Week in Seven Words #510

This covers the week of 10/27/19 - 11/2/19.

departure
I hurry back to give her a second kiss.

depression
One statue with a ripped out torso embodies depression. Mind and body laid to waste.

feasting
At an Uzbek restaurant: salads in small, shallow dishes and a delicious stew that settles comfortably in my stomach for what seems like days.

mealtimes
A rich salmon salad in the morning. Pecan cookies in the afternoon. Some yogurt for dinner.

sculptures
On one outdoor terrace, a sculpted horse considers the ocean and the narrow streets of an old neighborhood. On the rooftop, a real bird with black and white feathers perches on a steampunk-like contraption. Nearby, a statue skulks, its face lost in the shadows of a hood.

staked
The cat peers out from among broad, dusty leaves.

waterfront
By the ocean: scooters, bikes, paper boats strung up in the air, a rippling flag on a rock among the waves.

Week in Seven Words #487

alimentary
A narrow path takes us through a narrow park. I get the feeling that I'm in an alimentary canal, a digestive tract. There's enough food and shit scattered around to strengthen that impression.

anxiety
Anxiety is like clinging to a salt-caked rock miles from shore as cold waves slap you around.

chariness
A cat investigates the automatic doors. She's too small to open them on her own. When a human passes through, she sticks her head and some of her body into the gap but quickly pulls back as the doors close. Maybe she's afraid of being trapped in the building, an unfamiliar place that smells heavily of humans and disinfectants.

ditch
Decades later, she still behaves like an unloved little girl not getting enough attention from her parents.

gorge
She eats cake with popping, slurping noises.

indignity
She has tripped and is lying facedown with her face in her hands. What hurts her more than the bruising is the awareness of a crowd around her, staring.

rubber band
She walks away from the math problem and for a few minutes pretends it isn't lurking in her notebook. With a sigh, she returns to it. Solves it. Smiles.

Week in Seven Words #438

conducting
A tourist family clumps beside me on the subway. When they hear my reassurance that they're on the right train, and that we're all going to the same place – the Staten Island Ferry – they follow me like baby ducklings until they're safely on the boat.

enlivening
He apologizes for talking too much, but there's no need. He's funny, clever, and down-to-earth. His brain is an old bookshop of anecdotes you'd actually want to listen to and historic trivia made more interesting by his theatrical retellings.

goggle-eyed
Two daycare workers push a large mini-van type of stroller with six babies, who stare at us in fascination, as if they're taking a tour of a zoo stocked with strange adults.

padding
A silent, muddy path in the woods. Something is watching me from the undergrowth. A cat.

snuffle
The dog hops onto the couch, where I'm working on some editing. She presses against me and sniffs at the small pile of pages balanced on my thigh. There's a chance that she'll try eating one of them. (She doesn't. Maybe the kind of ink I'm using isn't appetizing.)

unchanging
There's a timeless quality to the park's headquarters. The main room is small and smells of sawdust. The lighting is cozy and dim. Maps are scattered across the table, and posters and diagrams that largely go unread make the walls colorful. I can see the room being preserved this exact way for decades.

vista
The field is shaped like a bowl. It's screened by trees all around, and on one side it's bordered by a broad river.

Week in Seven Words #424

clunking
The rhythm of our conversations is two people kicking a ball around aimlessly.

encompassing
Her shawl has rippling shades of blue, light and dark, as if a small ocean has settled around her shoulders.

purposeless
He stares in bemusement at his useless homework that his inebriated teacher won't bother to read.

replications
Along one avenue, each block seems to be copy and pasted, one to another. A succession of groceries, nail salons, pizzerias, and chain restaurants on repeat. (But there are some variations. A community bank, now and then. And sometimes the grocery store specializes in a certain cuisine.) Along another avenue, this one primarily residential, homes with their own small lawns give way to chains of homes with a flight of front steps and no lawn, followed by a block of project houses, then back to the homes with the front steps.

shedding
The park is all bare trees pawing at the sky, and leaves that have settled in rustling folds on the grass.

single-minded
The dog pants ferociously during the game of fetch. She darts, gasping and growling, down the hallway as if the tennis ball is an escaped criminal she alone can bring to justice.

sorcerous
Three cats emerge from a salt marsh. First a pair, then a lone one with a black mustache and thick white fur. None of them have collars.

