GRIZZLY PEAR
I tuck the kids into bed.
At their feet, I swing the blanket up into the air and let it float onto them.
We call it a floooph.
Occasionally, I’ll whip the blanket down with a whoosh!
The kids clamor for this 快 (quick) floooph, but mommy frowns upon this ritual of generating dust clouds.
We laundered the sheets this afternoon.
Tonight’s dust is clean.
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We’re It!
“A Cosmic Belly-Laugh“, William Martin
We always have been, and always will be.
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Grizzlypear would have hit four digits last year, but I had moved some old posts to private.
It was worth the wait because this moment coincides with a programming change.
For the past month, I’ve been playing with a new format. These Penny Delights started as a one-sentence story, but have expanded to include a short vignette, quote, and linked photo.
Beyond the format, I have a rule — I don’t schedule Penny Delights. If I don’t write today, I don’t post today.
I’d like to post every day.
So I’m slowing down on the longer posts. I’ve also revised the Grizzlypear newsletter to publish a weekly digest on Sunday mornings.
If you’d like a Penny Delight each morning, I’ve created a daily newsletter (that will also include the longer posts when they are published). Send me an email if you want to try it out.
Over the years, Grizzlypear has been the home of many experiments, and this hobby has become more fulfilling with each iteration. It’s totally 2008, but everyone should start a blog. The internet was supposed to be a utopia of shared knowledge, not a mindless scroll of spoon-fed consumption in the walled garden of a soulless corporation. Plant your flag and start writing. Even without a big audience (we’re up to nine!) the exploration is its own reward.
One of my mottos is “to tinker and delight, together”. Thanks for following this meandering journey. Please forgive my tinkering; I hope you enjoy the new delights.
Who knows, maybe I’ll be writing about five digits in 2052.
Until then, cya tomorrow!
Justus
The kids love making pancakes, but an eternity extends past pouring the batter.
They run off.
I glance up as they race out the kitchen.
Her arm stretches right out of the room. His leg kicks back to the left. He pushes his head towards his sister. She angles her torso above her brother.
They flash two grand smiles.
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An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem… The brain just edits it out.
Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams
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The girl scootched up the slide, but couldn’t quite make it.
The boy ran up the structure. He offered a little hand.
Ssssssstttrrretchh…
Clasp!
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Every door stands an open door:
our human settlements all temporary.We share together the incidental shore
and teach the young to tend the lamp’s wick,weary of anyone small enough to bar our entry.
“Visitors” by Joan Naviyuk Kane, via American Life in Poetry 887
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At the start of the pandemic, my son learned to count to twenty while washing his hands.
…十三、十四、十五、十六、十七、十八、十九、二十！
Least year, he learned the alphabet song at the lavatory.
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and ….
Now, he wails for a few seconds.
“AAeeeeAAAEeeeeeeAAAEeeee”
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Yes, everybody has his own trademark – or someone else’s for that matter, since we seem to be plagiarizing all the time.
Borges on Writing, page 26
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The boy discovered a new helmet.
There’s a laundry basket on his head.
He spins it round and round.
A little man encompassed in a translucent white blur.
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Did you know that a group of pandas is called an embarrassment?
from the girl’s research paper on pandas.
People are trying to change that because it is embarrassing to the panda.
Most of the time they are solitary animals though.
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bl-uh-d or-an-j!
The thought grosses out my daughter.
So the boy repeats it with zest.
Not nice!
And we warn her about imbuing sounds with power.
How about the oranges?
meh.
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At times [the twilight cloud] will overspread the whole west as a sheet of brilliant magenta, but more frequently it blares with scarlet, carmine, crimson, flushing up and then fading out, shifting from one color to another; and finally dying out in a beautiful ashes of roses.
“Desert Sky and Clouds”, The Desert, John C. Van Dyke, 1901
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While folding laundry, he found his new boxer-briefs.
He was skeptical (they were one size larger than his current collection of underwear).
He ran downstairs to verify.
妈妈你有买短裤给我吗?
Mommy did you buy the underwear for me?
是的。“Yes.“
So he asked again.
and again. and
again. and
again
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Until she snapped and disavowwed doing any such thing.
He sauntered back upstairs.
I asked him to double check.
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That first cry opens the earth door.
“Memory Sack” by Joy Harjo, from American Life in Poetry #886
We join the ancestor road.
With our pack of memories
Slung slack on our backs
We venture into the circle
Of destruction,
Which is the circle
Of creation
And make more-
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The boy drew a large oval with eyes, nostrils, and a smile.
He proudly presented this egg to mom.
We asked him to sign the drawing.
To help, I wrote his name in big letters, all uppercase as an architect would.
My daughter stepped in and taught him proper capitalization.
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Whence things have their origin,
The sole surviving fragment from the philosophy of Anaximander.
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one another
– The condemnation for the crime –
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
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The smell of baking bread is the height of luxury domesticity.
But the past five years have turned it a warning of the looming exam.
Will it rise?
Will be pretty?
Is this loaf a “failure”?
The bread lines of war put me to shame.
This aroma should only be a source of joy.
Beware of the hedonic treadmill.
Let us accept our nourishment with constant gratitude.
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A big, red bug bit Gus.
Last night, the boy read a simple sentence from a Phonics Pathways, 9th ed.
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