"in between one eye blink and the next"

And fleetingly it seemed to him
That in between one eye blink and the next
Time paused, allowing time to be installed
Within that countless interim,
Coiled up, on hold,
A memory predicted and recalled.
Now, that weak muscle flexed,
All that contained him started to unfold

In front of him, a moving book
In three dimensions he could wander through,
At will, at any point, now, since, before,
To feel, to listen and to look—
A house, or suite
Of rooms around a circling corridor,
And waiting there, he knew,
Were all the peopled days he’d not repeat.

Form "The House of Time" by Stephen Edgar. Complete poem is here.

Der Kaktusliebhaber, Carl Spitzweg, c.1850

*After many weeks away, I seem to be making regular posts again. My thanks to everybody who hung around to welcome me back. It's a pleasure to go searching again for words and images to share with you. Not sure where all the time went while I was away from here. A lot of it was spent reading and writing. I've read some gorgeous books in the past few months, including Appalachee Red by Raymond Andrews, Mr. Field's Daughter and Rebel Powers by Richard Bausch, Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow, and the new Lydia Davis translation of Madame Bovary. Kevin Wilson's new novel, The Family Fang, is smart and great fun -- I reviewed it here. As for the writing, I've been lucky enough to devote more of my work time to fiction, and I spent two weeks at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. I wrote a little essay about that for Chapter 16.

For longtime readers who don't keep in touch with me via Facebook, I'm sad to report that Kobi, the Big Yellow Ball of Crazy, died in August. Kobi was the most troubled and troublesome of my dogs, and the one that loved me best, so of course she was my favorite. I always said she would wind up breaking my heart and she did. I miss her.

Finally, an apology for my poor housekeeping. I have neglected the blog so thoroughly for the past few months that I just now discovered that some Blogger spasm (probably that huge hissy fit last spring) tweaked the template just enough to knock a bunch of the past year's posts slightly askew. Urgh. They are still readable, but we are all about the pretty here at BitterGrace Notes and misaligned text is intolerable. I'll eventually fix all the posts so that those of you who like to scroll through, say, the Gallery of Antique Smut will find nothing to offend your eyes.