Week in Seven Words #378

confect
He brings out a glass bowl with six strawberries bathed in whipped cream.

denial
The kid is determined to pretend that she's happy. She speaks in greeting card platitudes and draws smiley faces on her work. It's her way of getting through a childhood that's starved of love.

gliding
The day is flush with sunlight, and the air smells clean. I walk for an hour and feel calm.

narrowly
He spins the fidget toy on the surface of the desk (spin spin spin), his attention focused entirely on it and not on his book.

pressed
The silver din of utensils and the voices sparkling and roaring pin me to the doorway for a moment, before I step into the restaurant bar during happy hour.

tenant
The cat doesn't belong to anyone in the building. He moved in, and some of the residents took responsibility for veterinary fees. Now he wanders the corridors and curls up for hours in the courtyard among potted plants and folding chairs.

tongue-tied
Her gratitude catches me by surprise, and I don't know if it's deserved. I smile awkwardly, and the thoughts seem to empty from my head to make room for confusion.

Week in Seven Words #365

courtly
He tips his hat and wishes me a good afternoon. It's sunny out, and he's serene. It really is a good afternoon.

dab
Fingerprints of sunlight on faded brick and joyful murals.

felinity
In the gap between brownstones, there's a fenced off dirt plot, studded with rocks. Two cats inhabit it. One sprawls on a bed of sunlight. The other watches me with menacing alertness.

horseplay
Kids seize each other in headlocks outside the department store in front of the mannequins and pink placards, as they wait for their mom to finish shopping.

neighborly
In their community, neighbors, friends, and coworkers will show up with trays of food in the days after childbirth.

neonate
She sleeps in a warm crescent against my stomach.

slumberous
With classes cancelled for the day, the campus is silent. A building with a crenellated tower casts a shadow over the grounds.

Week in Seven Words #345

feline
The cat hops on the chair and places a paw on the table. The human glares at her. The cat gazes into the human's eyes. She places another paw on the table.

gelato
On a warm night, the ice cream store is a cold, clean square of light.

lop
When he plays Clue, he starts to shorten most of the names, maybe because he's trying to sound like a hard-boiled detective. Miss Scarlet becomes 'Scar.' The conservatory is "the serv."

narratives
He comes across short stories of people from a country he doesn't care about. After that, he wants to know more about their struggles and their way of life. He'll ignore a news report, but the short stories humanize them to him.

performing
At the table, the kids interview each other as they pretend to film a talk show. Meanwhile, one of the adults crafts an ostentatious display of temper for the waiter.

pizzazz
Many situations can be improved on with a bit of jazz hands and a song.

reek
The car smells like sweat and onions. Even with the windows rolled down, the smell persists, mixing with the cool wind and swirling through our heads.

Four Short Stories Where an Animal's Misfortune Shows Something Toxic About People

Title: Everything in This Country Must
Author: Colum McCann
Where I Read It: The Art of the Story

Katie, the narrator, is a teenager who lives with her father on a farm in Northern Ireland. At the start of the story, their draft horse is stuck in a river and will likely drown. Salvation for the horse might come from a group of British soldiers passing by, but what will Katie's father choose - the horse's life or a burden of bitter gratitude to the despised soldiers? From the beginning of the story, all hope seems to have drowned. Katie's father can't imagine a world without grief, a world where even an inadequate reparation or artless act of kindness is possible.

Title: In the Zoo
Author: Jean Stafford
Where I Read It: The Granta Book of the American Short Story

Two orphaned sisters come to live with their grandmother's friend, Mrs. Placer, who runs a boarding house. The atmosphere in the house is poisonous, full of suspicion and malice. Mrs. Placer and the boarders talk about everyone in town in the worst light. They don't see good in other people; they like to puncture people's happiness and go out of their way to find petty motives even in kinder acts. The story shows the children marinating in this toxic environment.

Some escape might come from Mr. Murphy, a man who spends his days drinking and looking after a small menagerie. He gives the sisters a puppy one day, a bit of innocence and warmth in Mrs. Placer's house. The girls call the dog Laddy, and he becomes their companion. However, Mrs. Placer gets the idea that Laddy could be retrained as a fierce guard dog. With harsh tactics, she turns the dog violent and calls him Caesar.

