar against temptation.
Here I except (cut out the names)
Perfectly Platonic flames.

Rudyard Kipling

Problematic in a million ways.

Have you all sorted out your resolutions yet?

'Desert Places'

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost

Do you think you can die from being touch starved?

( SKI WEEKEND! Day 1 )

'And the days are not full enough'

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Anyway. Who's excited about the ski trip?

I don't know who thinks it's funny to build a voyeuristic snowman right outside people's windows, but I can assure you that it is not actually funny.

[..........]

Apologies to Deeplurk for the scream.

I'm going to kick it down.

( URIAH LIVES ANOTHER DAY )

Does anyone know why the Surly Stump was reduced to its current status?

[Codebreakers: Elijah, Freya, Audrey, Trudy]

For whatever reason, the cipher is working on some of the entries today. Just the Monday entries.

[Laszlo & Aris]

Hi Laszlo.

Will you look at some plants for us?