Our Sins of Butter, Eggs, Flour & Sugar

I'm still reading The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman. I read one of the fourteen stories at a time, so I can make it last. But there will still be The End.

I'm thinking about finding this place, Blackwell, Massachusetts. I want to climb High Top Mountain and find a bear in a cave. Or better yet, a bear cub. Then stop by the Jack Straw Bar and Grill, maybe I'll hear some good stories from the locals. I don't think I'll swim in Eel River, even though there aren't that many eels in it anymore, not like there used to be, anyway. But I'll go have a look. Maybe sit for a awhile on the riverbank and see if the Apparition shows up.

I will definitely eat an apple.

Too bad Ava Cooper went back to California. Otherwise, I could indulge in some Devil's Food Cake, Lust Cake, Gluttony Cake—or maybe one slice each of Gratitude Cake and Apology Cake. Unless Envy Cake is what's on the menu.

Sigh.
All those sins of butter, eggs, flour, and sugar.
Maybe it would be easier to get down to San Francisco and stand in line on a Saturday night.

Is Place Mystical?

I am reading The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman. Ever since I read Leaf Storm by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I am enchanted by this idea of a collection of short stories united by place. The place in Leaf Storm is Macondo, a fictitious town in Colombia. The place in The Red Garden is Blackwell, a rural town in Massachusetts.

Having the good fortune and misfortune of living many places--the good fortune of being exposed to variety and difference, the misfortune of leaving one a bit rootless--I find place to be mystical, i.e. every place on this great earth has its own unique convergence of energy.

You can't really sense place in a single visit, much as you can't always know a person after one conversation. But living in a place, over a period of time, you start to grasp its particularities, and idiosyncrasies, and how those effect the people who live there.

I have lived in the desert, I have lived near the beach, I have lived on the plains, I have lived in proximity of mountains…each place has its own identity, as definable as any person or character. I suppose that is why this concept…story of place…intrigues me so.

The first story in Red Garden leaves me thinking, as much of Alice Hoffman's work does. And I'm one of those animal lovers. For someone who is so wordy, it is perhaps their wordlessness that draws me to them. That and their eyes.

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