What the dog eventually does, and what happens to him, is the most obvious example of the kind of corruption and deformation that Mrs. Placer brings about. What she does to the girls is more subtle. Hers is a steady drip of poison.

Title: Puppy
Author: George Saunders
Where I Read It: The Book of Other People

There's a puppy at the heart of this story, and his survival depends on two people understanding each other. One is the puppy's current owner, a woman living in a mess of poverty, ignorance, good intentions and violence. The other is a prospective buyer, a woman who currently has a more stable, dignified life and wants to give her children a pet. The puppy is a mute character, sidelined. Though he's the one whose life hangs in the balance, he takes second place to the human drama - the quick judgments, the incomprehension and horror.

Title: The Silent Traders
Author: Yūko Tsushima
Translator: Geraldine Harcourt
Where I Read It: Mothers & Daughters

With her two young children, a woman has returned to the neighborhood where she grew up. Near her home there's an overgrown park, pleasant to visit, but also a source of mystery and unease. Cats have proliferated there. The woman remembers how, during her childhood, people would abandon pets in that park. All those unwanted animals dumped among the trees.

The park's a place where people get rid of what's messy in their life. But they can still imagine their pets thriving, leading fantasy lives in a magical wood. (Or maybe facing horrors in the dark.) The park is full of possibility. And the animals in it, cast aside, resonate with the woman in the story - as she and her children are also a mess in someone's life, a complication that needs to be put out of sight.

Week in Seven Words #183

bromidic
I sit through an episode of an awful TV show. It's only bearable when watched with people who can laugh with you at how bad it is. It hits me yet again that I've lost a lot of patience for TV; I know there are good shows out there, I just rarely turn on the TV and bother to look.

dreamt
Green eyes, bony limbs, the grace of a cat. She's a creature made for shadows.

harmonious
A spray of white roses against brownstone. A yellow window framing bookshelves and a burgundy couch.

preternatural
A cat, arching and yowling in the mouth of a dark alley at something it can see but we cannot.

procyonid
Raccoons paddle around in the shallows of the urban lake. They forage among the weeds and rocks. From the bridge, some people throw bread crusts and chips. A large, bold raccoon brushes aside these offerings and scampers closer, looking up, maybe waiting for something more substantial to fall from human hands. What would happen if he were to climb up on the bridge?

stifled
Maybe in holding my feelings back, I'm giving them too little opportunity to grow. Maybe they should learn, however painful it is for them, that I'm not who they'd like me to be and that they'll have to deal with that.

trammel
He mutters to himself and jingles the keys in his hands. He's given small but important tasks, so that he'll always feel a part of the community. But sometimes he goes to the end of the street and looks across it, not as if he's seeing only the buildings on the other side but what's beyond. He knows that he could have been more, were it not for the unsolvable problems of his brain.

8 stories from around the world

Story Collection: World Literature: An Anthology of Great Short Stories, Drama, and Poetry
Editor: Donna Rosenberg

Title: The Black Cat
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
For as long as he can remember, the narrator in Poe's story has preferred the company of animals to men. He marries a woman whom he describes as having a compatible temperament, and she brings several pets into their home, including a black cat named Pluto who becomes his most cherished companion. However, being a Poe story, their harmonious home life isn't meant to last, and the peculiarities that had set the narrator apart from his peers at a young age now take a darker turn. He becomes a violent alcoholic, and though he lashes out at his wife, she remains for the most part in the shadows of this story, mentioned now and then but taking second place to Pluto, who bears the brunt of his cruelty.

What follows is torture, murder, and walled-up bodies. The story is told in a first-person, mentally unhinged narration, a Poe specialty (though this character is unique, not a repeat of other narrators). I love how The Black Cat conveys the perverse joy people take in damning themselves; they know that what they're doing is wrong, but do it for that very reason ("the unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself"). And it's also a tale of domestic violence. The wife, subtly erased, is only mentioned now and then (almost as soon as we've forgotten she exists - until we can't forget any more); in a strange way, as the narrator strikes out at his cat, I also sensed he was striking out at her, where she stood in the shadows.

