The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Fifteenth Birthday: March 19, 2009

Friday, March 20, 2009

Fifteenth Birthday: March 19, 2009

Happy Fifteenth Birthday to Philip:

So happy to have his picture taken. It gets difficult to come up with ways to celebrate birthdays when the birthday guest is of a certain reluctant age and way too cool for party hats or games.

But we tried. The current color that is cool in Philip's circle is purple, a hot, neon kind of purple that reminds me of the sixties, and not the good part of the sixties. His little sister and I tried to dye the cupcake icing that color:

Philip's guests pronounced them "Goth Vomit Lilac" but still managed to put them away pretty quickly along with a couple of half gallons of ice cream. Here's Philip's response:

The presents he wanted? A large bucket of fried chicken, a Japanese fighting fish, a new set of drumsticks, band posters, clothes and money. He thinks this is a great age: we think he's right. He took this last picture -

9 comments:

Mary Witzl said...: Aw, I love those photographs! And 'Goth vomit lilac' is such an evocative description. Still, I'd eat those cupcakes, frosted with such a delicate pastel shade. No way I'd touch anything purple unless it was cabbage or beets.; Friday, 20 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Heh, well the cupcakes had wheat germ and organic pears hidden in them, so you would be fine. They did warn everyone, "Mom puts vegetables in everything," to which I replied, "There are no vegetables in those cupcakes. I wouldn't put vegetables in birthday cupcakes."

But fruit is different. And wheat germ doesn't count.; Friday, 20 March, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: I really love the list of things he wanted. You guys must be super healthy if a bucket of fried chicken counts as a gift!; Friday, 20 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Maybe -- they can't have anything fried unless it's their bd. He measured 6'2" at 14, so yeah, guess he's pretty healthy.

BTW, he managed to eat the entire bucket and then dive into the ice cream.; Friday, 20 March, 2009
Nora MacFarlane said...: Goth vomit lilac... paints quite the picture in my head!

He at the whole bucket of chicken - wow! I can remember my mom buying 2 of everything when my brother reached 15. A chicken for him, and another for the rest of the family. I was always amazed at how much he could put away and then be ready for another meal in an hour.

Happy birthday to Philip!; Friday, 20 March, 2009
Katie Anderson said...: I am in love with Goth Vomit Lilac! And I love that you actually tagged it as such - you know, in case you write some more posts about GVL! LOL; Saturday, 21 March, 2009
Adrienne said...: The quality of purple icing is so disappointing, but that is the perfect name for that shade!
Great pics.; Saturday, 21 March, 2009
Hardygirl said...: Just the shade I've been looking for for my bedroom! Goth Vomit Lilac--you should get a job on the side naming shades of paint (do you ever wonder who actually DOES have that job????).

Happy Birthday Philip!

sf; Saturday, 21 March, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: GVL -- I'm not sure I could eat food described as such, but they laughed and shoveled them in. If anyone knows how to make icing that hot shade of purple, please let me know. It's all they want, and no matter how much red and blue we mixed, it just didn't change.

And yes, the food consumption of teen boys is beyond what I thought it would be, and I haved been warned since they were learning to walk what it would be like. It's even more.

Thanks for the bd wishes!; Thursday, 26 March, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***