Welcome to Litsy!

This is from the episode of Mad Men where JFK was assassinated. Betty is at home watching the news when Carla, the maid, comes in all distraught. Betty has to tell her the president is dead. They sit on the sofa and smoke cigarettes together, sharing their grief.

shared moment of grief
breaks down social barriers —
commiserating.

#haikuhive #haikuaday #madmen #tvhaiku #JFK

P.S. If you haven‘t watched Mad Men I can‘t recommend it enough!

The writing is engaging but full of stereotypes and cringeworthy scenes. Determined to finish for my IRL bookclub I jumped to the author interview, found it fascinating and forged ahead. My problem was fictional MC, Mary Dodd, as the incredible heroine of her own journals. I didn‘t believe an 1870s woman would make her choices because the consequences were too grave. However, everyone in my bookclub loved her and disagreed with my take.

I really loved this one. At first it was like any other fantasy; beckoning us to take a closer look at this train, its staff, and passengers. But don‘t look too closely at the passing landscape. It was dreamlike. The idea of being stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere, with an ever-changing landscape with unknown creatures on the prowl, sounds terrifying. But then it turns ethereal and whimsical, full of magic. The underlying theme is greed…⬇️

“We leave new life in our wake; young vines curling around ancient houses; new shoots stirring in the soil; flora and fauna not found in any of the natural histories so far written. We leave you to find ways to live alongside it, to make the choice that faces us all—whether to turn away from the changes, to fight, to flee; or whether to welcome them in.”

“Within all things, a striving to achieve a more perfect form.”

“…though the crow is a much maligned bird—a creature cannot be good or evil, not like man, who is born good and pure, who must learn evil.”

“This is why we have our rituals, she thinks. This is why they are needed—so that we can lose ourselves for a while.”

“…they take up the years of superstition, the ritual—boundaries have to be marked, after all, and what is it about a line that brings on the urge to leap over it?”

Gave myself a rest day cause it‘s been a crazy couple of weeks. Only the bare minimum for me today, and I think Luna and Sunny agree with my choices 🥰

“The human mind sees what it wants to, the Professor always says. We see faces in the bark of trees, in wallpaper patterns, because we look for ourselves in everything.”