Good Short Fiction: Gordon the Self-Made Cat and Guardians

Collection: Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories
Editor: Ellen Datlow

-------------

Title: Gordon, the Self-Made Cat
Author: Peter S. Beagle

This isn't a children's story, or it doesn't have to be one anyway; it reminds me of a Pixar movie that can be enjoyed by adults and kids.

Gordon is a mouse who doesn't see why he has to be consigned to a life of keeping out of sight, fleeing from predators, and trembling in fear in small dark holes in the wall. So he decides to learn how to be a cat. The principal at the cat school is skeptical at first:

The Principal was a fat old tiger cat who chewed on his tail all the time he was talking to Gordon. "You must be out of your mind," he said when Gordon told him he wanted to be a cat. "I'd smack you up this minute, but it's bad luck to eat crazies. Get out of here!"

But Gordon is persuasive, and the story follows him through the cat school courses, which include: Running and Pouncing, The Elegant Yawn, and Making Sure You Get Enough Food Without Looking Greedy (101 and 102). There's also an Assistant Professor of Tailchasing.

This is a funny, enjoyable story. Thought-provoking, too; it gets you thinking about the extent to which our behavior is influenced by culture and learned habits.

-------------

Title: Guardians
Author: George R. R. Martin
I like this story mostly because of the amusing main character, Haviland Tuf, an intergalactic tradesman, mercenary, and ecological engineer. Tuf is large and pale, fond of cats and dishes with mushrooms. He speaks with a prim, exaggerated formality. ("Sea monsters can be most vexing" or "Always I must truckle to suspicion... They are fortunate that I am so kind-hearted, or else I would simply depart and leave them to their fate.") He knows every courtesy, yet there's always a faint thread of contempt in his voice, an exaggerated patience for what he sees as other people's stupidity.

In my head, he sounds like The Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.

Tuf hears about an aquatic planet, Namor, beset by what appear to be unbeatable and extremely destructive sea creatures; these creatures are rapidly adapting to the planet's modes of attack and defense. When Tuf arrives at Namor, he liaisons with the Guardians, who serve as the planet's governing body and military. Naturally, the author writes them as more limited in perspective and imagination than Tuf.

"Your uncivilized ultimatum forced me to unwise action in order to placate you. Fortunately, while you have spent your nights gloating over transient and illusory victories, I have continued with my work."

I would probably tire of his character in the course of a long novel, but in a short story I can enjoy Tuf. I liked the way he discovers and presents the solution to Namor's problems at the end.

-------------

Other stories from this collection include: Puss-Cat (by Reggie Oliver), The White Cat (by Joyce Carol Oates), Coyote Peyote (by Carole Nelson Douglas), Every Angel Is Terrifying (by John Kessel), and Tiger in the Snow (by Daniel Wynn Barber).

Good Short Fiction: Every Angel Is Terrifying and Tiger in the Snow

Collection: Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories
Editor: Ellen Datlow

Title: Every Angel Is Terrifying
Author: John Kessel

Kessel wrote this story as a sequel to Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The title, "Every Angel Is Terrifying," is taken from the "First Duino Elegy" by Rilke.

The main character is the murderer from O'Connor's story, and he moves through this one like a fallen angel bringing devastation to his little corner of the world. He recoils from what's beautiful, maybe because it overwhelms him, and he can't trust it; it could be that he wants to destroy it before it destroys him.

Kessel makes excellent use of details; there's always something jarring and out of place, much like the fugitive himself who remains uneasy in his new life. Here he considers the room he's renting from a lovely landlady, Mrs. Graves (I don't think Kessel could have picked a name that foreshadows this lady's fate more obviously):

The room she rented him was twelve feet by twelve feet, with a single bed, a cherry veneer dresser, a wooden table and chair, a narrow closet, lace curtains on the window, and an old pineapple quilt on the bed. The air smelled sweet. On the wall opposite the bed was a picture in a dime store frame, of an empty rowboat floating in an angry gray ocean, the sky overcast, only a single shaft of sunlight in the distance from a sunset that was not in the picture.

At one point Mrs. Graves tells him, "Sometimes I wish I could live in the world of goodness. But this world is good enough."

