Thursday morning

Thinking about writing:

Just so you know, I am reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It is about a boy named Bod [Nobody Owens to be exact] who lives in a cemetery and is being raised by ghosts. And I like it. Gaiman is a brilliant and masterful writer. Tiny literary turns make for sudden images and delight.

Here is an excerpt:

And so it went, until it was time for Grammar Composition with Miss Letitia Borrows, Spinster of the Parish [*Who Did no Harm to No Man all the Dais of Her Life. Reader, Can You Say Lykewise?] Bod liked Miss Borrows, and the coziness of her little crypt, and that she could all-too-easily be led off the subject.

"They say there's a witch in uncons--unconsecrated ground," he said.

"Yes dear. But you don't want to go over there"

"Why not?"

Miss Borrows smiled the guileless smile of the dead. "They aren't our sort of people," she said.

"But it is the graveyard, isn't it? I mean, I'm allowed to go there if I want to?"

"That," said Miss Borrows, "would not be advisable."

Bod was obedient, but curious, and so, when lessons were done for the night, he walked past Harrison Westwood, Baker and family's memorial, a broken-armed angel, but did not climb down the hill to the Potter's Field. Instead he walked up the side of the hill to where a picnic some thirty years before had left its mark in the shape of a large apple tree.

I posted Gaiman's poem Instructions a while back. Take a look if you want.