Fiery Shapes

Tomorrow I turn one year older. Every year during mid-August, when the Earth passes close to the orbit of Swift-Tuttle; the bits and pieces ram into our atmosphere and the glorious shower comes down -- The Perseid Meteor Shower. I feel so blessed.

My daddy sent me a deep dish pecan pie from the Colin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas. Yum. That's kind of like a star falling from the heavens.

Neil Gaiman's Stardust opens today. Universe is going so far out for my birthday! Thank you! (If you don't know who Neil is, you should really read more.) His movie is about about a falling star , so appropriate. Neil's one of the peeps --a bona fide children's book writer - Coraline. That's going to be a movie, too. Neil's on my list of awesomely cool people I'd like to meet.

The current book: Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time". Pure genius.

Have I mentioned that I'm a great fan of Will Shakespeare? I really miss Texas around my birthday. I miss Shakespeare at Winedale. I saw at least 20 plays there as a teenager. I watched Shakespeare productions in a old barn; the bard's words were spoken with twangy Texas accents -- does it get better than that?

So I close with this quote from my main muse:

At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes
Of burning cressets, and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.

William Shakespeare

Henry IV, Part 1, act 3, sc. 1, l. 13-7.