For the fugitive it never is. He ensures it isn't, by choices he's made in the past and by the course he charts in the current story. Even if the rest of the world doesn't see him for what he is, he knows himself, doesn't he? No matter what resolutions he's made since the O'Connor story, he can't sustain faith in himself or understand the faith that others might place in him. Faith can be delusions or platitudes; how can it be trusted? It's relatively easy to destroy this kind of faith, isn't it? Especially when no one really sees him as he moves among them.

From what I remember, he comes across both as an adult in control, making his terrible choices, and as a helpless child knocked around by powerful external forces - for instance, by old murder victims avenging themselves on him. His eyes seek out omens that he thinks might tell him his fate; he's waiting to be led and transformed by something outside of him. Does he want someone to come along and lead him by the hand (or maybe just put an end to him once and for all)? Will he accept a human hand held out to him? Maybe he is waiting for a light or a truth that is more definitive than humanly possible - a light that will either fall on him in sure blessing or expose him harshly and damn him once and for all.

There's a sense of disorientation in the story, where as a reader you sometimes doubt what's real and what isn't; the fugitive is very much apart from everything around him, and he can't handle uncertainty. I liked the general atmosphere of the story and how, similar to O'Connor's story, even mundane details can raise goosebumps.

(And if you're wondering why "Every Angel is Terrifying" showed up in a book of cat stories, all I'll say is that there is a cat, spilling over from O'Connor's story.)

-------------
Title: Tiger in the Snow
Author: Daniel Wynn Barber

This turned out to be a wrenching story. It closes in around you as you read; you slowly realize what's happening, and at that point you can't look away - you need to stare it in the face.

The story begins with Justin, a young boy (two years shy of Junior High), visiting his best friend Steve's house. Usually they have so much fun together but this time he isn't invited to sleep over for the night. He'll have to walk home through the snow.

What he fears isn't walking home on a snowy night, but the thought of a tiger lying in wait for him - a white Siberian tiger that blends in with both the snow and the shadows. He knows it's a ridiculous fear (his father once told him so) but he can't shake it off especially when his quiet neighborhood seems so different in the snow.

But tonight the usually comfortable features seemed alien and warped out of reality under the snow, and finding himself in this strange white landscape, Justin suddenly felt the tiger-fear return. It bobbed up and down within him until he could almost feel the tiger's nearness, so close that the hot jungle breath seemed to huff against his cheek.

The conversation at the end of the story is terrible and gentle. ("Yes... I thought it was you. You've been following me all my life, haven't you?")

-------------

[Edited: 1/2015]

Other recommended stories from this collection include: Coyote Peyote by Carole Nelson Douglas, Puss-Cat by Reggie Oliver, The White Cat by Joyce Carol Oates, Gordon the Self-Made Cat by Peter S. Beagle, and Guardians by George R.R. Martin.

Good Short Fiction: Coyote Peyote (by Carole Nelson Douglas)

Title: Coyote Peyote
Author: Carole Nelson Douglas
Where I read it: Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories (ed. Ellen Datlow)

Midnight Louie works as a detective in Las Vegas. You can find him at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino by the koi pond, which supplies him his dinner. He cuts a striking figure - black with "tourmaline-green" eyes and "topping twenty pounds soaking wet" - and has a pretty high opinion of himself. It isn't easy being the foremost feline detective (maybe the only feline detective?) in a city like Las Vegas.

In the story he's approached by a wild coyote who needs his help; the coyote death rate has soared at the borders of a real estate development called Peyote Skies just outside the city. Louie's first assumption is that they're getting killed off for trespassing:

No wonder the coyotes are goners. They were trespassing on some high-end new real estate of the first water. I sit under one of the paired yucca trees that mark the development's entrance to read the billboard, which features colors like trendy turquoise, orange and lavender bordered in a chorus line of alternating jalapeno peppers and howling coyotes.

Though I was curious about the mystery of the dying coyotes (and a dark tale it turned out to be) it was really Louie himself - and the idea of a cat detective - that drew me into the story (I'm sure he'd be happy about that). He narrates like a film noir detective - cool and perceptive, given to colorful descriptions, and knowing just how good he is. There's no femme fatale in the story, but he does get a sidekick for a while - Happy Hocks, a half-grown coyote who worships the ground Louie struts on. Along with the humor, attitude, and striking characterizations I loved the strong sense of place in this story: Las Vegas and its environs through the eyes of a feline who's seen it all.

-------------

Other stories in this collection include Puss-Cat (by Reggie Oliver) and The White Cat (by Joyce Carol Oates), along with Every Angel is Terrifying (by John Kessel), Tiger in the Snow (by Daniel Wynn Barber), Gordon the Self-Made Cat by Peter S. Beagle, and Guardians by George R. R. Martin.

-------------

This post has been linked to at this week's Short Stories on Wednesdays at Simple Clockwork.

Good Short Fiction: "Puss-Cat" and "The White Cat"

Collection: Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories
Editor: Ellen Datlow

Title: Puss-Cat
Author: Reggie Oliver
Godfrey is a washed up theater actor who used to perform in supporting roles alongside the late Sir Roderick Bentley, a legendary thespian. In the story Godfrey is sitting around talking about Roderick ("Roddy") over drinks, and even though Godfrey is an interesting man in his own right - world-weary and full of forced cheer, his tongue loosened by drink - you sense that his life has revolved and will always revolve around Roddy. "Puss-cat" is the term of endearment that Roddy, an insatiable womanizer, used for all of his girlfriends and mistresses, and Godfrey spends the most time talking about one of them: Yolande, an ingenue who caught Roderick's attention after she berated him for hurting a stray cat that hung around the theater where they were rehearsing. As Godfrey puts it:

Yolande, you see, was one of those people who is instantly drawn to anything even more defenceless than herself.

There's so much deliciousness in this story, the way it's crafted in a loose narrative where each detail slips in at just the right moment. In Godfrey's reminiscences the characters come alive: Roddy, grand and careless, the charismatic egotist par excellence, and Yolande, who is way in over her head when it comes to love and life and the often sordid business of theater. And Godfrey himself, with his witty asides and drink-deadened heart, what little surprises he has in store for us. I love how the humor in the story can suddenly give way to a deep bruising darkness.

I also love the detail about each theater having its own cat, a stray who saunters around and owns the place (and keeps mice from chewing on wires and cables). Isn't it curious that Roddy, a man of the theater who calls all his girlfriends "puss-cat," really hates cats? Theater cats are a critical part of this tale.

-------------

Title: The White Cat
Author: Joyce Carol Oates

There was a gentleman of independent means who, at about the age of fifty-six, conceived of a passionate hatred for his much-younger wife's white Persian cat.

Julius Muir is in his fifties; Alissa, his wife, is in her thirties. It's her second marriage, and his first. She's pursuing an acting career in the city and spends a lot of time with her circle of theater friends, including men her own age. Julius meantime hangs around his large estate outside the city collecting valuables and wondering why he still feels lonely.

Into this picture of marital health steps Miranda, the cat. Miranda seems to show affection to everyone but Julius, and it drives him up the wall. He bought her, didn't he? Out of his loving, considerate heart he gave her as a gift to his wife, to cuddle and dote on. He sustains her, provides her with a home. Why won't she let him touch her? Why won't she love him? If someone were to ask him, "Julius, dear boy, is it really the cat that's bothering you or is it your wife?" he would say that of course it's not his wife. He loves his wife; it's just her cat he can't stand. Her beautiful ungrateful cat.

So he starts plotting how to kill the cat and make it look like an accident. It's a sad spectacle for the most part. Creepy and pitiable. He married a woman who is unsuited to him and to his ideal of marriage, and he thinks offing her cat will change things? But he's not really thinking, is he; he's going off the deep end.

Sometimes a story has a dominant color, and for this one it's a pale icy blue. Husband and wife may be cordial to one another but there's a chill on the marriage. Even Julius Muir's passions give off little heat. I see him bluish and oxygen-starved, with little to nourish him from within or from without.

Love can't be bought or demanded. And revenge doesn't always go as planned. It's painful to watch Julius square off against a house cat, and feel the futility of everything he does. Tormented by the thought that maybe a man like him can't inspire love.

-------------

Other stories from this collection: Coyote Peyote (by Carole Nelson Douglas), Every Angel is Terrifying (by John Kessel), Tiger in the Snow (by Daniel Wynn Barber), Gordon the Self-Made Cat by Peter S. Beagle, and Guardians by George R. R. Martin.

-------------

This post has been linked to at Short Stories on Wednesday #23 at the Breadcrumb Reads blog.